O l' John Paul the Deuce settled ancient church business like no other Pope. He pardoned Galileo and exacted revenge on the English royal family. You have to admire his timing in forcing Prince Charles to postpone his royal wedding.

For my tithe, JP II stopped short. I know the college of Cardinals won't read the advice of a non-practicing Roman Catholic, (at least not until it comes out in paperback), so I will send out to the universe (and my loyal readers) my wish list for the incoming pope:

Declare a worldwide effort to end capital punishment. Sure, sure, Jesus wouldn't be the messiah without the death penalty. It was barbaric 2,000 years ago, it still is. If the papacy motivated American Catholics to vote their faith on this issue like they do abortion, the USA wouldn't be the only western democracy that resorts to such demagoguery.
Declare a worldwide effort to end war and its accompanying miseries. Ex-communicate American bishops and cardinals who support the war on Terror. Let's take Christ and God at their words, like, "Thou shalt not kill" and "Love thy enemy." I don't love myself with napalm or atom bombs, so I won't love my global neighbors that way, either.
Start a Book of the Month Club. The Polish Pope condemned many books. He wrote a few, too. Yet no pontiff in the past 1,600 years has added any inspired words from above to the official Word of God, The New Testament. The incoming Pope needs to recommend spiritual lit, because there's more to the written word than the Bible. Bob Dylan, Emily Dickinson, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Thomas Merton and Rainer Maria Rilke deserve consideration for their spiritual meditations. And while we're at it, let's put Bibles into RC church pews, so people can interpret the word of God for themselves.
Re-examine the life of Christ using the Gnostic gospels. Political considerations - like people being thrown to lions for their beliefs - necessitated a unified structure to provide safe places to worship. Irenaues, an early church patriarch, tried to distill hundreds of gospels into a cohesive belief system, which eventually became the Nicene Creed. Many of these gospels offer contradictory pictures of Jesus. Some, like the Gospels of Thomas and Phillip, explore Christ's humanity, even expressing that Christ's resurrection is merely metaphor. The gospel of John, which focuses solely on Christ's divinity, is the cornerstone of modern Christianity. Heresy be damned, if you can convince someone that a guy rose from the dead, you can sell them beachfront property in Nebraska, the divine right of kings or the inferiority of women.
Open the priesthood to women. The Apocryphal gospels ascribe a greater role for Mary Magdalene not only in Jesus' life, but in the formation of the early church, which featured many female preachers. The RC ban on women priests is misogyny, cultivated from the Old Testament, justified by the treachery of Eve. Enough! Women can be saints, why not priests?
Repudiate St. Augustine's view of sexuality. We know nothing of Christ's sexuality. Gay? Straight? Celibate? The ancient doctrine of sex as solely for pro-creation and only for marriage leads to overpopulation. If Popes have had kids, I am not shameful, sinful or dirty for having sex. Sayeth the prophet George Michael: "Sex is natural, sex is fun. Sex is best when it's one on one."
Allow priests to marry. Of the many factors leading to the shrinking of the RC church, a dramatic one is the lack of new priests because potential recruits are turned off by the celibacy thing. If the church is charged with spreading the good news, it fail its mission when it closes dwindling parishes because its pastors like little boys instead of large congregations. The Papacy must stop aiding and abetting sexual predators.
Expand the parochial school system globally. Closing schools is atrocious. I can't fathom that the RC church committing such crimes against children. Literacy is a universal human right. The church has suppressed intellectual curiosity for millennia, and the best way to change that stance is to strengthen educational infrastructure. (Disclosure: I attended a parochial school. You judge if I got a good education). As one of the largest global landholders, the Catholic Church has the wealth to end illiteracy and child poverty. It chooses not to, and children in Hartford and places much poorer suffer for such ignorance.
Revoke Papal Infallibility. The age-old policy of the pope being always right because he has a red-phone to God gives dictators like Bush permission to claim God is on his side in whatever military adventures he chooses. If the Pope could say, "Hey, we're human. We're sorry. We were wrong on so much, like Pope Gregory XVI (1832) claiming that science is rubbage, free speech evil. We don't have any more idea what God is saying than what the Bible tells us. We won't use the infallibility crutch to control debates. Swear to God."
The Pope should smoke dope. God said to Adam in Genesis - "I have given you all the animals and seed-bearing plants." That means poison ivy and cannabis sativa. Maybe Jesus was so chill because he burned blonde Lebanese hashish. Perhaps his body (those little wafers) would taste better if they sparked some skunk bud in the incense burner. I know I would go to church more if weed was a recognized sacrament.

4/12/05

Email this to a friend.

Pope Gots A Gun - by Mark McLychok +enlarge

"I have given you all the animals and seed-bearing plants." -- Genesis

Index Pages

Topics

Archives

Hopes for the Pope

"I have given you all the animals and seed-bearing plants." -- Genesis