I had a random thought the other day, made me giggle but then it really got me interested in how it would play out.
Pope Francis should condone abortion and encourage birth control.
That is one person on the planet that could improve the quality of life for millions of people from now and ever after. Imagine the world if we didn’t have to deal with the infrastructure of the Roman Catholic org when it came to hospitals and schools against family planning and women’s health?
Any utopia fiction I write will have that premise in its history!
I wonder long-term whether the effects of this or of women priests would be greater. Have sects that begin to allow female clergy become more liberal, causing sect to support reproductive freedom and much else? Surely someone has studied this.
Your idea is a surer bet. If it were possible.
Of course the church should sell all of its property and pay reparations to the world. True believers can follow the pope’s orders from cheap storefronts, like followers of other mystics.
I actually considered that the Catholic Church is primarily a landholder. That is part of how it works, because whatever the Pope says everyone has to follow, or they have to start from scratch. It isn’t like they can say, “well, our hospital is going to splinter off”. They change their policies or they find other grounds.
I went to a Planned Parenthood counter-protest. The other side had a priest hanging out with a bunch of asian men decked out in Berkeley gear. I don’t know who the priests are at Newman Hall anymore, but Father Peter was awesome and so is Father Dick and Father Al and they were (relatively) progressive. Once (in like 2002) Father Dick was banned forever from a Catholic conference because he said “sure, Mary Magdelene and Jesus didn’t have sex, but he took her to the prom. Maybe they necked a little” lol. Berkeley catholics are crazy mofos. Like me. The Newman community was where I first heard of the “radical fringe.” “The Catholic Church needs us,” we’d tell each other. “We’re the radical fringe. We’ll push them to change slowly.”
Anyway that was not the point of this story
Oh yeah. So I racked my brainz trying to come up with a way to sing an old favorite worship song (feels so weird to say that, it’s been years) back at them to discombobulate them. I wanted them to know that I was one of them and I could be a jesuslover and think that maybe women deserved healthcare at the same time.
I also came up with chanting “women priests now” at them. That got their attention but priestbro had left already (I was too polite in allowing other chants to happen haha). One of the women on the other side smiled and chanted it with me a few times. That was the best feeling. I wasn’t her enemy, then.