From #NotAlone to #SomewhatAlone given lack of numbers at Vatican event

Vatican empty at event for human brotherhood  

 

 There is a joke going around the networks that the event held in St. Peter's Square on human fraternity, with spectacle and many important people, should change its motto from #NotAlone to #SomewhatAlone, given the very low attendance.

Meanwhile, in a Spain where membership of the Church is falling rather than falling, the Corpus Christi procession in Toledo was celebrated with the usual massive popular welcome. What mystery is this?

After all, human fraternity is something on which Catholics and non-Catholics agree, something that lies at the heart of the UN's omnipresent Agenda 2030, the very raison d'être of the UN, in fact. The same can be said of ecological concern and the fight against Climate Change, which is spoken to us as St. Paul asked us to preach the Gospel, in season and out of season. Why, then, are ecclesial initiatives focusing on these issues, so dear to the new times, so unsuccessful?

To answer, let me reason outside of faith, as a non-believer might. After all, the designs of Providence are unfathomable, and the deep reasons for this crisis can be discussed much better than I can by any orthodox theologian. I will start, therefore, from mere common sense, experience and a dash of sales psychology.

Seen from the outside, from respectful unbelief, the Church is an institution that sells a product, always the same for two thousand years: Salvation through the Incarnation, Passion, Death and Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The world (understood in a theological sense) sells other products, which change from one epoch to another. Now it touches on the environment, the Earth as a demi-goddess, as a sentient being, in whose interest we must sacrifice; it touches on the promotion of alternative sexualities to the only one that has been considered normative for millennia and the only one, also, that guarantees the survival of the species; inclusion, diversity, equity and other minor issues.

Now, it is true that this whole package is incomparably more successful in the West than what the Church has to offer, at least as an instrument of power and a matter of media and educational preaching. Greta has more pull with young people than any priest, bishop or the Pope himself. It is understandable that, in order to get closer to the lost sheep (who form an incomparably larger flock than the ecclesial 'pusillus grex'), our pastors are tempted to talk to them about all those things that concern them. Understandable, but unspeakably stupid.

And if you made me head of marketing for the Catholic Church (excuse the irreverence), I would explain to you why this is the worst thing you could do. Because as an agent against climate change and an advocate for the acceptance and acceptance of homosexuals, transgender people and other such groups, the Church would just be a poor copy, and people generally prefer the original to imitations.

Especially when it is going to be a late, repetitive, hesitant (it can't go as far as the world is going without self-destructing) and shoddy copy. Such a craving for imitative relevance does not attract new (sorry again) "customers", because the public has plenty of more capable and daring purveyors of the original product. On the other hand, by neglecting the core message, it conveys the impression that they do not trust it, they no longer see it as sufficiently attractive and true. In other words, it is a strategy that does not gain new followers and risks losing the ones you already have.

Suppose my interest is in ecology, which is more likely, Greenpeace or the parish? Who will give me more confidence, long-time activists and professors with deep knowledge, or some guys in strange hats who have just arrived in the field, as it were?

On the other hand, if I am looking for something that not only gives meaning to my life, but also to my death, to the whole universe; if I am hungry for the transcendent and the sacred, it will not be easy to find it in the Church today. I will be wary of the importance of the central message of salvation, given the scant insistence with which it is preached today by the clergy, especially by the high clergy. To give an example I have quoted before: it is difficult to maintain the centrality of the Eucharist in Christian life when we have all seen how readily and readily the hierarchy hastened to accept the interruption of public Masses during the pandemic, accepting without protest that theirs was not a "necessary service".

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