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Just be glad that you were only Rick-rolled. There are much worse things Skeptigator could have put behind that link.

But, getting back on topic...

mightymjolnir wrote:

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Lots of glad-handing going on in the press today about the papal visit. This NY times article in particular pointed out what the pope really wants from American catholics:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/us/nationalspecial2/17pope.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

This quote was perhaps the most succinct and disturbing for me:

"Any tendency to treat religion as a private matter must be resisted," he said.

(Lest I be accused of quote mining, the paragraph prior to this blurb goes into even greater detail about ignoring church teachings in favor of secular laws.)

I despise this pope. I don't just mean that in the sense that he represents religion - I mean compared to other popes, this guy will do more to stifle human progress than we can possibly imagine. He makes reference to the "subtle" influence of secularism, yet he was the king of subtlety and intrigue in his campaign for the papacy. His public appearances after JPII's death fairly runk of self-promotion.

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While I'm sure you meant that as hyperbole - either that or you have a poor imagination! :) - I wouldn't get too worked up over this Poop Pope.

In the U.S., the Catholic church has been in decline for decades. The priests are retiring faster than they can be replaced and attendance at Mass is way down. The numbers look even worse if you exclude the, largely Catholic, immigrants that have moved here

In addition, the ability to attract new converts look bleak.

• The new Pope has nothing like the rock-star status that Pope John Paul II had, so, despite the current media frenzy, I would bet that there will be less media coverage of Benedict.
• When PJP II died, there was talk/sense/hope that the new Pope might modernize the church (e.g. allow women to become priests) in order to make it more relevant to people's lives. Instead, Benedict reaffirmed the status quo.
• Like it or not, genetics is the future of medicine. The application of genetics in everyday life will increasingly highlight how out-of-touch the church's mandates are with reality. For many Catholics, this is already the case on matters of birth control and abortion. (Of course, as has happened so many times in the past, the church will eventually be forced to change its position, at which point, it will declare the new position to be the will of God or God-given knowledge or some other such nonsense.)
• Various religiously motivated tragedies have made it more difficult to claim "Oh, sure, we're a religion, but we're not a crazy religion like they are."
• Stories about pedophile priests will continue to pop up in the news. (e.g. convictions, settlements, parish closings, priests being murdered in prison, biographies of victims)
• There are an increasing number of opposing voices (e.g. Dawkins) in pop culture that would never have been heard fifty years ago.

So, the Catholic church in the U.S. is not quite gone yet, but it's well on its way to being ushered out.

Finally, although it's clear what the Pope meant, if you like playing with interpretations (as I do), you can reinterpret the quote as:

"Any tendency to treat religion as a private matter must be resisted...for one would not want religious myths to cloud one's thoughts."

Thanks for the compliment. I've got to wonder about my prediction also.

I am reminded of a story I heard about an underage girl who was having unprotected, pre-marital sex with her boyfriend. She was terrified of getting pregnant. When asked why she didn't use birth control, she replied "Oh, no, I could never do that; I'm Catholic!"

That story may sound like a joke, but it really happened. (I trust the source.)