Refreshingly ungloomy

Climate change

 

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres admitted that the countries of the world who signed the Paris Climate accords are “light years” away from achieving their goals.

 

Yet there is someone who is not so pessimistic–Katharine Hayhoe. Christiane Amanpour who interviewed her on her PBS television show called Hayhoe “refreshingly ungloomy.” She is an atmospheric scientist and professor of political science at Texas Tech University as well as the Director of the Climate Science Center. Not only that she is an evangelical Christian.

 

Hayhoe is the author recently of a book called Saving Us: A Climate scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World. As Hayhoe said,

“The Paris Climate agreement is like a potluck dinner. Each country bringing something different–a different dish to the table. Up to now it is very clear, we don’t have enough food at the table. We cannot hold warming to anything below 2.7°C and even then it’s only a 2/3rds chance without further admission.”

 

Now that the UK is in the lead as far as the richer countries is concerned, on the issue of climate change progress.  Their former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the perennial bad boy of British politics was boasting about the UK’s success and urging other countries to “grow up” as his has done. Imagine that Boris Johnson telling people to grow up.

 

As Hayhoe said some countries like the US and Canada too for that matter are still trying to hang on to the status quo so they can adapt our systems when we are “truly in a crisis.” As Hayhoe said, “ The ICCC said its Code Red.” Of course the planet is not a in crisis. The existing life on the planet is in an emergency. The planet will survive this crisis. Whether humans and other creatures on it survive as well is another question entirely. As Hayhoe said,

“It truly is about saving us and that’s why we need all hands on board. We need these promises to be fulfilled.”

 

The Financial Times said,

“Making progress on climate change without alienating citizens who are worried about their household budgets just got more difficult. For responsible leaders however, there is no alternative.”

 

Hayhoe acknowledged that politicians might be frightened away by the scale of the problem about reducing dependence on fossil fuels. She asked us to:

“Imagine if the oil crisis in the 70s had precipitated climate action on the scale that we see today. We would be living in a completely different world. I know that as humans we always want to go back to what we had before, but the planet that you and I were born on no longer exists. Instead, it is literally up to us. It is in our hands to build a better planet for all of us. And now it’s time as he (Boris Johnson) said to grow up and do it.”

 

If course we have to figure how we do it?  This requires massive change. And there are enormous forces of inertia trying to block the process from being fulfilled. Many organizations and powerful individuals are trying, with all the money at their disposal to stop the changes from happening. And they’re  succeeding. According to Hayhoe,

“Climate has become the most politicized issue in the United States ahead of money, religion, and politics.”

And that is remarkable for, as Hayhoe said,

“A thermometer is not liberal, or conservative, or Democrat or Republican, and a hurricane doesn’t knock on your door and ask you who you voted for in the last national election before it destroys your home.”

 

The polarization is helping to hold us back from climate action. We have to understand that we have to lose vastly outweighs anything else on this issue. As Hayhoe said,

“We have to realize that what we have in common and what we have at risk is far more than the political ideology that divides us.”

 

It is surprising but in the 1990s in the US both Democrats and Republicans agreed that climate change was a major threat. But that was before major oil companies started spending a lot of money on persuading people that it was not a threat and they should continue instead with business as usual. Hayhoe put it this way,

 

“Back in the early or even late 1990s you could ask a Democrat and a Republican about climate change and they would give you the same answer. So, what happened? It was deliberately politically polarized. By who? By those who have the most to lose by the world weaning itself off of fossil fuels.”

 

Hayhoe agrees with Naomi Orestes an historian of science at Harvard University. She said, the Merchants of Doubt spread doubt and it paid off. For decades that dark money has helped to persuade Americans, and others around the world, that climate change is not real, at least not yet.

 

What can we do about it? We all have to make personal choices and that is important. We can be the change we want. That is a powerful example to others. Yet, our biggest tool is actually our voices. We can speak up. There are people we can influence. We can advocate for change and that can make a difference.

 

We can call for action! That is what young people have been doing and it has made a difference. We can do that too. As well, as Hayhoe said,

 

“we can do that at every table we sit at. It might not be the public square. It might be where we work. It might be in the city or town where we live. It might the organization we are involved in. We have a voice and we have influence, each of us in our unique spheres and wherever we go we need to be connecting the dots between how climate change affects the things we already care about, as a place of work, or school or worship or town and what we as a group or organization can do to help contribute to the solution, because it’s not just about country. It’s about cities, states, provinces, towns, businesses, organizations, tribal nations, universities, churches. All of us have a role to play again in saving us.”

 

The worst thing we can do–absolutely the worst–is nothing. Nothing brings nothing. Nothing is bound to fail more clearly than nothing.

From Heat Dome to Heat Bomb

Climate change

 

A couple of summers ago in B.C. people experienced an unusual weather phenomenon. It was called a heat dome. It trapped heat inside the invisible dome. Some described the weather as ‘stagnating.’ This dome trapped hot air inside it across western Canada and the northwest US.  In Manitoba we felt the effects though we were not inside the heat dome. For the first time ever, Christiane and I held back, by one day, our planned trip to our un-air-conditioned cottage.

 

During that week amazing things happened. As Jonathan Watt explained in the Guardian “The Canadian national heat record was broken last Monday, smashed Tuesday, and then obliterated last Wednesday when Lytton’s monitoring system registered 49.6ºC.”

Yet the new Canadian heat records were only the beginning of the story as BC moved from a heat dome to a heat bomb.

As Jonathan Watts reported,

“After the insufferable heat came choking fire. Firs the forest burned, then parts of the town. On Wednesday evening major, Jan Polderman, told people to evacuate. ‘It’s dire. The whole town is on fire,” he said on TV.  It took, like a whole 15 minutes form the first sign of smoke to, all of a sudden, there being fire everywhere.’

Police stations and hospitals reported a surge in heat-related deaths—486 in British Columbia, and dozens more south of the border.

The psychological, political, and economic effects are harder to quantify but, for many, there was a sense of bewilderment that these northern territories were hotter than the  Middle East. David Phillips, the Canadian government senior climatologist, summed it up in an interview with CTV, ‘I mean, it’s just not something that seems Canadian.’

More people in more countries are feeling the weather belongs elsewhere. Across the border, in Washington state, the maximum heat measured at Olympia and Quillayute was 6C higher than the previous all-time record, according to the Weather Prediction Center. In Oregon, the town of Salem hit 47C, smashing the previous record by 9C. Several areas of California and Idaho also saw new highs. The previous week, northern Europe and Russia has also sweltered in an unprecedented heat bubble. June records were broken in Moscow (34.8C), Helsinki (31.7C) Belarus (35.7C), and Estonia (34.6C).

 

Did you notice that.  486 people dead in BC from heat in a place that is considered having a moderate climate!

Siberia experienced an early heat wave that helped to reduce the amount of sea ice in the Laptev Sea to a record low for the time of year. The town of Lymyakon, Russia, widely considered to be the coldest place on Earth, was hotter (31.6C) than it has ever been in June. This followed a staggeringly hot spell in Siberia last year that lasted several months.

Yes, you read that last one right Siberia!

Things are getting weird and uncomfortable, but hardly anyone seems to care.

An Unlikely Hell on Earth

Climate change

Which place do you think of when you think of hell on earth? death Valley? Siberia? Steinbach?  There are many candidates for that position.

A couple of years ago, British Columbia surprised the world.  And not in a good way. Most of us think of B.C. as the land of mild winters and mild summers. We have not thought of it as a place of extreme weather. That was then; this is now. Lytton B.C. is a place of extreme weather. The hottest place in Canada!

As Jonathan Watts of the Guardian said,

“If you have been drawing up a list of possible locations for hell on Earth before last week, Lytton would probably not have entered your mind. Few outside of British Columbia had heard of this Canadian mountain community of 250 people.

Those who had were more likely to think of it as bucolic. Nestled by a confluence of rivers in the forested foothills of the Lillooet and Botanie mountain ranges, the municipal website boasts: Lytton is the ideal location for nature lovers to connect to beauty and fresh air freedom.

However the village made headlines around the world last week for a freakishly prolonged intense temperature spike that turned the idyll into an inferno…Shocked climate change scientists are wondering how even worst-case scenarios failed to predict such furnace-like conditions so far north.”

 

Climate change is surprising a lot of us. And usually in a bad way. Like fires destroying large parts of Los Angeles.  Or Fort McMurray. Or people dying in a forest fire in Lac du Bonnet Manitoba. Welcome to the world of climate change.

Literally the temperatures in Lytton were off the charts. None of the computer models for climate change—no matter how extreme—predicted what happened there.

For a long time, climate scientists have been warning that one of the effects of climate change will not just be warmer weather, but will include more extreme weather events.

 Johan Rockström, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Change Impact Research explained that the

“recent extreme weather anomalies were not represented in computer models that are used to project how the world might change with more emissions. The fear is that weather systems might be more frequently disrupted as a result of human emissions. He told the Guardian, “It is a risk—of a serious regional weather impact triggered by global warming—that we have underestimated so far.”

 

It seems that weather has arrived that is worse than the worst.

Savage Mistakes:  Climate Sense and Nonsense:

Movies

 

As PBS News Hour reported, “There were 27 US weather and climate disasters with at least $1 billion in damages in 2024.” You would think this would make it abundantly clear to American and Canadian conservatives that climate change is a serious problem now, because it is costing Americans and Canadians a lot of money—now. Not in the future.  If you thought this, you would have thought wrong.

 

As the second Donald Trump administration continues its barrage on every environmental protection measure created in the past half century, Climate change continues it siege on the world unabated.  And no one but the engery sector is happy, because they continue to make money Bigly.

 

We have been warned about the dangers and keep doing nothing. Now, at least in the US and Canada, we are going backwards in our efforts to contain this looming disaster. One of the thinkers who understands this process better than most is Bill McKibben who was interviewed on PBS News Hour.

 

Both in the US and now Canada too our political leaders are floundering, though the US more than Canada. In both countries conservatives argue strongly, that this is not a serious problem and that trying to address it only hurts the economy and puts both countries at a competitive disadvantage. Pierre Poilievre in Canada wanted to “Axe the Tax”, meaning the carbon tax designed to limit Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions. Now the prime minister has done that at least for consumers.  In the US Trump wants to bring back coal to solve the energy. Both of these actions seem remarkably unwise.

 

Bill McKibben noted the actions of the American president are not only bad for the environment, they are actually bad for the economy too:

 

“We’re seeing an incredible rollback, pretty much, of all environmental regulations dating back to 1970. We’re just passed the 55th anniversary of Earth Day, and it was in the immediate aftermath of that we started basically regulating pollution, and now we’re deregulating pollution of all kinds. The most serious consequences are what’s happening around climate and energy, and they’re serious for two reasons.”

 

One, the planet is getting hotter and hotter and hotter all the time. And with environmental catastrophes.  As McKibben said about America,

 

“March was the hottest March we have ever measured on this planet. And, two, were making a series of extremely foolish choices about energy. We’re the only place in the world that’s decided that somehow coal is the future of the planet. And we’re going to have our lunch eaten by the rest of the world, which has quite rightly figured out that sun and wind and the batteries to store their power when the sun goes down or the wind drops are the cheapest, cleanest, easiest, fastest way forward.  So, on both counts, we’re making just the most savage mistakes.

 

 

On his first day in office President Trump withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords, even though many heads of American corporations urged him not to do that. In Canada, on his first day as Prime Minister, Mark Carney axed the carbon tax as Poilievre had been demanding.

 

Trump has actually gone farther than Carney, because he has also rolled back what McKibben referred to as “an incredible rollback pretty much of all environmental regulation dating back to 1970.”

 

What makes McKibben particularly disappointed in America is that is where so much of the important science warming us about climate change has come, and now they are turning their backs on all of this knowledge and ignoring it.

 

As he said,

 

“U.S. was the place where we first understood what was happening. We were the first people to measure carbon in the atmosphere. The people that built the computer models that helped us gave us the warnings about what was coming. And those are precisely the programs that are now being chopped off. Even the programs where we measure the amount of carbon in the atmosphere or the temperature of the Earth are under assault, as if, by not measuring it, it might go away. But that’s not how physics works…. And willfully blinding ourselves to it is — has to rank high on the list of dumbest things that governments have ever done.”

 

But there might even be one thing they have done that is even dumber. That is ignoring the fact that is already well understood that the cheapest power now on the planet is solar energy and America is ignoring that, unlike its chief world rival China. China now produces 2/3 or the world’s solar power while America is ramping up coal production! As McKibben said, “they’re going to own the future and we’re going to have some coal mines.”

 

Doesn’t sound very smart does it?

 

Conclave: An Explosive Ending          

American Fascism, Authoritarianism, Movies, Populism, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

For those of you who have not seen the film Conclave and expect to, perhaps you should consider reading this post after you have seen.  The scene is quite shocking.

 

In the film  Brother Tedesco is the favorite of the conservative Cardinals who believed that the most recent Pope was much too liberal. They believe the Pope risked shaking the Church to its foundation. It would be shook to its foundation if any one of a number of candidates for the Papacy were elected.

 

The actual voting procedure in the film is quite interesting. At the exact moment that Brother Thomas Lawrence is delivering a vote in his own favor, because he seems to be the only candidate that might be able to stop Tedesco, like a bolt of lightning from God, there is an explosion and part of the ceiling of the huge hall collapses onto him and injuring him. It appears a terrorist suicide detonated a bomb that killed himself and also killed 52 people. Hundreds lie injured. There were also reports of attacks in Louvain and Munich. Perhaps it was a bolt of lightning from the God or the devil?

Brother Tedesco is quick to rise with a shaking finger:

 

“Here at last we see the result of the doctrine of relativism so beloved by our liberal brothers! A relativism that sees all faiths and passing fancies accorded equal weight. So that now, when we look around us, we see we see the homeland of the Holy Roman Catholic church dotted with mosques and minarets of the prophet Mohammed.”

 

Brother  Bellini says Brother Tedesco  should be ashamed. Father Tedesco replies,

“we should all be ashamed. We tolerate Islam in our land, but they revile us in theirs. We nourish them in our homeland. But they exterminate us. How long will we persist in this weakness.? They are literally at our walls right now. What we need now is a leader who understands that we are facing a true religious war…We need a leader who will put a stop to the drift that has gone on almost ceaselessly for the past 50 years. How long will we persist in this weakness? We need a leader who fights these animals,”

 

as he points to the crumbled ceiling.  Like so many political leaders, including Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump, he tries to take advantage of an emergency to grab absolute power for himself. Demagogic leaders love to take advantage of emergencies.

Sometimes, when people are fearful it is difficult to resist the authoritarian leader. Fear is a very poor guide for human conduct.

 

 

 

Conclave: Unholy Ambition

Catholic Church, Movies, Politics & Religion, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

Ambition is complicated. I remember when I was young in school if you were nominated for a position, on student council or something like that. you were expected not to vote for yourself. It was not conisered seemly

The candidates for the papacy in the film Conclave, as in real life come from rough timber.  There is not perfection there. Everyone of them is flawed, just as we all are.

Early on in the film Brother Aldo says, “no sane man would want to be Pope.” There is some obvious truth to this statement. He says he has no interest in being Pope. He also says, “the men who are dangerous are the ones who want it.” Yet later he makes clear he wants it too. But later he says every Cardinal has a desire to be Pope. In fact each has already chosen the name he wants to be called.  Was he lying?

Is this the moth of holiness? Or unholiness?

Brother Aldo Bellini and Brother Thomas Lawrence argue about who should be Pope.  Aldo believes Thomas should vote for him. If the Liberals don’t unite, Tedesco (the arch conservative) will win and undo 60 years of progress. He is vehement about it so Thomas reminds Lawrence this is not a war.  To this Aldo replies, “It is a war. And you have to commit to a side… Save your precious doubts for your prayers.”

Father Lawrence throughout the film says he does not want to be Pope. In fact, he assures everyone, that just before the Pope died he asked him to release him from his role as a Cardinal, for he wanted to return to the role of an ordinary Priest. He does not want power or glory or status. He tries to convince others not to vote for him.

Yet, later, we see, he votes for himself, at least once.

 

 

 

 

Conclave: Faith, Doubt and Ceremony

Movies, Religious Quest in the Modern Age, Skeptical Philosophy

 

Director Edward Berger who directed the film Conclave, told the BBC that the conclave was thought of as “an ancient spiritual ritual.”  We must remember that one of the wonders of the Roman Catholic Church is its ritual.  I remember that when I was young, a friend of mine, who was a Mennonite boy raised by an aufgelna (‘fallen off the branch’, Mennonite) whose father scandalously had weekly “Sunday School” in his little gazebo that included alcohol for those so inclined so early in the morning. Much to my surprise at the time, my friend told me he was attracted to the Catholic church because of its ceremonies.  I was surprised by that comment, as I had been brought up to think that ceremonies got in the way of faith.

The film demonstrates some of those ceremonies thrillingly in ways only good cinema can do. Watch it and be amazed. Clearly, ceremony can be part of a religious quest, no matter what us dullard Mennonites may think.

Another major issue in the movie is the question of doubt and its relationship to faith.  Can there be faith without doubt? It is an old and important question.  Brother Lawrence speaks warmly of doubt

Brother Cardinal Lawrence, the Dean of the College of Cardinals, gives an opening address to the Cardinals gathered in conclave which is a majestic homage to the twins, doubt and faith:

 

“Let me speak from the heart for a moment. St. Paul said, ‘Be subject to one another our of reverence for Christ. To work together, and to grow together, we must be tolerant. No one person or…or faction seeking to dominate another. And speaking to the Ephesians who were of course a mixture of Jews and gentiles, Paul reminds us that God’s gift to the church is its variety. It is this variety, this diversity of people and views which gives our church its strength. And over the course of many years in the service of our Mother the Church let me tell you, there is one sin, which I have come to fear above all others. Certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. Even Christ was not certain at the end. My God, My God, why are you forsaken me? He cried out in agony at the ninth hour on the cross. Our faith is a living thing, precisely because it walks hand-in-hand with doubt. If there was only certainty, and no doubt, there would be no mystery and therefore no need for faith. Let us pray that God will grant us a Pope who doubts. And let him grant us a Pope who sins and asks for forgiveness and who carries on.”

 

I think these are wise words for us all on our religious quest. Certainty is the enemy of faith, not its defender.

Is it even possible to have faith without doubt?  There is no faith in mathematics. No one has faith that 2 + 2 =4. That is a certainty. No faith is needed. If you don’t understand that you don’t understand mathematics.

 

Conclave: The Abyss calls Out

Movies, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

 

In the real-world conclave, which started one day after I watched the film Conclave, a majority of the cardinals who went to Rome right after Pope Francis die, were appointed by the late pontiff, within the past 13 years, and as a result had never experienced a conclave. Just like in the film many of those Cardinals came from small dioceses around the world and were not well known.  Apparently, some of the Cardinals, just like me, watched the film to learn some of the protocols of the Church.

 

In the film Conclave, one of the Cardinals was so obscure he had never been revealed to be a Cardinal. So at least he claims.  This was Cardinal Benitez a purported Cardinal from Afghanistan, who had been secretly appointed by the previous Pope, if you can believe that. Is he a real Cardinal? Can he be believed? No one there had ever heard of him before, but apparently the Pope appointed him in secret. Here is a very surprising candidate but in the first round he collects a vote.  Clearly some Cardinals had doubts about the legitimacy of the alleged appointment. Yet he received one vote, but perhaps he voted for himself.  Yet, he denied that he voted for himself.

 

Father Thomas Lawrence, who is managing the process of the Conclave, accepts this Cardinal Benitez for real and sees this as “a marvellous testament to the Universal Church.”   He also said, “so many men of different nationalities bound together by their faith in God.” It sounds miraculous, to use that word again.  It is a testament to pluralism. After all, if the Church is truly universal it must have leadership from every part of the world. Such as Africa from where many priests now come because the Church there is thriving. As it is in the Philippines. Why should the Pope not come from one of those places?

 

One of the brothers, Brother Tedesco, a very conservative Cardinal, who thinks the previous Pope was too liberal, insists the Pope must come from Italy. After all, looking around it is clear that each Cardinal naturally moves to his own circle. Africans to African Cardinals. French to French. And the like. He said what holds them together is the Universal Language—Latin. But sadly, The Roman Catholic Church, the Universal Church, has given up on Latin services and he thinks that is where their problems originated. The Church should go back to Latin. As he says, “Without the dead language…without Rome, things fall apart. The centre cannot hold.” He uses the stirring words of W.B. Yeats to reinforce his point.  He says, pointing to the black Cardinals, “the abyss calls out.”

 

 

Conclave:  Imperfect Men

2024 Trip to Eastern Canada, Religious Quest in the Modern Age

I mentioned in my first post on this wonderful film that the ancient procedures of the Roman Catholic Church in choosing a new Pope are insane. But that is not all. Not only is the process far from perfect, so are the candidates. They are imperfect men. Some of them very far from perfect.

Father Ayemi, one of the candidates,  admits he had “a lapse” when he was 30 years old with a nun who was 19 years old.  She made a dramatic unauthorized appearance in the conclave where she caused a stir. The secret is already out.  In addition, there is a child who might be his.  Yet, surprisingly perhaps, he also said, “I sensed the Holy Spirit this morning. I am ready to take this burden.” He believes God has chosen him to lead the Roman Catholic Church, even though if this “lapse” was discovered, it would no doubt rock the Church. As a result, he refuses to excuse himself as a candidate and he has wide support among the Cardinals.

Imagine the carnage to the church if it came out that the Pope had fathered a child!  Eventually it is revealed that other Cardinals are also less than impeccable men. Some Cardinals search for the “least horrible” candidate. Some of the cardinals examine their own hearts and find themselves wanting. One begs others not to vote for him yet they do. Many have deep ambition, but hide it. Is that bad?  Humility is more attractive, but is it better? One Brother says, with a shudder, “It is shameful to be this age and still not know yourself.” Then quotes this: “Ambition is the moth of holiness.”  I don’t know who said that? I am not sure what it means.

 

Clearly, none of these men who are candidates are perfect. But who is perfect? Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “the last Christian died on the cross.”  Some are very far from perfect Christians. Every political or religious process is imperfect. So too is every candidate for any office.

The process actually mirrors our current political malaise.  I wish we could have a thunderbolt from heaven to make things right in our political world. But its not likely to happen.

What that process has never achieved, no matter what Catholics believe, is infallible leadership. That might be the only certainty in this process. Even though in some cases the choice of leadership seems almost divine, in others, the choice seems more Satanic.

So how can such an imperfect process with such imperfect timber create a good Pope? Or a great Pope?  It must be a miracle.

Conclave: An Insane Process

Religious Quest in the Modern Age

I strongly recommend that everyone watch the film Conclave. It tell the story of a fictional conclave conducted by the Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church to choose a new Pope.

 

Since the Roman Catholic was recently having a real conclave, I thought it would be a good idea to watch this film, before they did. I finished it just in time, one day before the actual concave.  The concave in the film was much more interesting than the real one, which ended swiftly after two ballots. The rule is a Cardinal must achieve 60% of the votes of the Cardinals.

 

I also wanted to consider this as part of my continuing efforts make a religious quest in the modern age.  This is certainly modern quest for a very ancient church.

 

Ralph Fiennes who starred brilliantly in the film along with Stanley Tucci, and one of my favorite actors, John Lithgow. All of them are brilliant as Cardinals. I also heard Fiennes interviewed a couple of days earlier on Amanpour & Company. He indicated that he was not a believing Catholic but said “the God question has been in family for centuries.”

 

What Fiennes emphasized is that the formal ancient procedures for “electing” a Pope are really an insane political process. First, and I think most important, the only ones who can vote are Cardinals under the age of 80 all of whom are males.  Secondly, they can only appoint a man!  Women are out. Obviously, this is not a democratic process in any sense. Cutting out half of the members of the Church is ridiculous. Every one of the other 1.2 billion Catholics has no say whatsoever in who becomes Pope. In the modern age who could accept such a procedure?  Catholics that’s who. None of the Cardinals were elected to their positions either. Popes appointed all of them. In fact, Pope Francis appointed most of them.

 

Yet, the mystery—the real mystery I would submit—is that somehow the procedures work.  How is that possible? After all, the Roman Catholic Church has been around for 2,000 years. No other organization—religious or otherwise—can say that. Even those like me, who think the process is insane, must respect the longevity of the Church.

 

So one of the themes is to reveal how against all odds, the procedure works. Usually the “right” Cardinal is chosen.

 

One of the Cardinals in the film, Brother Ray says one day before the conclave, “I’d say this is a pretty fair vison of hell.”  The Cardinals are called Brothers.  To this, Brother Lawrence, replied, “Don’t be blasphemous Brother Ray, hell arrives tomorrow with the Cardinals.” Such a procedure can’t work. Yet, somehow it does.  At least, so it appears.