A New Pope—African, Latin American, Woman, Nice Guy—Will Change Nothing

A new pope will change nothing. Not a woman, not an African, not a Latin, not a nice guy. In fact, if anything is to change, the first thing that needs to happen is no pope, and certainly not an infallible one. Infallibility, unique to Catholicism, has led not only to internal despotism but also to an attempt to impose on the world all that has hurt Catholic women. What needs to change is the church.

As long as Catholics continue to accept the lines they are fed about papal infallibility, it will make not one whit of difference who the pope is. As long as Catholics are expected to accept rigid, sexist and blatantly illogical doctrine, there can be no real change in the church. From the Vatican down to the local parish priest, the early narratives—stories, really—that sought to explain who we are, why we are here, and the meaning of life are still taught, despite the fact that they are even less credible explanations of who we are than they ever were. By now, they are narratives of the oppression of women and in many ways of the human sprit. The insistence that Jesus Christ was born of virgin is among the most destructive. It suggests that women—married or single—are forever tainted by sexual activity. It reflects the early Christian distaste for all sexuality. It clings to the notion that there would have been something unseemly about God coming into the world through a birth canal through which semen had passed. Holding to the virgin birth is not a benign teaching. It undermines the idea that pleasure is sacred, that sexual intercourse is normal and healthy. It certainly does nothing to undermine the idiots who think that the woman’s body will reject the sperm of a rapist. It’s not just a matter of religious doctrine—at a policy level, it is at the root of the rejection of contraception, even for married people, insurance coverage for the same and most definitely abortion.

Some Catholic priests and bishops actually believe these narratives; most refuse to face the fact that they are not “mysteries” but relics of a time past that urgently need to be rejected.

read article by Frances Kissling