Religions are finally starting to understand that the scientific revolution, and the information age is eroding the power of their institution. It turns out that material explanations for natural processes are much more satisfying than a bunch of outdated superstitious ideas and vague promises of life eternal. A formerly religious fan who wrote to me recently put it better than I ever could:

I’ve always rebelled against those ideas [religion] but have never considered atheism nor have I ever done any kind of research on the origins of life, our planet, and the universe. Since becoming an atheist I’ve learned so much about these things. It’s really amazing how rejecting fairy tales really opens your mind to some really fucking amazing things.

Confused and afraid, the Church has only one “solution” for the problem: bringing it back to the love of Jesus, and making people understand that only their institution can properly hand out tickets to the magical playland in the sky. They worry about an increasingly secularized world, combined with a weak-sauce form of spirituality that lacks the important tithing they cherish so much. As membership continues to slide, no doubt they see the writing on the wall.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York seems to understand that there’s a serious problem:

They [churchgoers] drift from her, get mad at the Church, grow lax, join another, or just give it all up,” he said, according to a text of his remarks posted on the Conference’s website (www.usccb.org). If this does not cause us pastors to shudder, I do not know what will. The reasons are multiple and well-rehearsed — and we need to take them seriously. The Church we passionately love is hardly some cumbersome, outmoded club of sticklers, with a medieval bureaucracy, silly human rules on fancy letterhead, one more movement rife with squabbles, opinions, and disagreement.

I totally agree. The Church is so much more than cumbersome, outmoded, silly and filled with squabbles and disagreement. It’s also a criminal organization that’s sheltered pedophiles and child rapists since its inception, been responsible for some of the most brutal genocides and massacres in our species history (Just ask the Cathari how they feel about the Church. Oh wait, you can’t, since they slaughtered them all), and still to this day continues to spread death and misery over their stupid objection to contraception.