Editor's Note: Reprinted from Successful Rebranding magazine
Pope Francis Wins Successful Rebranding Magazine "Person of the Year" Award
January 6, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
When Pope Francis assumed the leadership of the Catholic Church, he took on one of the greatest rebranding challenges in recent history. Pope Francis has turned out to be what the church's adherents would call a "godsend" to a brand that had been in serious crisis.
He has taken on the challenge of representing an institution that has been, in his words, "obsessed" with condemning same-sex relationships and forcing women to bear children against their will by opposing not just abortion but any form of birth control, all the while providing intransigent protection for institutionalized rape and sexual abuse of children. And in a world of vicious inequality, the Catholic Church remains deeply embedded in the most obscene oligarchies while denouncing any attempt of the oppressed to rise up against their oppression in struggle, let alone revolution.
With substance-free but carefully crafted gestures like wearing different clothes, moving to a different house, and occasionally expressing concern about income inequality and saying that he really, really cares about some of the people who his church nevertheless continues to oppress, Francis has miraculously revived the Roman Catholic brand. Talk about resurrection!
Pope Francis has managed (thus far) to convince many otherwise sane people, including people who had in many ways sharply criticized and even broken in some ways with the church, to forget about all the rank injustice, oppression, and insults to reason and truth that outraged them with just a few well-placed words.
Matthew Schmitz, deputy editor at the conservative magazine First Things, observed that the new Pope "says there is no question of what the church teaches. He wants a gentler approach. The way that he speaks masks how orthodox he is and might lead to some confusion."
The rebranding of the Catholic Church has focused on a 17-word excerpt from an interview with Francis declaring the church should not "obsess" over persecuting and condemning same-sex relationships or forcing women to bear children against their will. While that excerpt flooded the airways, the Pope made clear that "The church cannot be expected to change her position on this question. I want to be completely honest in this regard. This is not something subject to alleged reforms or 'modernizations.' It is not 'progressive' to try to resolve problems by eliminating a human life [allow women to choose whether or not to have a child]."
What is really so impressive in this Age of Branding is that Pope Francis has been able to do all this while maintaining all of the Dark Ages rules and practices of the Catholic Church which contribute to so much outrageous oppression and needless suffering, including:
- Preventing women from getting safe, legal abortion and birth control and dooming some 70,000 women every year to death from unsafe abortions – overwhelmingly in places where abortion is illegal or highly restricted. And forcing untold numbers of women to bear children against their will;
- Continuing to condemn the use of condoms as "immoral," with genocidal implications in Africa where overcoming material obstacles and prejudices against using condoms could save the lives of millions by preventing the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases along with providing a basic, safe way for women to prevent unwanted pregnancies;
- Continued protection of child-raping priests and covering up the historical and present-day exploitation of children and women by the church;
- Continuing to condemn the right of gay people to marry and campaigning to overtly attempt to impose theocratic principles to prevent marriage equality from becoming law;
- The all-round promotion of ignorance and superstition, false hope, and divinely justified bigotry, which is the normal job of religion.
May we suggest a new advertising slogan for the Catholic Church?
"When you've just got to justify horrible crimes
and medieval morality with a cover of piety...
Things go better with Pope"
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