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THE VATICAN
NEEDS TO GET OUT OF THE BEDROOM
April 18, 2005
Catholic or not, the
new Pope’s views will exert some influence on all
of us. He is to be the spiritual leader of one
of every six persons on this earth, and he will
have greater moral authority than any single
person on the planet. It is not power of a
military, political and economic nature such as
the President of the United States wields, but
rather the forcefulness of his ideas. And it is
precisely those ideas which should be a matter of
concern for us.
John
Paul II was hardly a liberal Pope, reaffirming as
he did the most traditional precepts of the
Catholic Church. The current danger is that the
new Pope may refuse to modernize Catholicism and
may hold onto backward concepts that give rise to
inequities and disavowal of medical advances.
First
and foremost among those things that irk one with
regard to the Catholic Church is the disparity in
its approach to its dealings concerning men and
women. How is it possible that well into the 21st
century, a girl can be barred from the priesthood
or from becoming Pope by the mere accident of
having been born female? Is it really
inconceivable that a woman can have the
endowments required to be a leader of the Church?
The
keynote of the education my 18-year-old daughter,
Paola, has received thus far is that there is
nothing to which she cannot aspire, and that
there is absolutely no reason whatsoever—and I
mean none—for her to feel inferior to any man.
But Paola, who made the decision on her own to
make her First Holy Communion, soon discovered
that her religion discriminated against her
because it does not offer her the same choices
and opportunities it offers to men.
Why? Just because she is
a woman.
Thus,
it should not come as a surprise that young women
are falling away from the Catholic Church and
perceive it to be a chauvinistic institution.
Those institutions that are the most impartial
ones in the world have women in high-ranking
positions, which is not the case with the
Catholic Church.
I
wonder if a Church that had female cardinals
would have shielded and concealed in like manner
the more than four thousand male priests who
raped and sexually abused nearly ten thousand
youths and children in the United States. I
would imagine not. The irony is that a large
part of the priests involved in this scandal are
homosexuals who are representatives of a Church
that, at least officially, rejects homosexuals
and, contrary to the dictates of medical science,
considers homosexuality to be a “pathology.”
Celibacy is another concept that keeps the
Catholic Church firmly entrenched in the past.
The sexual restrictions imposed by celibacy may
actually be the very crux of the scandal that
gripped the Catholic Church in the United States,
a situation which may be echoed in other
countries without our even knowing it. How is it
that a sex life can have any effect on the love
that a priest can have for his fellow man and for
God? It is important to note that celibacy was a
practice instituted by man eleven centuries after
the death of Jesus Christ, and therefore can be
reversed.
And
while we are on the subject of lovemaking, it is
imperative that the Vatican decamp from the
bedrooms of its Catholic faithful.
Coincidentally, this is the very demand being
made by Muslims of their Islamic religious
leaders known as mulhas. For example, the
decision to use birth control or condoms is one
that ought to be made by a couple, not by their
church.
This is
one of the issues on which Catholicism has lost
the most credibility. Millions of Catholic woman
take birth control pills and millions of Catholic
men use condoms, in open violation of the tenets
of their religion. These Catholics openly defy
the the teachings of their Church because they
know that, in that regard, the clergy are wrong,
they have no direct knowledge or experience, or
they are out of step with reality.
In like manner, the
Vatican is blind to the incontrovertible
scientific evidence of the United Nations and the
World Health Organization that assures that
condom use can reduce the worldwide AIDS
epidemic, particularly in Africa. The Vatican
can say all it wants about the wages of sin, but
the resultant cold, hard facts are there for all
to see. The Holy See’s ban on condom use, far
from saving lives, instead puts them in mortal
danger from AIDS.
Because of ideas
such as the preceding ones, Catholicism has lost
millions of its faithful in Europe. A mere five
percent of the French attend Mass. And married
couples in Spain and Italy are far from having
all the children God might otherwise send them;
to the contrary, theirs are some of the world’s
lowest birth rates, with only one child per
family.
Despite
the obvious drop in the numbers of practicing
Catholics in Europe, the number of Catholics
worldwide has remained stable over the last 10
years—at one billion one hundred million
faithful—thanks to the Church’s sustained growth
in Africa, Asia and Latin America. But the
constant challenging of Catholic dogma, which is
already being manifested on those continents as
well, coupled with the spread of Protestantism
and Islam, indicate that Catholicism must adjust
to the new reality if it is to avoid losing more
of its faithful, its seminarians, and its moral
influence.
Barring
any significant change in its practices and
dogma, the Catholic Church is at risk of lapsing
into irrelevance in a changing world. Thus it is
not a question of filling the shoes of John Paul
II, but rather of the new Pope walking in his
own shoes and showing all of us, Catholic or
otherwise, those ideas and actions that breed
equality between men and women, discriminate
against no one, protect children from rapist
priests and not the other way around, that
neither fear nor ban books such as The DaVinci
Code—an eleventh-hour ban that is absurd and
counter-productive—and that allow couples to make
their own decisions, unencumbered, with regard to
their sexuality.
There
is no doubt that religion has its place in our
society, but that place resides neither in the
bedroom nor in the government.
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