Fourteen Stations of Reform/Miracles

Posted on April 5, 2005 in Pontiff Watch

I call the following list “miracles” because I believe they are not likely to occur. Nonetheless, based on my reading of Scripture, I feel that they represent a more Christian course than what the Catholic Church now pursues. None of these changes will bring me back to the Church — I have embraced a more Universal and personal spirituality — but I feel they will do much to reestablish its credibility and moral force:

1. Admonition of powerful Catholic laypeople who claim that they can ignore the Church’s authority on the death penalty, and unjust wars. (Antonin Scalia, I am talking about you.)
2. Affirmation that no one element of the Church’s Pro-Life position is more important than any other. In other words, to say that abortion is not the only pro-life issue, that opposition to unjust war (e.g. Iraq) and the death penalty are just as important.
3. Reopening dialogue with gay and lesbian Catholics. End the suppression of Dignity.
4. The ending of the celibacy requirement for priests.
5. Ordination of women priests.
6. Investigation of Opus Dei and, if necessary, its suppression.
7. A shift in the Church’s approach to the abortion question. Instead of hectoring women outside of abortion clinics, establish more programs which strive to help unwed mothers who want to keep their babies by helping them find meaningful and appropriate employment and daycare for their children.
8. An end to the sexual abuse of nuns and punishment of those who attempt to suppress investigation of those claims by their authority as church hierarchs.
9. Canonization of Dorothy Day.
10. Acceptance that Communism/Socialism represent reasonable socio-economic systems so long as they do not demand the suppression of free exercise of conscience. (The same should be done for capitalism or free market entepreneurism.)
11. Rehabilitation of Liberation Theology so long as it espouses Just War principles and exercises Nonviolence before turning to armed revolution.
12. Suppression of the canonizations of Escriva and Kolb.
13. Revival of Synods — a Vatican III that will include the participation of nuns and members of the Laity.
14. An end to the doctrine of papal infallibility.

I affirm the church’s right to prescribe behavior for its own members. Before any element of its program may become law in a nation, however, it must surrender to democratic agreement.

This does not signal a retreat from my pacifism or my choice position. It is merely a recognition that on some moral issues the Church differs, e.g. abortion and Just War. I grant that John Paul II condemned the war in Iraq as unjust. I am calling for the next Pope to recognize that the abortion issue is not so easy and that opinions about where life begins differ. Of course, this will take nothing less than a miracle.