Is Catholisism on the decline?
You might think, like a lot of bullish types, that travelling on a big banana bus through South America, takes away from the true essense of travel and doesn´t allow oneself(what) to fully interact with the locals and therefore get a real understanding of what is underpinning the societies and cultures which we visit.

A big load of bollocks!

I´m here to tell you that it´s only taken me the best part of a couple of weeks observing from my seat at the back of the bus(that´s where all the cool members of the group sit), to identify a potentially catastrophic trend beginning to emerge in South America.

THE INFORMATION THAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO READ IS HIGHLY SENSITIVE, AND THOSE WORRIED ABOUT RECOURSE SHOULD NOT CONTINUE AT THIS POINT!

I promised myself that I would not use this blog to get up on my soap box and peddle my somewhat coloured opinions on important world matters. However there comes a time when a red blooded human can remain silent no longer.

This great continent has been through some great changes over the last 500 years, firstly with the Inca culture steamrollering it´s way through the Andes, engulfing smaller cultures enveloping them into there own way of life. Then the more brutal and tranforming invasion by the Spanish, killing and surpressing most of the local peoples, removing the local religions and enforcing there own daities onto a people with no real understanding of what was going on, and then crucially emposing a complete new language, which would become the common tongue for a continent.

Where does that leave South America now. Well, we have a collection of countries which almost exclusively speak spanish, adopt spanish cultures and festivals, and crucially is 98% pacticing Catholic. This point evident with the number of locals who can be found in mass everyday, the hugh numbers who celebrate Sundays as the day of rest, and the almost silly numbers of men who adorn well tanned chests with big shiny gold crosses on them.

You would think, why therefore is Gary questioning the importance of the Catholic religion in these countries? Is there large demonstrations against the church, do the students take to the streets and burn the cross, is there a large number of sinful activities being undertaken by the masses.

The answers to these questions, is generally no!

What then throws doubt over the impact that the church and religion has on these people? Well I´ll tell you:

Have you seen the number of pregnant dogs? Absolutely bloody ridiculous!

I know the church, so to speak, doesn´t ultimately believe in contraception or abortion, but if an organisation has the control and influence it pretains then surely measures would be taken to irradicate a problem which is leading to problem after problem. Where will we be in 20 years time if this continues, houses will have collapsed with the sheer weight of dogs on roofs, streets will have become unwalkable with the amount of crap on the pavements, rabies jabbs will have to be increased from 3 to 93 before departure meaning any trip to South America will be a logistical nightmare due to the 25 years of planning required, alpaca jumpers will be unwearable due to excess mass gathered from dog hair, the dog will have to replace the frog in the blender which can only lead to problems with hair between the teeth and the continual coughing up of fur balls.

But these problems are secondary, my main worries are for the church, it can only be surely a matter of time before manipulative dogs start to take key positions in the catholic church, and where will South America be then, we only have to look to the example of France:

"one for all, and all for one, muskahounds are always ready"

- posted by Anonymous @ 12:10 PM