The Power of the Papal Brand

There is now a generation of young Irish people under 30 - perhaps up to 40 or thereabouts - for whom religion in general, and the Catholic Church in particular, are in practice totally irrelevant. They have no interest whatsoever in the various debates between "liberals" and "conservatives" within religion.

They wouldn't recognise a Bishop, or his crozier, if he bit them. They would stare at you in wide-eyed puzzlement if you started going on about the Holy Trinity (and its link with the shamrock, say), much less the wars fought over transubstantiation versus consubstantiation.

This supremely irreligious tranche of Irish society are not fierce, campaigning atheists like Marx or Shelley: they just regard religion as a feudal hangover and a deep inconvenience to their personal lifestyle choices which has no place in the 21st century.

However, the one thing these new secularists do understand - they seem to have absorbed it, in a miraculous example of Darwinian adaptation, into their DNA - is image, media, publicity, brand-consciousness, and the selling-power of a global product. And in one of those astonishing paradoxes, it is the media-conscious, brand-name, global-product aspect of the recent changes in the Papacy which have genuinely fascinated the irreligiously agnostic generation.

Yeah, religion is old hat, and irrelevant to lifestyle choices - but hey, this Papal gig has amazing pulling power! Global television coverage, splash headlines around the world, heated debate over a million media discourses - Christ Almighty, you couldn't buy that kind of publicity! Not to mention the choreography of the whole show: the Cardinals in scarlet, the Sistine Chapel painted by Michaelangelo, the huge crowds in a state of excitation in St Peter's Square waiting for white smoke - and what a smart marketing move it was not to change to electronic voting, or to decide to break the news by TV or e-mail. White smoke - what a stunt! Visual, yeah? We must, think the secularists in suits, get our marketing boys onto something like this. Then - get this! The bells! Great musical resonance echoing the image!

Serious-minded, and indeed fair-minded, Catholics are concerned that the new Pope, Benedict XVI, might be just a shade too conservative: he might fail to embrace the "big tent" of Christianity and Catholicism, which, after all, include gays, divorced people, people who use contraception and see nothing wrong with it - oh dear, maybe he might alienate many good folk who are doing their best according to their consciences…

But our irreligious generation of neo-capitalists don't look on the event like that at all. They're thinking - hey, this is a CEO with a really, really strong brand image! He's not interested in a "big tent" - he's interested in branding his stamp of leadership on the market and letting the market follow him. Consumers know instantly what he represents - he's got a big publicity profile. After all, head of the Catholic Inquisition (as the Holy Office used to be known) - there's plenty of punch in that package! (Could we do a design logo with guys in cowls, maybe?)

Ecumenically-minded Catholic are rather dismayed that Papa Ratzi has been so dismissive of other Christian faiths - saying that the various Protestant churches are not "proper" churches at all. This is, to most Catholics, unkind and hurtful to their Protestant neighbours who they know from experience to be decent people, and quite often highly moral human beings.

But our marketing-minded secularist doesn't take that attitude. He (or she) thinks that the Pope excluding Protestants and other Christians from his "Best Quality" category is no different from anyone in business proclaiming his brand is best. You don't get the sales manager of Guinness's saying - "Okay, folks, why not try Murphy's stout next time - it's just as good as our brand?". You don't get Toyota declaring - "why not drive a Ford car for a change?" By the same token, the CEO at the Catholic Church has to believe that his brand is best, and competitors are also-rans. They're the rules of the game. Anyone, didn't the "totally irrelevant" Bible say that if the trumpet makes an uncertain sound, no one will heed it?

I have sometimes entertained the thought that if you were looking objectively at varieties of faith, the religion which emerges most admirably is Methodism. Point for point, Methodists have done a fantastic amount of good for humanity: they've campaigned against slavery, against crime, against poverty and drunkenness: they've produced heavenly hymns and inspired people to faith with energetic evangelism. But our image-conscious, brand-aware, global-minded and publicity-conscious young agnostic almost certainly thinks the Holy See gets up a better gig, and in that, paradoxically, he is on the same wavelength as Papa Benedict.

Irish Independent magazine: 30 April 2005.