What's the difference between a pope and a frill-necked lizard?

You are so funny, PZ. The picture was hilarious.
So does this mean he has converted to evangelism?

Purely from the standpoint of political strategy, I think the Catholic church made a huge mistake with Benedict. A few years ago, there was talk of an African or Latin American pope, which acknowledged the vitality of belief in those places compared to the US and Europe. I even recall hearing the US referred to as a "mission country" in the sense that we were the ones who needed to get missionaries from the third world. It's understandable if this all sounds like nonsense to a non-Catholic, but I at least admired the consistency and global nature of the church as an institution. It would be remarkable to watch the church acknowledge the fact that its base was no longer ethnically European and adapt to it.

Frankly, I think the Vatican hierarchy isn't satisfied with having mostly third world believers and Benedict represents kind of a "shoot the moon" strategy of attempting to win back the least likely set of believers just because of a subtle bigotry that puts a higher value on having them as members. I don't see how it can possibly work. In the US, evangelicalism is gaining, not Catholicism. In Europe, I'm not sure if any religions are gaining. Evangelicalism is growing even in traditionally Catholic third world countries. But this is the only place where the church would be in a position of strength to consolidate its influence. Pope Benedict's priorities are to neglect this part of the world in order to attempt something infeasible.

Anyone who wants the Catholic church to dwindle in numbers should probably be pleased to have Pope Benedict and his priorities. As a former Catholic, I don't have a stake in it either way, but I am paying from the standpoint of watching an institution making poor decisions.

"paying" above should be "paying attention"

So the earth-pope is reptilian as well!

The Pope looks like an evil supervillain, cape and all, in that picture.

Benedict, a German, has made combating a Europe of empty churches and religious apathy a priority of his papacy. Vatican officials have declared that such former Catholic bedrocks as Spain are in need of what they call a "new evangelization."

I think the problem here is that Pope Benedict takes himself far, far too seriously. Watch how Carol Cleveland steals the show in this live performance of The Ministry Of Silly Walks. Just imagine how much happier this planet of ours would be if the pope were a woman, and she made her cardinals go around silly walking all the time. Instead of the "Year of the Eucharist", (the last pope was obsessed with something called the "Eucharist", whatever that is), we could have the "Year of the Silly Walk."

PaulC - ya I remember being disappointed when they picked ratzi as well...if they'd picked someone from Africa or South America they'd probably have stayed conservative on the issues but they would have globalized / democratized their organization a wee bit. Or of course they could have picked someone who'd do away with their awful rules on condoms, contraception, female priests, gay people et al.

Leave it to the holy cardinals to achieve so worthy a compromise by both standards :/

As I understand it, the Catholic Church in Spain shot themselves in the ass by supporting Franco to the hilt up until the day he died, and vice versa. Tarred themselves with the fascist brush so bad it will still be a long time washing off.

It's been over thirty years though, so maybe they have a shot.

It would be remarkable to watch the church acknowledge the fact that its base was no longer ethnically European and adapt to it.

This is 100% true. In reality the RCC is suffering a slow death in America. It has already died in much of Europe if not on paper then in practice. No church by percentage loses more members each year than the RCC. They are a dinosaur and are simply being out evolved/competed by faster more aggressive sects.

I suspect in the future this church will have a spattering of 'white' members but will predominately be 'brown'. Now why this would bother a Catholic is beyond me but it does. Several of my friends who are Catholic to varying degrees are not very comfortable with this mentally.

When I was in the Czech Republic last year, their position was that they'd been the seat of two major churches and had had that for years, plus the Communists for years, and they didn't see much difference between them. Both just want to control and f___ up your life.

BTW, during the month we were there, they had 3 major televised charity concerts -- two for Katrina.

Well, if you want the US to acheive the level of religosity of Europe, the solution is obvious: get rid of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, and establish a state church. This is what countries such as Spain, France, and England have had for centuries -- somehow, the combination of church and state leads people to treat the church as being yet another intrusive arm of the state, to be avoided if at all possible.

I would suggest that the Established Church of the United States should be as close to the majority Christian viewpoint as possible, so that that view gets most tarred by the association with the state. In order for this to be *most* effective, we probably also need to require that everyone belong to the state church, bringing as many competing religious views under the same roof to "expose the contradictions" as the old Marxists might say.

(On the other hand, if you *are* a Christian, wouldn't you want the state to stay as far away from your church as possible?)

Slight correction to my previous post: Spain and France no longer have established churches, but I believe that due to the history of having the Roman Catholic church established there it may play a similar role...

Vatican officials have declared that such former Catholic bedrocks as Spain are in need of what they call a "new evangelization."

Oh, this I gotta see. What are they going to do, get some lame-o ad campaign? Order everyone to go to church?

The RCC has had a good run, but it's on the Ozymandias track now.

Well, I think it may have dawned on the Church that high-tech nations with better educated populaces are turning away from them, and that most nations are trying to become more high-tech and educate their populations better. (The US is one of the few nations where a significant political movement is deliberately trying to make our education *worse*.) When you combine those two trends, it's clear that the Church is headed for a future of irrelevance. If they can't hold on to believers in Europe now, they won't be able to anywhere in a generation or two.

Sadly, this doesn't necessarily generalize to newer religions and superstitions, which seem to be doing quite well in the First World.

If there really are empty churches and religious apathy in Europe, we should find out what they're doing right.

"Hemipenes" is a word that really gives new meaning to the question "that thing got a hemi in it?"

I saw this at Pam Spaulding's other site, Pam's House Blend, and this was the comment that I made. Thanks for the link to the fun software Dr. M.!
------------------------------
I ran this photo through
http://www.myheritage.com/FP/Com...=1&u=g0â©=EN
At first it didn't see his face so I had to manually show the program where to look (and I didn't do the lizard at all) and it turns out that His Holiness looks like Stan Lee (66% match), Billy Crystal (62%), Hamid Karzai (62%), Edward Heath (62%), Warren Beatty (62%), Justine Henin-Hardenn (Huh, doesn't her name belong in that other thread? Whoever she is she was a 61% match), Philip Glass (61% and another for the name thread-this is getting scary!), Madonna (58%!), Ion Iliescu (57%), and Takeshi Kitano (56%). Keep in mind that this site is a beta version of the software but I did find it interesting that the photo didn't result in a match with him. Madonna is a poor substitute!

"If there really are empty churches and religious apathy in Europe"

There are. In fact, an article in "Die Zeit" from 2004 said that a third of all churches in Germany may have to be sold or demolished as their maintenance has become unaffordable for the shrinking parishes. The trend got faster to the Netherlands: half of the former churches of Amsterdam are now supermarkets, restaurants or clubs.

Empty churches and religious apathy? What an excellent idea! I'm thinking we need to begin some secular evangelization over here in the States.

Don't get too excited. From personal experience, I'd say that almost all the Europeans who have deserted organized religion have hardly become paragons of rationality - they just turn to new-age, Eastern and other wooish beliefs instead.

Okay, I'm off to get my chakras aligned. Penta water, anyone?

Don't get too excited. From personal experience, I'd say that almost all the Europeans who have deserted organized religion have hardly become paragons of rationality - they just turn to new-age, Eastern and other wooish beliefs instead.

Well, they're not out on any more crusades or Inquisitions at least. Someone ought to make a graph charting the religiosity of Europe vs. the frequency of wars there, show the negative correlation. Hey, it's no more spurious than any of their correlations.

The only converted church I've ever seen in America was this seafood restaurant in Ilwaco, WA. We gotta work on that. There's probably tons of better uses for those buildings. Libraries. Concert venues, if you could work out the acoustics. If there are any on the shore, we could take a page from Ben Franklin and make lighthouses.

Counterbalance: I've been to a church in Raymond, Wa that was a converted grocery store.

If you have seen it already, get the DVD of Fellini's film "The Clowns". It has a great scene of models going down the catwalk in eccelesiastical outfits.

Actually, what Ratzo probably wants is to bring back that great xtian leader Franco to put Spain back on the right track. Franco did after all give the church great privileges before atheistic democracy took over.

"Don't get too excited. From personal experience, I'd say that almost all the Europeans who have deserted organized religion have hardly become paragons of rationality - they just turn to new-age, Eastern and other wooish beliefs instead."

For many Europeans religion merely serves a cultural role (e.g. festivities or concerts in churches), a survey found that for half of the Europeans religion does not play a role in their lives. Most of them don't identify as atheists but from my experience that's only because they don't care. There are some who believe in the healing power of minerals and silly stuff like that or who practice yoga or meditation, but that hardly qualifies as a secondary religion. However you're right in that most people here aren't paragons of rationality.

"Actually, what Ratzo probably wants is to bring back that great xtian leader Franco to put Spain back on the right track."

I strongly disagree. That's just plain bullshit. You better had good supportive data before accusing a German pope of sympathizing with fascism.

He's the Pope. He approves of fascism by definition.

PZ Myers: Indeed. What you mention is true even in Canada. Here in Montreal the big traditional churches are very empty and all the "storefront" stuff is growing. That and some mosques, both storefront and otherwise ...

As for repurposing them - the CC has all this fabulous wealth in unused land and yet won't use it for the social purposes they claim are important. Its like the old saying: "if I feed the poor, they call me a saint; if I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist."

When playing Sim City, I always went out of the way to buldoze churches. They'd just pop up somewhere else eventually, but I found it a fun stress-reliever.