Remember Mr. T, the enforcer on the old A Team TV show? You know, the big Black dude with the Mohawk and half ton of bling rumored to be worth hundreds of thousands draped around his neck? Built like a brick outhouse, Mr. T could somekinda kick ass. He could back up his favorite words, "I pity the man; I pity the poor fool who..." What a great model figure for the new Pope, whoever he may turn out to be.
Before the local convent comes threatening to hang me by my genitalia from the nearest steeple, allow me to explain.
Tuesday the Cardinals, most of them anyway, will literally be locked into the Sistine Chapel. They're not allowed to come out until they've elected a new Pope. We on the outside will know they've once again come to that momentous decision when grey smoke begins to billow forth from the ancient chimney erected on the Chapel roof to commemorate the occasion. Thousands upon thousands of nuns, priests, churchmen, churchwomen, and tourists of every sort from all over our shrinking planet will erupt in cheers as they wait to see who appears at the upstairs window as Pope Who or Whatever name he chooses.
Then begins The Great Speculation over whether they have made a momentous or disastrous decision; one that will either move the Roman Catholic Church forward through rethinking the Church's role in the new multicultural, multi-religious millennium, or backward into a new Dark Age of increasing irrelevance to all but the most faithful few. There will be good arguments on either side.
Which is why it's appropriate that the smoke from the chimney will be, not white, but a see-through shade of grey. It hasn't been white for years. Tradition was that when the ballots were taken, if no choice had been made, the guys inside rigged the fireplace to make the smoke black, and vice-versa. St. Peter's, however, has been around a few centuries, and over all those years deposits have built up that render the white smoke a tinted grey. It's a fitting symbol for our new millennium where everything, every moral decision, every ecclesiastical pronouncement, every theology, every economic policy, every political decision is neither black nor white but somewhere in between.
To paraphrase Mr. T, when it comes to being Pope, "I pity the man! I pity the poor fool..!" who has to cope with brining the ancient traditions into a world neither Jesus nor The Twelve could have conceived of in their wildest imaginings. And let's face it; the Church of St. Peter's is in trouble.
Riddled by everything from sex scandals to financial improprieties at the Vatican itself, a shortage of priests, the decline of those entering monasteries and convents and various orders of ministry, the decline of parish attendance, celibacy, to the concerns of the LGBT communities; the new Pope will have a plate full. "I pity the man..!" who gets this job. Then, some guy (well, personally, I would argue that too, but I'm not there) has to do it.
Beginning in the century after Jesus' death (the resurrection is a question of faith, so let's stick to history here), the faithful have been tasked with attempting to live within a creative tension between the past, represented by the Gospels and the teachings of the Church, and the moral and political conundrums of the present.
I would suggest that tradition as valuable as it is, should guide and inform rather than enslave us. Blind obedience to the past is just that, blind. And the blind soon fall into the ditch. The present brings new ethical challenges and, we can always hope, new insights into what it means to be a moral human being. Let's hope the new Pope will be a man capable of keeping one eye on the past and another clearly focused on the radically new predicaments of the present.
For example, take the issue of only men in the priesthood. Let's hope the new Pope catches up with the wisdom of Martin Luther's Reformation and chucks this one out the window when he first appears to the waiting crowd. So what if The Twelve was an old boys club. That was then. This is now. In Jesus' time only men would have been accepted as teachers. Contrary to what in some quarters remains popular belief, Jesus did have women, Mary Magdalene for one, within his inner circle, and was quite probably married as was the custom among Jewish men of the day.
Though much work remains to be done, we have made a bit of progress in the area of gender equality. Of all places, in the church, women should stand on equal footing with men. It's way past time for the Roman Catholic Church to permit, yea, even encourage women to join the priesthood. And I mean a fully endowed with all privileges and powers priesthood, not as second class helpers to their male counterparts.
Face it. For a clergyman to sit across from a female parishioner and dare say, "I understand" may be valid, but only up to a certain point. We need to realize human understanding is limited, defined, informed by and interpreted through our respective gender. There's just no way around it. So let's just admit that and realize that if I can't walk a mile in her shoes then I should bloody well get her to priest of her own gender who can.
As for celibacy, that should be an option, not a requirement. Both celibacy and marriage are sacred expressions of being together in holy community. Neither is superior to the other. If someone wants to follow in the footsteps of Thomas Merton and become a hermit intellectual living on top of a seven storied mountain that should be his or her privilege. Or if they want to follow Martin Luther, get married to a former nun and have seven kids (now that's Reformation!!), then so be it. Let the individual be free to choose how he or she will live by the teachings of Jesus. The Church should be there to help interpret and guide as best as human fallibility allows, not dictate.
Now, Martin, and Pope Who or Whatever you will call yourself; about all those kids. This idea of no birth control needs to go the way of the dinosaur because if it doesn't then the rest of us and our offspring will follow T-Rex and his buddies down the rabbit hole of extinction.
Neither in the time of Jesus nor that of Martin Luther was the human species in danger of overrunning the planet, despoiling nature of every last resource, poisoning the well water by fracking for natural gas, over fishing the seas--you get the idea. Times have changed. Deal with it. It is the utmost environmental irresponsibility to tell people, for whatever reason, they don't have a moral responsibility, to themselves, their children, and to the ecosystem we're all part of to limit their own numbers. Eighty percent of American Catholics deep sixed this idea years ago. It's time the Vatican caught up with the wisdom of its own people.
Change is always difficult. So here's to hoping the Cardinals have the collective wisdom to bring it on. The next Pope must have the wisdom to bring the ancient teachings to bear upon a post modern world teetering on the brink of self-destruction. Let's hope that, like Mr. T, he turns out to be a real kick ass kind of guy.
The Jawbone
