A Modest Proposal

I grew up in the Catholic Church and have mostly positive memories of it. I was an altar boy and was never abused by any of our priests nor did I have reason to suspect anybody else was. Some of the nuns were a bit physically abusive, its true, but given the absurd costumes they had to wear, its hard to really blame them.

The big problem with the Catholic Church is its organizational structure: it was patterned on the Roman Empire of Constantine, and wound up with most of the vices of that organizational structure. The Pope was only responding to the character of that institution when he chose to deal with the sexual abuse scandal with secrets, lies and a cover up.

The time has come to move the Church a bit closer to the twenty-first century. A good way to start would be with the Pope's resignation, replacement by a term limited (ten years?)Pope elected by all Bishops - themselves elected by the congregations for limited terms. One of the problems with the current lifetime election system is that the Cardinals don't want to be stuck with some idiot forever, so they usually elect somebody so old that he's pretty much senile already.

And get rid of the stupid celibacy stuff.

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