Business as usual for Vatican Enterprises, Inc.

By PAULA KIRBY, NEWSWEEK, ON FAITH
Added: Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:00:00 UTC

Each week the Washington Post's On Faith team sends a question out to its Panel. This week, the question was as follows:-

Rome's Anglican annex

The Vatican is making it easier for Anglicans -- priests, members and parishes -- to convert to Catholicism. Some say this is further recognition of the substantial overlap in faith, doctrine and spirituality between the Catholic and Anglican traditions; others see it as poaching that could further divide the Anglican Communion. What do you think?

The Panel's answers can be found here

Paula Kirby is a member of the Panel, and her answer is posted below. Richard Dawkins is also a member and his answer can be found at here

Paula's Post

'It is business as usual," said the Archbishop of Canterbury at the press conference announcing the Vatican's latest attempt to poach disaffected Anglicans. And how right he was. The Roman Catholic Church is a giant multinational corporation, differing from its business equivalents only in that they pay their taxes.

Like any corporate business, the Vatican's focus is all on the bottom line: profits rather than prophets; financial rather than spiritual growth. Everything else is just a means to an end. And in order to achieve this end, it deploys all the tactics that have served the corporate world so well: dodgy marketing techniques, products that are not fit for purpose, the refusal (or inability, in the church's case) to honor guarantees and warranties, advertising based on unproven claims, corrupt trading practices, and obscene rewards for its Chief Executive whilst workers on the shop-floor struggle to make ends meet on poverty wages: these are the daily business of the multinational corporation that is the Roman Catholic Church.

Given this sort of track record, why should we expect it to scruple to poach its competitors' workforce and customers?

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