IN a move reminiscent of the little Dutch boy’s efforts to plug the leak in a dike, Pope Ratzinger has unveiled plans to stop the growing number of escapees from the clutches of the Church.
According to the Telegraph today, Ratzinger is to create a crack squad to drive disillusioned Catholics back into the fold. The new Vatican department would tackle what he called:
A grave crisis in the sense of the Christian faith and the role of the Church.
He expressed deep concerns that previously staunch Catholic countries in Europe and North America were facing:
The eclipse of a sense of God.
Or waking up to reality, as we prefer to call it.
Tens of thousands of worshippers are deserting the Church over issues such as clerical sex abuse and the ban on married priests. And maybe also because Ratzinager, 83, cuts such an unattractive figure.
Said the old drag queen:
I have decided to create a new body with the aim of promoting a renewed evangelism [in countries that are going through] progressive secularisation of society.
The new department, to be called The Pontifical Council for New Evangelisation, will try to reinvigorate belief among Catholics in rich, developed countries – or, in the pontiff’s words:
Find the right means to re-propose the perennial truth of the Gospel.
It is expected to be led by an Italian archbishop, Rino Fisichella, who as head of the Pontifical Academy for Life is the Vatican’s top bioethics official.
Congregations in the West have fallen dramatically and faith in the Church has been hard hit by a series of high-profile scandals involving the sexual abuse of children by paedophile priests.
The Vatican, together with senior Church leaders in individual countries, has been accused of ignoring or actively covering up sex abuse cases in the United States, Australia, Germany, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway and Austria – in fact, just about everywhere that the Catholics have managed to ply their vile trade.
The Pope himself has been accused of turning a blind eye to paedophile priest cases when he was Archbishop of Munich and then head of the Vatican’s office for doctrinal enforcement.
Ratzinger made an official visit to Portugal last month, but barely 20 percent of the population in the formerly staunchly Catholic country regularly attends church and the average age of priests is 62, and are probably now in need of Viagra.
Austria – once seen as a bulwark against the Protestant Reformation and a stronghold of Catholicism in central Europe – is witnessing a particularly strong push for a more liberal Church, partly in response to the paedophile sex abuse scandal.
The Austrian Church has estimated that up to 80,000 of the country’s 5.5 million Catholics could leave the church this year a new record.
In Britain there are about six million Catholics – one in ten of the population – but only around a million say they go to Mass every Sunday.
Archbishop Vincent Nichols, the President of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, said he looked forward to co-operating with the new body.
This initiative identifies a challenge with which many in the Catholic Church, and many in other Christian communities, are familiar.
Good luck, fellas, you’re sure going to need it.
Hat tip: Paul Ed
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
June 29th, 2010 at 10:51 pm
Wow, snappy title, bound to be a success, until the priests in it are exposed as paedophiles.
June 29th, 2010 at 11:18 pm
I just wish they wouldn’t go around claiming that their bullshit is “Truth”. If they said something like, “re-proposing the idea that you believe all of this and ignore science, and cover your ears and eyes when we’re not around, and cover your mouth when we ARE around,” then I’d be OK with that. Truth in advertising, people.
June 29th, 2010 at 11:25 pm
For centuries they managed to keep their sheep in the fold by keeping them ignorant, poor and scared and that trick doesn’t work anymore. So, what’s next?
June 29th, 2010 at 11:59 pm
Have they tried the “buddy christ” approach as seen in dogma?? (I was watching that last night, never gets boring
)
June 30th, 2010 at 1:27 am
Yep, cuz evangelism is certainly the way to go. I live in Texas, I already have more than enough preachers trying to get me to join this church or that, on billboards, television, the internet, prying into my government.
Of course, maybe the Catholics will piss the Baptists off enough to kill each other off, but I hope not. One side or the other would be bound to use nukes, and then it’s all over. Maybe they’ll just rip the christian constituency and leave rationalists room to breathe.
June 30th, 2010 at 3:13 am
The threadhead quotes the pontiff:
“Find the right means to re-propose the perennial truth of the Gospel.”
As most of you are aware, I am kinda centrist. I can’t make a scholar’s presentation of the accuacy of the old testiment and the gospel, but what I know of that which is presented to the believing nematodes, Jesus tried to change people’s perception from an angry jealous asshole to an image of a gentle father. Most importantly, his worst enemies were the Pharisees and Saducees, the educated privileged religious class.
There is the old question, what would jesus do? Well, I think the answer is clear what he would think about catholicism. Right or wrong, he would dump their coffers and smash their idols. So much for perennial truth.
NeoWolfe
June 30th, 2010 at 7:37 am
s.g. Herr Ratzinger,
Don’t waste your time and money, there are more worthy causes – for example – your followers in the islamic world are actually being persecuted.
I am not talking “being told not to wear a cross on a chain at work”, I am talking torture, killing, life imprisonment. You know all about that – your company used to do it to us atheists.
So, how about you go to places like Afghanistan and help those of your flock-of-sheep, who still believe what you tell them?
Or will you sit on your golden chair and claim that ‘suffering is good for the soul’?
Remember, when they have all been killed, you may have to work for a living.
June 30th, 2010 at 12:22 pm
Ratzinger is such a twat. He keeps coming up with these initiatives which have as much chance of success as Ratzo has of converting me to Roman Catholicism. One thing for sure: he can rely of friendly reporting from the BBC and its devout RC Head Honcho who continues to censor honest and imapartial views on Thought for the Day. Do I imagine it or is the witless meandering whining from that programme getting more vaccuous and flatulent? I thought it had already reached its nadir but where religion is concerned there is never a bad but a worse.
June 30th, 2010 at 1:47 pm
@Broga
“Do I imagine it or is the witless meandering whining from that programme getting more vaccuous and flatulent? ”
Too right. I usually turn off the radio for a few minutes when I hear it’s about to start (as I do with the Archers too…) but I left it on the other day and it was the most meaningless thing I have ever heard – literally a string of words that meant absolutely nothing.
A bit like the “Sokal Affair” in the sense that some people can pretend to find true meaning in it.
June 30th, 2010 at 1:59 pm
Wouldn’t the funniest thing about this be that the Liberation Theology boys were doing a pretty good job of all this back in the day (whatever else you might make of their mix of Marxism and Christianity)? But the first thing Ratzo did as Oberfuhrer was drove them out in favour of the hardline traditionalists who people are leaving churches in droves to avoid!
By the bye – Ratzo’s now wimped out of doing TFTD too.
June 30th, 2010 at 2:04 pm
@MrMonist. I don’t listen to it either but I get caught at times. It really is junk. Even the announcement of the speaker has a sickly, precious tone to it. When it is understandible – I mean the sequence of words not the message – it is so banal, patronising and obvious.
June 30th, 2010 at 2:22 pm
@StuartH. So Ratzo has butted out of TFTD, has he? I wonder how much that little non event cost. I heard that his disciple who runs BBC Radio had gone to the Vatican to try to persuade the creepy Ratzo to make an appearance. I doubt if he paid his own way and these BBC apparatchiks don’t hold back on the classy travel. Why should they? It is our money.
June 30th, 2010 at 2:24 pm
@Broga
Why on Earth does a member of the cocking Iona Community or a Vaishnav Hindu have a right to waste 2 minutes of serious news time to impart their nonsense? Surely a mini version of “From Our Corespondents” would be more fitting…
June 30th, 2010 at 2:28 pm
“progressive secularisation of society”
The only way to reverse that is to go back to the glory days
burn the books, close the schools and burn a few witches twice a year.
Some day you and your entire band of preverts will be gone, and we’ll
keep the Cathedrals as reminders, just as we keep Auschwitz and someday
Mecca as well.
monuments to assinine evil
June 30th, 2010 at 3:26 pm
@MrMonist Years ago my daughter had a friend from college who got a temporary job at the BBC. This friend – yes, I know this is hearsay – said that Richard Dawkins had appeared on TFTD. The result,much discussed in the BBC, was so positive that the TFTD outfit decided that they didn’t want him, or anyone like him, back. They decided to stick with “people of faith.” And they have.
Now I can’t vouch for this story. However, I have remained puzzled why an atheist like A.C. Grayling, a philospher such as the excellent Professor Simon Goldhill and many others I could name, could not appear regularly. (Assuming Dawkins is too strong meat as thyey see it.) There is so much that could be offered that might actually help people.
Instead, we are stuck with the most banal nonsense that is really no more than words spewed out in the assumption that the audience will assume there is something worthwhile underlying them. The terror inside the religious mafia in the BBC is that if Dawkins (really a rather temperate and understanding man); Grayling, Goldhill and others are allowed, say, a weekly slot, the banality of the rest will be exposed for the flatulent nonsense that it is. Worse, the poison that is regularly pushed about Dawkins and atheists will be exposed for the propaganda and religious lies that it is.
June 30th, 2010 at 4:23 pm
@Broga
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/to.....kins.shtml
You are so right. Either let people of all philosophies have a crack or ditch it entirely! (The latter preferably…)
I really love Today, even the sport (Gary Richardson is cool!) but that wretched slot undoes the good work of the rest of the show.
June 30th, 2010 at 9:02 pm
Those of you who are infuriated by the Today programme’s daily dose of godswallop need to pay a daily visit to Rev. Dr. Peter Hearty’s ‘Platitude of the Day’ blog and join in the fun in taking the piss out of it. Sorry, I did try to provide a link but my copy & paste thing didn’t work.
Broga, the Richard Dawkins TftD of which you speak was broadcast at a later time and in addition to the regular TftD slot.
June 30th, 2010 at 9:06 pm
Try again:
http://www.platitudes.org.uk/platblog/index.php
Enjoy.
June 30th, 2010 at 10:24 pm
Thanks for the information on the Richard Dawkins’ broadcast which I have have now heard and read for the first time. I am grateful. I intend to pass the links to my daughter who put me on to this in the first place.
July 2nd, 2010 at 1:15 am
Italian archbishop, Rino Fisichella, is he the father of the F1 racing driver Giancarlo Fisichella?