... from top to bottom.
If there were just one thing that he could do that would have enormous impact, it would be to revoke the celibacy rules for the priesthood, and allow them to be married men with families. Again. Because historically the priesthood was not always celibate, just as it was not always exclusively male.
That alone would go miles toward bringing a kind of balance to the Church that is sorely lacking. More men would be attracted to the priesthood, which is now declining drastically in numbers. Priests as family men would get to experience the real lives of the people they are supposed to be guiding. Women would no longer be the complete and utter Other that they are now. Pope John Paul II venerated the Virgin Mary to such an extent that all of womanhood was supposed to fit into the transcendent and otherworldly vision that he had of the Virgin Mary.
I am completely fine with mystics and mysticism, with monks, nuns, hermits and whatnot, all depending on the individual inclination of the people involved. But the vast majority of humanity lives HERE in THIS world, the world of matter (the very word matter has its roots in the Latin mater, mother). Real women are not transcendent shimmering spirits; we give birth to new humans in sweat and blood and we bleed every month and do not die of it.
I think one of the things that the Church got profoundly wrong at some point was making sure that seminarians somehow were taught that girls and women are at some level icky. Either you're the Virgin Mary or you're ... icky. I think this is a big reason for the pedophilia that focuses almost entirely on boys: women and girls are so profoundly Other that they can't even go there when they have urges that might take them in the direction of adult women. Of course there are gay priests just like there are gay men in other places, but I am in no way conflating pedophilia with being gay. Adult gay men with their heads on straight are not sexually attracted to little boys. Just like adult hetero men with their heads on straight are not sexually attracted to little girls. The priesthood does not have its head on straight, either way.
I've got nothing against the Virgin Mary, either, just to be clear. It's just that as a metaphor for women's lives she is impossible to live up to. That's why when I moved away from Christianity I joined the Goddess movement. In that metaphor the Earth herself is our Mother, we are grounded in Her. She is not somewhere else, transcendent; She is immanent, here.
It's very late, and I know I am not expressing this as well as I should. It's just that I find myself really hoping that this new pope manages to start the cleanup process, and I profoundly believe that the biggest and most achievable thing he could accomplish would be to open the whole priesthood to married men. (They already admit married Episcopalian priests who convert to Roman Catholicism.) The ripple effect would be nothing short of astounding.
Hekate
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