Repairing The Faith

POPE FRANCIS is asking for forgiveness for what he essentially referred to as the open, festering wound within the Catholic church. he has little choice, since the festering sore is being fully exposed to the world's scrutiny, and the buck stops there, in the Vatican. If the Pope were a corporate CEO, or an athletic director his resignation would be requested. Confession and repentance are but the beginning of the redemptive process. The next step towards absolution, if memory serves, is the process by which corrective action is taken. What about penance? And what about victims compensation? No, that is impossible, beyond even the capability of the vast resources of the Holy church; to repair the damage done to thousands of people. The sexually abuse children will suffer psychologically until they die. One can only hope they will be made whole in heaven. What about reform within the church? Powerful, traditional institutions, institutions such as Wall Street, the Russian government, and the Holy Roman church, are highly resistant to change of any sort, let alone fundamental reform, which the church obviously desperately needs. The very resistance of ancient, powerful entities to reform is precisely what renders such reform urgently necessary, as the accumulation of corruption, unredressed, becomes an intolerable burden upon the entity will at length drags them down to their doom, if left untended. The Catholic church, like most of Christendom, is intolerant of homosexuality, driving it underground. that must change. "Loved the sinner, hate the sin" is insufficient, self righteously hollow, and thus pernicious. The sin and the sinner are one and the same; a person's sexual orientation cannot be separated from the person; its too inherent. Required priestly celibacy serves no useful purpose, and serves only to inflict needless frustration and misery on those who seek to serve God. Service to God should be rewarded, not punished. The world is full of married people whose commitment to their faith, and to their God, within the constraints of holy matrimony, is unflagging. Sexual intercourse, whether heterosexual or homosexual, whether within or outside marriage, is a celebration of life, and of God's creation, not a sin. The 'christian religion is no longer growing in membership, and is in fact shrinking, as Europe turns secular and the North American follows suit. Only in Africa and Latin America is there growth, and this cannot continue in a church riddled by scandal. The end of religion may well be inevitable, but without fundamental reform, Roman Catholicism is doomed to extinction, crushed by the burden of self inflicted corruption.