Pope Benedict XVI is creating a new Vatican office to fight secularization and “re-evangelize” the West — a tacit acknowledgment that his attempts to reinvigorate Christianity in Europe haven’t succeeded and need a new boost.

I like to think that I know a little something about “secularism.” In that spirit, I offer up 10 commandments suggestions to help the Pope with his, um, crusade:

10. Create colorful infographics showing that more children are molested by wicked (presumably secular) step-parents than by priests. (If anyone complains that the priests would look worse per capita, excommunicate him.)

9. Point out how “secular” referees can’t even judge whether a soccer ball goes in the goal or not, whereas the Pope is infallible.

8. Highlight how postponing retiree benefits until after death has allowed the Vatican to escape the fiscal woes plaguing its European peers.

7. Contrast between Papal support of gun control and “secular” American love of firearms ought to appeal to gun-hating weenies.

6. Start own MMA league (e.g. “CatholicForce”) and pay whatever it takes to get Brock Lesnar to join.

5. Sponsor a Judd Apatow movie starring Will Ferrell as a wacky priest, or a Michael Bay movie about robots that turn into priests. Or both!

4. Somehow convince Lady Gaga to use Catholic imagery in one of her videos.

3. Announce a ban on Your Religion Is False. (It could really help with sales!)

2. Reverse the Church’s position on masturbation. (That doesn’t just mean “use the other hand,” although I guess it could.)

1. Abandon mysticism and superstition, embrace science and reason.

They’re yours to use if you want them!

For example, Jewish scripture predates the invention of bicycles and spandex, leading to silly conflicts when bike lanes run through religious neighborhoods. Similarly, Catholic proscriptions on contraception, which might have made sense back when people disgustingly used candy bar wrappers as birth control, seem pretty goofy now that actual condoms are available for free in the school nurse’s office.

And, of course, the Muslim idea that a woman should only be seen in public wearing a burqa might need rethinking now that go-carts have become popular:

The Muslim clothing the woman was wearing flew back as she sped around the track and part of it became entangled in the go-kart’s wheels.

She was strangled in a second and crashed the vehicle.

This is not only a go-kart-specific problem, either. The same could happen with a lawn mower, with a motorbike, with a roller-coaster or a Sit ‘n Spin or a Tower of Terror.

It seems pretty clear that the burqa isn’t appropriate apparel for the modern world.

I mean, I guess you could instead take the position that maybe women just shouldn’t be allowed to do any of those things, or maybe that women’s lives just aren’t that important, and a few strangulations is a small price to pay for the corresponding benefits of getting your life micro-managed by a bunch of scripture-interpreting zealots.

But religious people couldn’t be that callous. Could they?

Unfortunately, the whole celebration is under a bit of a cloud this year, what with all the petty gossip about the Pope’s complicity in covering up sexual abuse by pedophile priests.

I personally think it’s a bit unfair for us to focus so much energy on his role in the sexual abuse scandals while ignoring his role in the Plame affair, in the Vince Foster murder, and in Abscam.

It doesn’t really matter, though, as it looks like the Pope will be able to use his diplomatic immunity card to get out of jail free:

“The pope is certainly a head of state, who has the same juridical status as all heads of state,” he said, arguing he therefore had immunity from foreign courts.

Now, obviously this isn’t on the same level as really egregious diplomatic immunity abuses like the end of Lethal Weapon 2 or the “Law and Order: SVU” episode about Romanian wife-smuggling or unpaid parking tickets. But it still puts him out of our reach, unless maybe we can spare some Marines from Afghanistan, which doesn’t appear to be in the cards.

That leaves our hopes in the hands of rank-and-file Catholics, who could quickly and peacefully put a halt to both the priests-touching-boys and the pope-covering-up-for-priests-touching-boys problems by quitting the church. Without parishioners, it would quickly go out of business and could be replaced by slightly less criminal churches. (This is what economists call “creative destruction,” although in today’s world there’s always the possibility that Tim Geithner or Ben Bernanke might decide the Church is “too big to fail” and try to save it using our tax dollars.)

There would be other benefits as well:

• Springtime lunch options no longer restricted to crappy Quiznos Lenten menu
• Sunday mornings suddenly free to watch “America Quilts Creatively” on PBS
• No more germy Christ-blood sharing means slower spread of communicable diseases
• Savings from not tithing could be donated to help pay off national debt
• Prime Catholic real estate in Rome could be repurposed into something everyone can enjoy, like a Starbucks.
• If we’re lucky, no more Dan Brown books.
• Deep sense of satisfaction from no longer devoting life to false beliefs.

Catholics, won’t you think about it? If you won’t do it for me, then do it for the children! Or maybe for Dan Brown!

Oh, and happy Easter!

There is no opposition between faith and science, says Benedict XVI, who proposed the example of St. Albert the Great to illustrate this truth.

Well, of course! What better way to demonstrate the compatibility of science and religion than with the example of a man who lived 800 years ago, back in the heyday of science!

You might not be familiar with Albert, as for some reason *cough* anti-religious-bias *cough* they tend not to teach much about him in science class, but he was a real scientist’s scientist.

For instance, he was an earlier pioneer of alchemy, and (like Nicolas Flamel in the British versions of Harry Potter) he wrote a treatise on the Philosopher’s Stone. He discovered the depilatory effects of frog ashes. His theory of astrological talismans was centuries ahead of its time. He witnessed the creation of gold by “transmutation,” which even today’s scientists can’t manage. And he was even said to be interested in phrenology, which wasn’t even really popular until 500 years later.

So next time someone tries to tell you faith and science aren’t compatible, you just remind them that the 13th century says different!

Well, now there’s a new one to add to the list: Vatican astronomer.

Sure, the hours are OK, and Rome is full of easily-charmed young women, and you can spend most of the workday goofing off and theorizing whether space aliens are allowed to take communion or not.

However, there’s also the real possibility that if you start doing, you know, science, then you might be arrested as a heretic and locked away in the basement where they keep confiscated copies of The Da Vinci Code.

But this doesn’t seem to worry star astronomer Brother Guy Consolmagno:

Q: Is there something spiritual in it for you?

A: Anybody who’s looked at the stars, it’s got to be spiritual. Now, I don’t want to say I find God in the stars. It’s the other way around. … You know, the reason that they fund us … is to show the world that the church embraces science.

For whatever reason, the world seems not to be convinced about the whole “embraces science” thing yet. Perhaps when the church abandons its evidenceless claims of human parthenogenesis and resurrection and transsubstantiation and miracle cures “they” don’t want you to know about, then we might start taking Brother Guy’s claim seriously.

(Plus, “it’s got to be spiritual” is not exactly scientific reasoning at its finest.)

Now, that’s not to say that the job doesn’t have its perks. For instance, while non-Vatican scientists have to spend lots of time becoming familiar with what counts as “evidence” for things, Brother Guy gets to remain blissfully unaware:

Q: Any evidence of Heaven in the heavens?

A: In a funny way, yes. It’s not enough that the universe makes sense, and that we can study it — that there are laws to be found. … But the fact is, the skies are beautiful. And even the laws of physics that describe the skies are beautiful. And to me that is the beauty of the creator coming through.

Q: Any evidence that after you die you go to heaven or hell depending on whether you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior, ate his cracker-flesh, and let a priest fondle you in a dark booth?

A: In a funny way, yes. The skies are beautiful!

Q: Any evidence that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim?

A: In a funny way, yes. The skies are beautiful!

Q: Any evidence that there’s a lost city of Atlantis somewhere under the ocean and that it’s populated by bloodthirsty merpeople who are waiting for the Mayan Prophecy Year of 2012 to come aboveground and conquer us all as revenge for the plastic we’ve been dumping into the Pacific?

A: In a funny way, yes. The skies are beautiful!

Or come up with your own. Thanks, Catholic Church!

And when you try and teach them about “the intangible,” why, they think it’s all “fortune-telling and ghosts,” just like they see on the television and the internets!

That’s why you can’t just assume they know what “god” is:

Most students in fact have already formed their own basis for belief or unbelief, and in both instances their implicit “philosophies” are cobbled together from some of the worst God-talk popular culture has to offer. In this sense, there is no question that students are up to the task of philosophical reflection about God. The problem is that this reflection is taking place without the direction and input of the Catholic intellectual tradition.

As the scare quotes make clear, it’s not really really a philosophy unless it incorporates the input of the “Catholic intellectual tradition.”

And teacher Brad Rothrock (who wrote the linked essay) knows how to incorporate tradition, which is how his students got so good at correcting those who make the egregious mistake of thinking of god as a “thing.”

Several students then tried to explain to her that God is not a “thing,” but rather the act of existence itself from which all “things” proceed. Though the transfer student remained confused, and I suggested she see me later, this was one of those moments teachers dream about.

Indeed, only the hardest-headed empiricist wouldn’t be thrilled with students so adept at parroting “philosophical” nonsense. I mean, philosophical nonsense.

• Communion rituals unfairly exclude coeliac disease sufferers
• lost faith in natural family planning after tenth pregnancy
• tired of being solicited for contributions every papal election season
• can’t believe in a god who would condemn “Top Chef” Season 3 favorite Dale
• don’t understand why children of “annulled” marriages don’t become illegitimate
• Catholicism false

Which is why I’m skeptical of the new Catholic ad campaign, which doesn’t seem to address any of these:

“In this world filled with chaos, hardship and pain, it’s comforting to know that some things remain consistent, true and strong,” an announcer says. “If you’ve been away from the Catholic Church, we invite you to take another look. . . . We are Catholic. Welcome home.”

On the other hand, if you’re one of the handful of people who left the church searching for a religion where you get to sit in an airplane hangar after you die and watch a movie showing all of your old haircuts, some of your worst pecadilloes, and the time you had sex with a blonde teenager in a cheap motel, then this new ad campaign is for you:

(Although Mormon ad campaigns have been similarly ineffective, at least they were savvy enough to cast the always-watchable Alfonso Ribeiro.)

Just what the recent miracle is that’s been attributed to the intercession or divine intervention of Kateri Tekakwitha, known as the Lily of the Mohawks, remains a closely guarded secret.

You’ve probably never heard of Tekawitha, whose when-alive hobbies included virginity, being really short, starving herself, and lying on a bed of thorns.

Nonetheless, she must be pretty popular within the church, as they proactively assigned her a miracle finder:

Evidence of the miracle — which took two years to compile — was sent to Rome last month in a diplomatic pouch through the Vatican embassy in Washington, D.C., said Monsignor Paul Lenz, the church official who was charged with finding a miracle that could qualify Kateri for sainthood.

Out of curiosity, I researched the qualifications to become a miracle finder:

Position Description:

The Miracle Finder guides and manages the overall miracle location process.

The Miracle Finder is responsible for all or part of these areas:

• Ignoring science.
• Devising supernatural explanations for natural events.
• Ignoring science.
• Superstition.
• Burning candles with pictures of saints and Spanish-language prayers on the sides.
• Finding miracles.
• Ignoring science.
• Some light cleaning.

Education and Experience:

• Maximum of a Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in Theology, Education, Human Resources, or some other non-scientific field.
• Demonstrated expertise in ignoring laws of statistics and probability.
• Accomplished Miracle Finder (AMF) certification preferred, not required.
• Credulous nature a MUST.

Compensation:

Depends on miracles.

No, it’s Alma Mater, the debut album from musical wunderkind Benedict XVI:

His holiness will be singing a Marian prayer as well as speaking Lauretan Litanies in different languages – Italian, Portuguese, French and German – accompanied by eight original pieces of modern classical music.

Will it reach the musical heights of Al Gore’s grammy-winning An Inconvenient Truth? Certainly not without cleverly-designed album art!

Now, anyone who’s examined the cover of my book knows that I’m no artist. Nonetheless, I think I’ve come up with a pretty compelling concept:

The Vatican lauded the latest Harry Potter film on Monday, saying Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince made the age-old debate over good vs. evil crystal clear.

Wait, crystal clear? I read the book, and I’m pretty sure that the battle between good and evil was anything but crystal clear.

I suppose it’s possible that the movie changes all those parts. But I’m guessing it’s a reasonably faithful adaptation.

Which means that the Vatican must be referring to their own idiosyncratic notions of good and evil.

For instance, perhaps they consider Dumbledore “evil” on account of his support for gay marriage and euthanasia. And maybe they consider Voldemort “good” because his pursuit of horcruxes demonstrates that (unlike those nasty Darwinist muggles) he believes in an immortal soul.

Or perhaps the priests are merely using moral language to disguise an affinity for watching horny teenagers:

The Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano even gave two thumbs up to the film’s treatment of adolescent love, saying it achieved the “correct balance” and made the stars more credible to the general audience.