Morally Bankrupt Pope Launches Effort to Reclaim Lapsed Western Catholics

The Christianist/Tea Party base of the Republican Party inhabits a world where objective reality has no meaning and where at times the GOP faithful seem to live is some sort of alternate universe.  But they've got good company in the form of Nazi Pope Benedict XVI who in a true moment of delusion has launched an effort to reclaim lapsed Catholics who have fled the Catholic Church in droves due to Benedict XVI himself and his equally morally bankrupt predecessor and the morally bankrupt Church hierarchy.  And let's not forget the role that the Church's rejection of modernity, science and reality has played in the growing exodus of western world Catholics.  The Chicago Tribune looks at God's Rottweiler's fool's errand that does everything but focus on the real cause of the Church's decline and steady shift towards becoming a southern hemisphere denomination that will likely see Africa as its last bastion of power.  Here are story highlights:

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict launched a campaign to bring lapsed believers back to the Roman Catholic fold on Sunday, opening a major convention of bishops on what the Vatican has termed the "new evangelization" of the developed world.

The Church is battling losses to its practicing flock in former strongholds in Europe, North America and Latin America in the face of sex abuse scandals, increasing secularism, rival faiths and open dissent against Church teachings on homosexuality and its ban on a female priesthood.

The synod - a Church conference where hundreds of bishops meet to work out a common global strategy, iron out divisions and advise the pope - has the theme "the new evangelization", the Vatican's buzzword for its drive to woo back believers.

The synod's working document spoke of the need to address the divergence between Catholic values and the reality of modern life in Europe and North America, and an "educational emergency" of children no longer being taught the faith.

The Catholic Church, which teaches abstinence outside of heterosexual marriage and opposes divorce, has found itself at variance with some increasingly prevalent societal trends in the developed world.

Sergio Barabaschi, a member of a Milan parish, said the Church's failure to address social change was alienating young people. "The Church is always too slow for the way the times change. Some moral stances are negotiable," he told Reuters.

Enrico Viccardi, an organist from Milan, said it was clear the Church was in difficulty. "Between scandals in the Church and issues like living together outside marriage, it's a very critical time," he told Reuters.

Both said they were influenced by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, a former papal candidate considered a leading liberal voice in the Church, who called it "200 years out of date" shortly before he died in August.

I suspect that this effort by the Church hierarchy will go nowhere.  The sex abuse scandal, the Church's demonizing of gays, opposition to contraception and overall hypocrisy will not be erased merely by a bunch of bitter old men in dresses telling people that they need to return to the Church fold.  That may work in nations where the bulk of the population is ignorant and uneducated.  It is not going to work in modern western nations.