Roman Catholics in England & Wales are to be offered a new "Faith Card," effectively a cliff notes guide to their religion.
Taken at face value, it all seems harmless enough nonsense; a handy-wallet sized guilt-trip for believers to niggle away at their conscience when their omnipresent supernatural policeman is engaged addressing more urgent matters and is too pressed for time to check whether the individual in question is shying away from impure thoughts and activities. As the Right Reverend Kieran Conry says in the BBC article, people carry a variety of items in our wallets or purses that are of importance to our lives. It serves merely as a miniature security blanket to the bearer, doesn't it? A readable precis of the finer points of Roman Catholicism.
Read between the lines, however, and it becomes apparent that something more sinister is at work here. Conry continues to ambiguously state that we hope that the card simply inspires people to do, read and learn more." Which people? The bearers of the card?
Not necessarily...
Pope Benedict has voiced fears that religion is being marginalised around the world (would that that were true, but on this issue - as on so many others - the Pope is well wide of the mark. Religion is as alive and belligerent as ever, with the ugly consequences of mistaken and irreconciliable beliefs about the world in blood-stained evidence in many a global flashpoint). He wants this year to be a year when Catholics are more pro-active in their efforts to spread the gospel.
Conry continues, "The card is also designed to give Catholics confidence to share their faith - often people need help knowing what to say. Faith is a not a private matter. We hope that Catholics will use it to witness to their faith. If someone asks a question about Catholicism, a starting point could be to show the card and to take it from there."
Faith IS a private matter. Fundamentally of course it is. Believers are increasingly keeping their faith private in part because in the contemporary western world, certain facets of certain faiths are not compatible with reason, rationality and a harmonious existence for all. Points of view consistent with religious dogma have been discredited by progressive society, and while this does not always prevent people from holding those views, it does make them more reticent about airing them openly because they realise that to do so will result in them not being taken seriously by a greater segment of the population than would have been the case in the past.
On one hand, Conry appears to implicitly acknowledge this by claiming the Faith Card is a reactive proof-points document (I don't know about you, but I struggle to see how one would recognise a work-a-day member of the Catholic religion, let alone proceed to tap them on the shoulder in, say, a queue at WHSmith and ask them to extol the virtues of their religious beliefs) in the same breath as proclaiming that "Faith is not private." Mixed messages abound here.
Let's cut through the spin; the head of the Catholic church realises the institution has become denuded to the point of crisis both by advances in human understanding, achievement and capacity for compassion, and the unspekably depraved conduct of certain members of the church. Ergo, his lieutants are mobilising the church's fallback of strength in numbers to counter this atrophying relevance of Catholicism. This isn't about arming the tongue-tied faithful with bullet points to explain their religion to curious bystanders, it's marketing collateral, pure and simple, aimed at pressganging - for want of a better phrase - new recruits.
