The end of an Era. The Beginning of a New One?

Yesterday evening, the Pope died as I'm sure you all know.

He has been an important player in the abortion debate since he took office. Many hoped that John Paul II would lead the church to a more liberal stance regarding women. Vatican II had been the beginning people dreamed of. They now hoped that the new pontiff would continue the progress.

But they were disappointed. In a trip to S. America, he was bold enough to speak out against birth control despite being presented with evidence of devastation brought onto women and children by the uncontrolled rate of pregnancy resultant in a society where men get what they want even if it means the death of their partner in childbirth or the death of their children from malnutrition.

The pope continued to speak out against birth control and abortion as well as refusing to allow women to be ordained or to allow priests to be married. The latter two are important to the future of the church even if taken separate from the issues of reproductive rights. Their importance to the question of reproductive rights, though, is that they present a picture of a person who is, for whatever reason, totally clueless about women.

Why did John Paul II get away with this in the 80s? Because he was a really nice guy. I truly believe that many Catholics thought, "he means well." He doesn't understand the true plight, but he means well. And deep down, I agree. I don't think he understood the big picture. I think he really believed that in the end, women would be taken care of. So the burdens of childbearing would be eased by supportive family and loving society. And indeed, he had seen so much death and devastation that it would be natural for him to take a stance of the "importance of life."

Those Catholics who did not agree, just went ahead following their beliefs. And thus began the erosion of the idea that the Pope is divinely inspired. That's pretty dangerous to the Catholic church. If the Pope isn't always right, how can he lead?

Now that the far right has figured out how to manipulate the media, they are quickly infiltrating the Catholic church and manipulating this fear as well. They are creating a deep divide between Catholics on this issue. Very few Catholic women use the rhythm method as is evidenced by the size of the typical Catholic family of today. But the few who do eschew birth control are very vocal. In that, "See? I did it. Why can't you be as holy as me?" way they repeat John Paul IIs injunction against birth control. Every egg or sperm is a potential life. Life is sacred. Following that line of reasoning, they should be having sex every month and getting pregnant whenever physically possible. I doubt that would happen.

In reality, life in the Catholic church is only sacred when the men are deciding it is sacred. I eagerly awaited the life-is-sacred talk when we prepared to go off to war in Afghanistan. It never came. Instead, we heard some drivel about how it was OK to defend your country. How can women believe this. OK, I need to be careful what I say here.

So who will come next. For years, I stayed with the Catholic church as a believer because I believed that John Paul was trying but that he was too naive to know what he was talking about. I believed that some day he would step down, or pass on and be replaced by someone more liberal in their thinking. I never expected that abortion would be acceptable to the church in my lifetime, but that maybe the stance on some forms of birth control would be backed off, or that at least priests would be allowed to marry.

Unfortunately, the press lately has been full of cardinals and bishops who have taken very conservative stances in times when they weren't even called for. A bishop in France making a strong statement about Catholic politicians who did not actively fight abortion rights being unfit to take communion? Another US bishop saying he would withhold communion from politicians who did not vote against abortion rights bills or who voted against restrictions on abortions? What happened to voting conscience? Did these bishops and cardinals review the legislation? Did they know without a question the reasoning behind the votes? Probably not. Their temerity in speaking out on these issues worries me.

Next came the strong message relayed in all Catholic churches that we were supposed to vote our Catholic conscience in the 2004 election. In other words, vote against the "pro-abortion" candidate. Since when does the Catholic church have a right to tell American voters who to vote for.

Then there was the new Boston bishop O'Malley who announced in one of his first speeches in the area that the problem with the Boston Diocese was that the people had lost their moral compass. We needed to return to the basic moral teachings of the Catholic church. No abortion, no gay marriage, no reproductive control for couples. Frankly, I thought the problem with the Boston Diocese was that many priests had been sexually molesting young boys and their superiors had been covering up for them. The moral compass of the people was not the problem as far as I was concerned.

I'm not hearing anyone stand up and say "Wait a minute! I don't agree with you guys. Where are the liberals in the Catholic church? Is there no more room for us?"

When the white smoke rises in the coming months, we will see what room there is for the liberal majority of Catholics. And we will see where it leaves the Catholic church.

Unfortunately, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.