World Youth Day WYD08

This July about 225,000 youth are expected to descend upon Sydney for World Youth Day, which is being organised by the catholic church as a week long pilgrimage for the young people of the world to share in the love of christ (poor bastards)  It has a youth festival which includes such wonderful things as the vocation expos – that’s where you go along to learn about becoming a nun or a priest and not ever having sex in your whole life.  Sounds like fun.  You can also join in the Journey of the Cross & Icon, which sounds like the best time of all.  The Holy See has even granted a Plenary Indulgence – that’s the forgiveness of your sins

This purification takes place through patient bearing of trials and sufferings through charitable and merciful acts, and through prayer.

Who would’ve thought.

But I wanted to save my scorn really for their corporate sponsors.  Even the catholics know that to survive in this world you need the help of big business, because they’ll come flocking to your door to help you out when you’re trying to reach out to 225, 000 young people – just the right demographic.

There’s a code of ethics if you want to offer sponsorship. (SOURCE) among the things that it says

Partnership

WYD08 regards selected Corporate Affiliates and Suppliers as partners in the work of hosting WYD08, together with the Pope, and the youth of the world. Therefore, no individual or organisation is acceptable who conducts or is associated with the conduct of business, or who continues to endorse past business, that:

• is clearly inconsistent with the moral teaching of the Catholic Church
• seeks to promote, or to benefit from, addictive or other harmful responses in young people
• is likely to be judged socially irresponsible by Church teaching or current business ethics practice

Get that?  If you’re clearly inconsistent with the moral teaching, if you promote or benefit from harmful things to young people, and then there’s the whole business ethics thing.

So, some of the main players this year are Telstra, Commonwealth Bank, Qantas, The Daily Telegraph, and plenty of others.

The Daily Telegraph, owned by News Limited owns the match.com website which you can join for free and find a man or woman, as you like and I assume form a relationship and have sex with them, or if you’re gay you can find a man (or a woman if you’re a woman). Is that in keeping with the moral teaching of the church?  You can get to match.com by going to The Daily Telegraph website and clicking on classifieds and dating.

Telstra, our national telecommunications company. The ACCC has on numerous occasions found them guilty of misleading conduct.  That’s not very christian now is it? (SOURCE) Not to mention the questionable telephone services that they supply through their networks. (SOURCE)

Qantas, our beloved national carrier – first of all, well done for sacking the attendant who admitted to having sex in the loo on your one of your planes (SOURCE), that showed some real moral fibre didn’t it.  I mean after all, we can’t have unmarried people having sex in a space that can’t be accessed by the anyone once the door is locked.  Perhaps Qantas could explain how it managed to get a $70 million dollar fine in the US for a six year price fixing scam. (SOURCE)  It took six years to get caught, and they admitted their guilt.  How ethical is that do you think?  When quizzed about the fine, the CEO said he didn’t think it would do much harm to their bottom line.  Whew, I’d hate to think it actually hurt.

The Commonwealth Bank recorded a profit for the 6 months to December 2007 as $2,371 million dollars (that’s just half a year) money earned from its customers.  You see, we all started using Netbank, it was free to start with, but now costs us for just about every transaction (SOURCE).  Or how about the Loan servicing fee, mine is $7.00 a month, although its not clear what service I get for my money and they still manage to charge me interest.  That’s not too bad on the scale of sins, apart from their lack of compassion and social responsibility for looking after those less able to pay.

It’s worth having a look over the World Youth Day disclosure statement, as you read it make a few mental notes and tick off where you think their major sponsors are unworthy of the catholics.

Disclosure

Applicants for a business relationship with WYD 2008 should use their best endeavours to disclose any business or professional activities or involvements which they suspect may be judged unethical or contrary to Catholic teaching by WYD08, or which may promote or benefit from addictive or other harmful responses in young people.

As guidance, causing, promoting or willingly benefiting from any of the following would be judged unethical and contrary to Catholic Church teaching:

• promiscuity, contraception, abortion, adultery;
• violence, abuse, intentional self-harm, addiction to harmful substances or activities, marital or family breakdown;
• unjust discrimination, payment of unjust wages, unethical work conditions, illegal business dealings;
• attacks on Catholic faith, attacks on Church leaders, religious discrimination, religious bigotry

The following would be judged addictive or harmful responses in young people:

• substance abuse
• under-age drinking
• under-age sex
• pornography, including inappropriate Internet usage
• problem gambling
• serious credit card or other debt
• self-harm or tendencies towards self-harm
• depression and other psychological disorders
• serious truancy or inattentiveness in school
• significant anti-social tendencies

My challenge here, for a church rocked by its own mistreatment of its youth in its care, is for them to fess up and cut loose those organisations that don’t stand the scrunity of its own code of ethics.  Or is the money more important?

What other links can you find that highlight reasons for these organisation to be thrown down in front of the swines?

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