More Pope than Catholics

The Church has been losing parishioners over the decades. The more democratic ideas have spread, the more free and secular education has expanded, the more we have advanced in the conquest of individual freedoms, the more we have shed the structures of religious power. It is difficult for societies with great scientific advances to accept the existence of an invisible, omnipotent, and omnipresent being who one day used a woman's womb—without even renting it or allowing her to enjoy the pleasure that usually accompanies the central act of procreation—to create a child who is both human and God. I know that theologians have written rivers and rivers of ink to explain the mystery, but it is nevertheless difficult to accept this type of mystery. It is surprising that these days, after the death of Pope Francis, there are those who elevate him to the highest power of progressive holiness. A man who believed in the resurrection of souls, in life after death, in the great mystery of the Immaculate Conception, and in the Holy Spirit. There are those who criticize flat-earthers and conspiracy theorists of all kinds, climate change deniers, and anti-vaccine activists, but they admire this man whose power derives from this entire cosmogony laden with completely implausible myths. As if the figure of the recently deceased pope had nothing to do with the powerful organization he led, as if he were alien to its way of doing things and cared nothing for money or influence, and as if he didn't represent retrograde values like equality and freedom that run counter to the modern democratic order. We must recognize the Vatican of this century for its adaptation to the ways of the present and its ability to change everything so that nothing changes. The pope is no longer just the leader of a particular religion but a brand, an image, a public figure, which is the way to wield power in today's world. By seducing and adapting the discourse to what's in fashion. If necessary, allowing a writer like Javier Cercas to accompany the Pope to Mongolia. The writer repeated to Ferreras the other day that he's an atheist while promoting the head of the small Roman state with fervent devotion. And he extolled the role of missionaries who worked for the most unfortunate and insisted that this Church doesn't proselytize. No, of course, today's missionaries aren't going to Christianize pagans, but proselytism is there and has modern channels that are more effective than scaring Native Americans with the existence of hell and the notion of sin. Nowadays, proselytism means allowing a well-known atheist writer to cover the Pope's trip and then explain whatever he wants. The point is to get people talking about it. The death of a pontiff is also a good time to establish a profile and achieve an inflated audience share, a share that no other state has. A state, moreover, theocratic and absolutist, sexist in its history and structure, homophobic and opposed to freedom of expression, which yearns for a time when Catholicism held absolute power and established alliances with authoritarian regimes to perpetuate itself. Something remains of that shameful past of violence against those subjected to the doctrine through the imposition of the state religion: an anomalous and enormous privilege called the Concordat, which, despite his humility and the suffering caused by the poor, Pope Francis did not renounce. That the Spanish Church (and the Catalan one, of course) continues to fail to comply with the tax obligations we all owe, that it enjoys preferential treatment over other religions in a secular state, is a scandalous indecency inherited from Franco's regime. A very profitable business that all taxpayers pay for, whether we are Catholic or not.