Profiles in Courage
The rest of the world has been learning a lot about the Roman Catholic church over the last couple weeks. Today, for example, I learned that you don't have to be a member of the College of Cardinals to be anointed pope. The only requirement is that you be a male baptized in the faith.Now, far be it for me to butt in where I don't belong. After all, I'm a German-American, Missouri-Synod Lutheran converted to agnosticism. (I prefer the term "unaffiliated heretic.") But then again, the Catholic church has never hesitated to offer me advice.
So, if I were them, I would drop the prohibition on women in the clergy-- a long overdue move-- and then I would name Caroline Kennedy to be the next pope.
Assuming she wants the job, consider this: the Catholic church has never had an American pope... or an Irish one. Caroline is smart and compassionate, beloved in the Western World, and respected throughout. She's committed to human service. Her faith appears devout and humble (both admirable qualities.) She would offer the church the rock star quality they've been perpetuating this week over the grave of Pope Paul II. She's firmly committed to the church's core principals of social justice, non-violence and peace. She's respected within the various global communities that the Vatican's been apologizing to over the last two decades-- i.e., the scientists, Jews, Muslims and Eastern Orthodox Christians.
The news media would label Caroline a "radical" and "progressive" successor, but hasn't the time come for one of those, for the church's own survival. Even if you dismiss the gap between Vatican teaching and Catholic church-goers' beliefs, you have to acknowledge the increasing lack of priests as a major challenge to the church. The exclusion of women and married men, by all accounts, has lead to the shortage. A "progressive" pope, by providing a contrast to the previous one, would display the church's commitment to balance, resulting in the promotion and conservation of the church's most important principles.
She has also restrained from campaigning for the job, which, I'm told by Chris Matthews on MSNBC, is a plus.
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By the way, did you know that if you re-arrange the letters in "Chris Matthews"...?
You get "he CharMs twits."
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Norman Soloman, head of the Institute of Public Accuracy, a liberal policy think tank, supported John Kerry over Ralph Nader in the 2004 Election. Then in March, he criticized one of Kerry's principal fundraisers, Moveon.org, for refusing to take a stronger anti-war stance. In doing, he made the argument that "only clear opposition to the war can change the terms of the national debate-- taking the paths of least resistance won't get us very far."
Anti-war "leader" Medea Benjamin, the Green Party Senate candidate in California in 2000, also backed John Kerry in 2004. Now, she's criticizing Congressional Democrats for not voting against President Bush's request for an additional $81 billion dollars for the Iraqi war.
Matthew Rothschild, editor of the Progressive magazine, endorsed Kerry as well. In the magazine's last issue, he condemned 18 "spineless" Senate Democrats for backing the bankruptcy legislation that "will fill the coffers of the credit card companies while bleeding consumers dry."
Editors at the Nation magazine begged Nader in an editorial to leave the Presidential race last year, and suggested that he was damaging his own public legacy. On Inauguration Day, they wrote that Democrats would be "well-advised" to oppose Bush's agenda. They feared that "the fainthearted among them (are) already wringing their hands and sounding retreat," and declared that "an aroused progressive movement will be needed to provide the necessary backbone."
They would know from backbone, eh? Evidently, that means standing up against the corporate Democrats when it counts the least, rallying the troops until it's time to cave in again four years from now.
In their defense, though, you'd have a tough time going back to work, too, if you took a year off.
posted by CM @ 9:50 PM
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