All in all, I’d say the past couple of weeks have been bad for the church. Well, their PR machinery. First, we had to be subjected to a preening Al Miller (he’s ‘nice’), the director of the National Transformation Programme in the Office of the Prime Minister, justifying breaking the law by claiming that he listened to his conscience in the Dudus imbroglio (I mean, what’s next? Can we all go around flouting the law now that the conscience excuse has apparently become the new black? I can just imagine the bedlam at cash registers all across this great country: “No, ma’am, I’m exercising my conscience here and I will not pay the GCT because I object to that additional 16.5 per cent which could benefit starving children in Africa or the inner city.” Or — light bulb moment! — how about this? How about, in order to establish our street creds, we all protect wanted men from the police? Our law enforcement is so crooked and biased against the poor wrongdoers anyway, let’s all become modern-day conscientious objectors. But maybe I’m mistaken and the conscience card can only be played by men and women of the cloth who allegedly operate on a higher mandate. Everybody knows church folks get free passes.)

Then, as if that wasn’t enough, the report of the pope raising holy hell about the Belgian police raiding the cathedral and chancery of the Brussels archdiocese in response to another round of sex abuse allegations and cover-ups by the Belgian Church, similar to the ones that have been rocking the Catholic Church in various parts of the world for some time now. In a message to the archbishop of Brussels, Pope Benedict spoke of his solidarity with the Belgian bishops, and decried the “surprising and deplorable manner in which searches were carried out”. The Holy Father acknowledged the gravity of sex abuse charges, but said “these serious matters should be dealt with by both civil law and canon law, while respecting the specific nature and autonomy of each”.

What horrifies me is the fine lather the Church has worked itself into about the, well, violation of its rights by the police. Hello? What about the violation of the rights of all the victims who’ve been coming forward over the past years to voice the abuse they’ve had to suffer at the hands of certain paedophiles disguising themselves as priests? The scandals simply refuse to die. You’d have thought the Holy Father would be relieved at the intervention of civil law since canon law, with all due respect, seems to be hurting more than it is helping. Where was his righteous indignation when the allegations of those abominations were coming fast and furious?

Apparently, it was a stealth raid. (The best kind, really.) The Belgian bishops were pounced on, so to speak, and basically sequestered within the building, deprived of their cell phones, etc. (A Greg Christie move, basically, so no paper shredding could take place or sensitive files removed to someone’s home for ‘safekeeping’.) Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State voiced the Vatican’s shock and outrage at the incident, saying “there are not precedents — not even under the old Communist regimes”. And a spokesman for the archdiocese has suggested that there may be grounds for a lawsuit against the police. Are these people for real?

This is why organised religion is losing much of its relevance today. In a time when knowledge is abounding – it is the Information Age, after all – the church still doesn’t get it. People simply won’t be conned into assembling with a group of people who don’t respect the age and times in which we’re living. Gone are the days of ‘do as I say but not as I do’. Hypocrisy is being revealed for what it is. When the reverend Al Miller in 2008 styled opponents of the death penalty as “dumb” and “dunce”, I wonder what he was thinking about. Now he has the nerve to be annoyed that people are lambasting him? I wonder what he thinks about the Ity and Fancy Cat sketch parodying him which goes beyond comedy and is trenchant commentary about how the non-religious demographic perceives him and perhaps the church in general.

And what about the church in general, that back-slapping fraternity that is one of the biggest subscribers to the good ole boys’ clubs? In the Al Miller affair, few of his mealy-mouthed colleagues have had the courage to challenge him; afraid to rock the boat maybe, they’re more content to focus on Miller’s gun amnesty suggestion instead. Please. As if we’re stupid and unable to recognise muddying of the waters, that old magician’s trick of misdirection, when we see it. A gun amnesty in a society where employment in the inner city is at a premium will not work. Why would criminals march up to the altars, hand in their guns and then return to their communities to simply wait on the miracle of manna falling from the sky to sustain them and their families?

What’s irksome about the church is this constant closing of ranks even when it’s evident that one of their own is wrong. The only time they come out and condemn a sin is when the sinful society at large is doing it: so they frown on the idea of a gay church, on horseracing on a Sunday, on casino gambling, and abortion. In the case of the Catholic Church, God forbid a married couple get a divorce if the marriage is a failure. Paedophile priests get a slap on the wrist, and shunted quietly to another parish. Reverends found consorting with known fugitives are coddled and their actions defended because they love God. If they love God, then they’ll keep His commandments, right?

Those days of the church being a moral authority are, sadly, over.

And yet the world is waiting for one. The world is waiting for a church — and a government, come to think of it — that leads from the top. Wrong is wrong, even if it’s one of their own doing it. Until it stops the dissembling and becomes an equal opportunity watchdog, I for one sure as hell don’t want to hear from them.