Peter: That is very apt, and if I were an optimist about the fate of

Christianity in the world, that is the kind of optimist I would be — a

“back to the catacombs” optimist. Indeed, the history of the enduring

religions displays cycles of retreat and advance rather like what

then-Cardinal Ratzinger was writing about. The Old Testament is practically

a precis of this thesis.

New things do come up in the world, though, and the future is not obliged to

resemble the past. What I described as secular hedonism, which I meant to

encompass all the barely-imaginable things we shall soon be able to do to

the human body and psyche, is a mortal enemy of Christianity as it has been

organized in the world for most of the past 2,000 years. The Catholic

Church seems to understand this at some level, but I don’t think has really

got the measure of the threat. If Christianity survives the pressent age,

it will be in some different form.

And religions do die. Who now worships Marduk, Zeus, Ra, Baal, or the

Triple Goddess?

(I await with resignation the indignant emails from Baal-worshippers.)