Cardinal Ivan Dias, prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, who is the most senior Catholic delegate invited to the Lambeth Conference, has diagnosed many Christian communities with “spiritual Alzheimer’s” and “ecclesial Parkinson’s.”

Whoa! A cardinal telling it like it is.

He said, according to The Guardian: “When we live myopically in the fleeting present, oblivious of our past heritage and apostolic traditions, we could well be suffering from spiritual Alzheimer’s…When we behave in a disorderly manner, going whimsically our own way without any coordination with the head of or the other members of our community, it could be ecclesial Parkinson’s.”

That does seem to sum up the situation rather well in many Christian sects, if phrased in a slightly politically incorrect manner.

Dias told bishops the battle to bring Christ to the world must be placed in the “wider context of spiritual combat” with Satan. “If this context is ignored in favour of a myopic world-vision, Christ’s salvation will be conveniently dismissed as irrelevant.”

This “spiritual warfare” had continued since the fall of Adam, raging “aided and abetted by well-known secret sects, Satanic groups and New Age movements” that revealed the “many ugly heads of the hideous anti-God monster”.

These works of the devil were, he added, “secularism, which seeks to build a godless society; spiritual indifference, which is insensitive to transcendental values; and relativism, which is contrary to the permanent tenets of the Gospel”.

“We Christians and bishops can ill afford to remain on the sidelines as passive spectators,” he warned.

Spiritual warfare, anti-God monsters, Satan. Is it just me or don’t you just really love it when someone in the Vatican speaks like this, you know like they actually fiercely believe in something?