The Church’s past and its future

Hello friends. For centuries right down to our grandmothers, the Church’s teaching went something like this: God of the Cosmos talks to the Pope and his bishops about sex and women’s ordination. They will tell us what to do. Don’t rattle the cage.

However, in my experience, bishops are mostly middle-management types. They are conservative personalities working (maybe kissing) their way up. Think of the police and the military, which are both rank-and-respect organizations much as the church Curia. It’s a big blow for the Curia to find that the cosmic Chief may not care all that much about celibacy. God He/She might be just fine with women priests. And gay priests.

I’ll finish for now with a clear memory of this large engraving in my brother’s house of Pope Leo XIII in his sedan chair, with triple tiara parading around St. Peter’s in 1900. Clothes, music, architecture all demanded obedience over and against any new thought. I must absolve my brother George of such intense devotion. He did not inherit my father’s anti-clerical Tuscan genes as I did. Best, Gene