4 - Wednesday, December 25, 1991 — North Shore News Guilty? Confess your 1AM of the firm opinion that a background in Cath- olicism prepares you in many ways for environmen- - talism. For those not familiar with the church’s convoluted collective in- ner thought-processes, it must be stressed that there is indeed con- siderable intellectual content to be found in the body of Catholic thought, despite the public behavior and utterings of the church’s rulers and acolytes. itis one of the world’s great religions because it dares to offer a blunt, black-and-white answer to the questions of life and death, while leaving all sorts of loopholes through which a tainted soul can worm its way back into good favor. This, says the catechism, is life’s meaning, so far as lowly you can know, and this is what hap- pens afterwards. Amen. Catholicism is a take-it-or- leave-it kind of religion. God says it’s My Way or the doorway to hell. That's about your full range of options. And God is a He, make no mistake. All this is basically the inherited Hebrew part, wherein the guilt mechanisms are oiled and the conflict between flesh and spirit is introduced. Nothing new here, re- ally. Standard Christianity. The genius of the Catholic system lies, I think, in the inven- tion of the confessional booth. Apart from the power it gave the church's minions, it meant you could screw up your whole life long, but the moment you took communion, confessed and promised to do penance, you could be zapped back into a state of sinlessness. Institutionalized forgiveness. ‘STRICTLY PERSONAL What a concept! No matter what kind of a snake you are, you always have one more last chance. On their deathbeds, lapsed Catholics are famous for changing their minds about how they didn’t believe any more, and calling pit- eously for a priest. Just in case, eh? Human weakness aside, there is a case to be made for Catholic thought. The notions of original sin, repentance, absolution and redemption are powerful ideas that map out a path a wandering soul might find useful to follow for a while. In my humble (and lapsed) view, Catholicism shouldn't be confused with modern-day papalism. An aging celibate European male going to South America and urging the illiterate masses to have more babics because Rome is running out of priests is such a complete twisting of Catholic charity and compassion (to say nothing of amounting to ecological madness) that it has to be viewed as moral corruption. The possible usefulness of a Catholic-style view of the universe when it comes to coping with the environmental crisis has nothing to do with popes or prelfates, evi- dently, but with a state of mind: guilt. Guilt has had bad press ever since Freud tied it in with sexual repression, but it can serve as an excellent starting-point for the development of an attitude or re- sponsibility. Guilt. Simple, healthy, old- fashioned guilt. The more basic, the better. That’s why original sin was such a great idea. In our time, orginal sin can be defined as the individual’s con- tribution to the ecological debt- load aquired by humanity. This should be easy for Cana- dians, of all people, to under- stand, since we have so much more to feel ecologically guilty about than any other nationality on the planet. We are eco-sinners of the first order. World class. We use more energy per capita than any other people. We leave behind more waste per capita. We consume more resources per capita. it has been estimated that Canada’s 25 million wasteful, energy-gobbling and pollution- causing citizens have the same total impact on the Earth's biosphere as one billion Third- World people. You sce the posential kere for a major guilt trip. As a youngster, ! used to resent feeling guilty about anything. But as time went by, guilt, | began to see, was a useful guidance system. For every silly little thing that I felt guilty about that | shouldn't have felt guilty about, there were a dozen things | should have felt guilty about, but didn’t. I never felt guilty about burning up gasoline, throwing out packages, using aerosols, spraying pesticides, cranking on air-condi- tioners, or committing any number of other modern neo- criminal acts. environmental sins made such a mess of things. Today, I don’t resent feeling guilty. It is high time to accept the Industrialized Person's Guilt Load, which is to say that we are the worst messmakers of a bad lot. No need to feel shame. Guilt will do. Having thus confessed — even to ourselves -— the theory is that we are well on way to redemption. 441n our time, original sin can ‘be defined as the individual's. contribution to the ecological debt-load acquired by humanity. 99 Of course, in retrospect we see that it’s too damned bad I didn’t feel guilty about those things back then, and neither did anybody else in society. Had we felt the ap- propriate guilt, we wouldn’t have Although — wait a second — there’s something called repen- tance to be done first, isn’t there? Ah, I'd forgotten... ARDAGH HUNTER TURNER Barristers & Solicitors Personal Injury AFTER HOURS C yh 5 FREE INITIAL CONSULTATION fiminal Matters Only e381 986-4366 ] 86. “2286 #300-1401 LONSDALE, NORTH VANCOUVER, BC. | EXTE AVAGANZA DEC. 26 - 8:30 AM Come early, bring a friend, enjoy a cup of coffee and have fun! DOOR CRASHER! FIRST 20 CUSTOMERS FOR 30-506: Herman Geist, Susan Bristol, Chava, Carol Anderson, Cornell Trading, Taryn de Chellis, All Christmas goodies includes cards, Jessa McClintock and more... ornaments, seasonal merchandise 0 % OFF A beautiful selection of Susan Bristol & Herman Geist sweaters