Desperate Catholic Church now offering sainthood to anyone who attends Mass regularly

Earlier today (see preceding post) Walt mentioned the long and complex process involved in canonizing someone -- making them a saint of the One True Church. I was talking about Archbishop Fulton Sheen, who died in 1979 and has only now been credited with the first of two miracles necessary to canonization.

Too bad that Archbishop Sheen wasn't alive today, as the Church seems about to relax the rules a little. Agent 36 alerts us to this report from the Onion.

VATICAN CITY—Alerting faithful around the world to changes regarding its process of beatification and canonization, Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi announced today that the Roman Catholic Church will now bestow sainthood on any man or woman who attends weekly mass on a regular basis.

"After careful deliberation and prayer, the Church has elected to enter any believer into the Canon of Saints so long as he or she is pure of heart and shows up to mass once a week, or even three out of four times a month," Lombardi wrote in a statement distributed to all dioceses worldwide, noting that the Congregation for the Causes of Saints will promptly begin taking up the cases of any parishioner who arrives on time and stays for the whole thing.

"We are also waiving the requirement that individuals be dead before attaining sainthood. As long as you take Communion and stick around for a few minutes after the service, you're pretty much in. You can be patron saint of anything you want—good health, food, music, whatever—as long as you're sitting in that pew."

Lombardi said that in addition to revising canonization procedures, the Vatican would now allow anyone who attends mass to put on the priest's vestments at the end of the service and play the church's organ if they want.

It's satire, right?! But like all good satire, it's based on the truth. A new Pew Research Center survey has found that indeed, Holy Mother Church is having trouble putting posteriors in the pews -- this in spite of the rock star popularity of Francis the Party Pope.

According to the survey, 85% of American Catholics have a favourable view of the second of two living popes. That's up from 79% in September. The first of the two, Benedict XVI, was viewed favourably by 67% to 83% in the past. JPII got higher ratings than both of them, ranging from 91% to 93% in past surveys.

Dear Catholic readers, what lesson do we learn from this? Just about anyone who sits on the Throne of Peter is bound to be viewed in a positive light by the majority of Catholics, no matter who he is or what he does.

But will the same majority pay attention to his teachings? Errr, no. According to the same survey, 63% of Catholics who attend Mass at least weekly -- the candidates for sainthood mentioned above -- want the Church to change Her teaching on birth control. 72% want to allow priests to get married. 68% support women’s ordination to the priesthood. And 50% support same-sex "marriage".

The percentages are even higher among Catholics who attend Mass less than once a week. That whirring noise you hear underneath you would be the sound of real saints spinning in their graves.