Pope Benedict’s visit to England has done more to shine a light on secularism than to enhance the fading brand of Catholicism.

The Pope arrived in London carrying the baggage of clergy abuse which seems to have been everywhere. He expressed his deep sorrow for “unspeakable crimes” but it means nothing to the increasing numbers who see religions - all religions - as bogus or, at best, flawed so deeply as to be ruled out of their lives.

Expressing the renewal of the church’s “age old” commitment to the education and care of young people doesn’t make up for the abuses we are aware of. Nor does it begin to speak to the abuses that must have been committed by all ranks of the clergy over the centuries. If they could get away with it in 1950, imagine the freedom they must have had in 1850? But physical and sexual abuse are just a short stretch along the church’s crooked path.

The Roman Catholic Church’s refusal to put one foot inside the modern world has led millions of Catholics to turn away, either because of an absolute loss of faith or the realization that the church does not meet their spiritual needs. While some have turned away because of the physical and sexual abuses visited on children by the clergy, most have left because the church does not speak to them, It has never spoken to women, except in a condescending way, and now it has lost even the attention of men who in former times would have embraced the priesthood, most of them for noble reasons.

Now that we can speak our minds without fear of being burned at the stake or shunned with effect by the deeply devout, we are hearing and seeing more objections to the institution of the church. If you don’t believe, or if you object to the church’s stand on birth control or abortion or celibacy or the treatment of women, you can say so. You might even be able to put up a billboard along the Pope’s motor route touting the wisdom of using condoms. While the Pope and his church oppose condoms, and the clergy has no need of them if they are following the rules, he and his cronies are no longer shielded from the beliefs of others. 

The media can and does put the Pope and his church under a very harsh and probing light. They criticize the church’s handling of abuse by priests, of course, but they also give voice to people who just find the whole institution a load of old rubbish. Some of those speakers are eloquent and their arguments reasonable. They will doubtless awaken feelings in others who will come to agree with them. The faith in non-faith will grow. The voices of so-called secularists will become louder and churches, unless they are taken over by clubs of atheists, will empty, close and either be torn down to put to some other use.

The Pope and his college of cardinals are aware that there is a shortage of priests, a hole they are trying to plug by using deacons to do a bit of church management or bringing priests out from Poland or Africa who still tow the party line. While there have been some successful transplants, many just annoy their parishioners and drive them away. 

Wherever the Pope goes in the future, he will be faced with the sorts of realities he and his top managers have hitherto been sheilded from. If the church was a private corporation, the board would be thrown out and the new board would alter their brand to suit an evolving spiritual marketplace and do their shareholders proud.

Instead, they are trapped in a web of rules, regulations  and myth stitched together over the centuries to shore up their grip on the Catholic version of reality. The suit no longer fits, the fabric is full of holes, but they continue to wear it hoping, perhaps, for a miracle.