Catholic spin

In a strange coincidence the Catholic Church has just started a big spin cycle.

1) It has discovered that it can admit Tony Blair. Cue lots of guff about joining the Catholic church being like coming home (copyright 2007 Cardinal Murphy O'Conner).
2) Catholic journalists are talking the opportunity to try and declare "Britain is now a Catholic country".

You can expect demands for changes in the constitution to follow shortly. ( Ably assisted by the weak approach taken by the Church of England ).

However lets look at the facts.

1) Tony Blair has a voting record which shows he couldn't care less about what the Catholic Church teaches. He even rebuked the Church when they tried to stop him taking communion with his family why still nominally an Anglican.
2) The balance between Catholic and Protestant church attendance has remain more or less constant over the time period.

As you can see England is a long way from becoming a Catholic country. The movement of protestant support away from the Church of England is a sign of hardening attitudes to Catholicism. Also remember that the decline in Catholicism has been stemmed by the dramatic rise in immigration from Catholic countries.

Of course the undeniable truth is that church attendance is declining overall by about 13% in 6 years.

The Catholic church may be hoping to cash in on current difficulties in the Church of England - but Man in a Shed thinks it has problems of its own now that it is skipping back a few centuries to Latin masses and indulgences.

There is a fight for the souls of men, and all the Churches, except the Pentecostals, seem to be losing it.


This is all based on the same data that allowed Jonathan Wynne-Jones of the Daily Telegraph to write the headline "Britain has become a 'Catholic country'". You might wonder how you could write such an article based on that data ......

The historical role of England as a Protestant country is hard to under play. The world is very much a different place due to this history. The key role of the English is all too well understood in the Vatican, if not The Daily Telegraph. Why else would such a church accept Tony Blair ?