Eating its Own Tail...

Word has it that the Vatican is planning on making it easier for disaffected Anglicans to go Catholic. It's lovely, isn't it? The RC Church is running itself like a business, looking to poach customers who are pissed at the direction a different franchise is taking. This, of course, is a transparently obvious ploy. It's also useful, since it's big enough to get reported on. But this stuff happens all the time. People leave Church A and go to Church B because Church A got a new pastor who's not as charismatic or has crazy ideas (crazy can go both ways, too. He can have crazy ideas like letting homosexuals in that are just too liberal. Or he can have crazy ideas like stoning all children who disrespect their parents [hey, it's in the Bible]. Or, in the case of the last big exodus from the Anglican Church, she can have crazy ideas like being a woman) but everyone hears Church B really has it together. So Church B says, "Hey, look at our growth! God is really doing great things here!" But that's almost never the underlying story. Actual churches that grow through transformation of the formerly godless are few and far between (I'd say nonexistent, but I know of a couple, most notably the Brooklyn Tabernacle). Mostly it's the same exact mentality that leads to people saying, "Hey, let's go try that new restaurant that just opened up on First Street." Actual church attendance is declining, at least in America and Europe. Certain individual churches are gaining, but it's at the expense of the dwindling congregations in other churches. Still, there are those who point to the lone bright spots, pretend that the gain is at the expense of the heathen non-believer community and say, "See, god's doing great things!" It's the Wal-Mart-ization of religion. Low prices on brand-name products (why do you think more people know who Rick Warren is than what Saddleback is? One is the pastor, the other is his church. All you need to know about Saddleback is that Rick Warren is the pastor and the church is huge, primarily because Rick Warren is the pastor. Just wait. When he moves on Saddleback will begin to collapse. It might take a while, but few movements built on a single cult of personality live past the loss of the founding personality) bring the masses and the masses bring ever more masses. So then they can say, "We have 20,000 members, we must be doing something right!" And people who don't get the fact that there may be absolutely no wisdom in crowds follow right along because it's a proven brand name. And all the while those of us who stand on the outside get to watch, point, and laugh. It's a shell game that the church is playing. The growing demographics for religion are on the side of the nones. The more we get to see pathetic moves like the RC Church's poaching of disaffected Anglicans, the more likely the nones are to grow. All the while the church will be eating its own tail and wondering why there's so much less nourishment to be found.