Catholicism’s multi-billion dollar brand is struggling despite Pope Francis
The Catholic church is one of the oldest and most profitable brands in history. The drip feed of negative headlines associated with sexual abuse and its cover up has irreparably tarnished the Catholic brand for many.
There is a more fundamental threat to Catholicism however: irrelevance
In stark contrast to the socio-cultural values espoused by the church pope Francis has refocused Church's core brand strength of representing the vulnerable, and regained moral momentum through its campaigns focusing on peace, poverty, migration and the environment. The pope’s decision to take three refugee families back to the Vatican following his visit to Lesbos, for example.
Still there are the consequences of diverging from public opinions on and experiences of homosexuality, female equality, married life, sex and parenthood? Perhaps we can see it in the stunning decline of Catholic congregations across large parts of Europe and in North and South America.
Remember Nokia disappeared because it failed to keep up with the changing expectations of consumers over the size of its phone screens. Research suggests that anti-gay, anti-science attitudes are turning people away from religion in the US, for example. In a globalised and hyper-connected world, scandals, hypocrisy, lies, financial cover-ups, and generally obfuscated moral messages, are shared, picked apart and rejected faster than ever.
https://theconversation.com/catholicisms...ncis-57595
The Catholic church is one of the oldest and most profitable brands in history. The drip feed of negative headlines associated with sexual abuse and its cover up has irreparably tarnished the Catholic brand for many.
There is a more fundamental threat to Catholicism however: irrelevance
In stark contrast to the socio-cultural values espoused by the church pope Francis has refocused Church's core brand strength of representing the vulnerable, and regained moral momentum through its campaigns focusing on peace, poverty, migration and the environment. The pope’s decision to take three refugee families back to the Vatican following his visit to Lesbos, for example.
Still there are the consequences of diverging from public opinions on and experiences of homosexuality, female equality, married life, sex and parenthood? Perhaps we can see it in the stunning decline of Catholic congregations across large parts of Europe and in North and South America.
Remember Nokia disappeared because it failed to keep up with the changing expectations of consumers over the size of its phone screens. Research suggests that anti-gay, anti-science attitudes are turning people away from religion in the US, for example. In a globalised and hyper-connected world, scandals, hypocrisy, lies, financial cover-ups, and generally obfuscated moral messages, are shared, picked apart and rejected faster than ever.
https://theconversation.com/catholicisms...ncis-57595
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
