Master of Ceremonies Franco Camaldo watches Vatican employees sign an oath of secrecy during a ceremony at the Vatican on Friday. Experts say it's unclear whether the successor could approve the ordination of women.After John Paul II
Divisive issues await new pope
Celibacy for priests, ordination of women among controversial topics on the table.
ROME -- When the next leader of the world's billion Roman Catholics emerges from the Sistine Chapel in the coming days, the church will get a new public face and personality, and perhaps a new direction.
The successor to John Paul II could permanently alter the church's path on three issues that have long divided U.S. Catholics. He could allow priests to marry, experts agree, and he could influence, and arguably change, church policy on the use of artificial contraceptives and ordination of women clergy.
"The papacy in some ways is a monarchy, though not an absolute monarchy," said Timothy Thibodeau, a professor at Nazareth College in Rochester, N.Y. "He can't challenge the virginity of Mary or the divinity of Christ."
But when cardinals meet beginning Monday to choose the man they call a successor to the Apostle Peter, they will select a leader who can change church policies and operations, some of which remain controversial throughout the Western world.
"I'd like to see that priests be allowed to marry and I'd like to see women priests," said Colleen Dwyer-Jones, who was visiting Rome from Florida. Like many Americans, she found John Paul too conservative.
Many experts agree the most critical issue for the new pope is the worldwide priest shortage, which has left more than 55,000 parishes without a resident priest and diminished the ability of their members to receive the Eucharist, or Communion.
While the next pope will be free to permit the marriage of priests, should he be so inclined, observers say there is great debate over whether he could unilaterally allow for the ordination of women.
Allowing priests to marry
Relaxing the priestly celibacy rule is a church discipline that could change under the next pontiff, experts say, especially since there is a history of married priests in the early church.
"The time for denial is over," the Rev. Thomas J. Reese writes in an editorial in America, a Catholic magazine. "There are not enough priests now, and the situation is only going to get worse. A church without sacraments is not Catholic. The next pope must acknowledge that providing the Eucharist and other sacraments to the Catholic community is more important than mandatory celibacy."
Meanwhile, experts note that the Catholic Church has welcomed more than 100 married priests who have left other denominations, primarily the Anglican Church. But it has shunned Catholic priests who have left the church to marry.
Among them was Terry Dosh, 74, of Minneapolis, who was ordained a priest in 1957 and married and dispensed from his vows in 1971. He thinks the growing activism of the laity -- the members of the church who are not clergy -- will continue to push the church toward allowing married priests.
"I have very high hopes," said Dosh of the conclave and the impact it could have on allowing priests to marry. "I'm an optimist."
He is among those who would continue to serve the church if allowed, he said.
"Many of (these) members would welcome the opportunity to return to the ministry," said the Rev. Tom Croak, associate professor of history at DePaul University in Chicago. "However, the Vatican, in the words of Cardinal (Joseph) Ratzinger, considers these men to be examples of 'the decadence of the Catholic priesthood in America.'"
Celibacy rules in the church began in the fourth century, and priests commonly were married until at least 1550, experts say. Since it was common in the early church and not bound by doctrine, future popes are considered free to change the policy.
Ordination of women
It is not so clear, however, that a new pope could approve the ordination of women.
Even if there was agreement that it fell within papal power, many doubt that an incoming administration would consider ordaining women because it is primarily a concern of churches in the West, and churches throughout the rest of the world have other pressing needs.
"Popes have to look at the universal church," said Kenneth Himes, chair of the theology department at Boston College. "And what seems to be a pressing issue for us may not at all be a pressing issue in other places."
Although some argue that there is evidence of female priests in the early church, John Paul in 1994 virtually ended discussion saying the church had no authority to ordain women. Because of the long tradition of male-only priests, many consider it an issue of church doctrine and not subject to papal change.
The conventional wisdom is that the next pope won't shift much from the views of John Paul, since nearly every one of the electors was appointed by him. But cardinals have made dramatic selections in the past.
Pope John XXIII was considered "an old fuddy-duddy" when he was picked in 1958, Thibodeau said, but his five years at the helm were "the most startling and the most jarring" because he modernized the way the church worshipped and prayed and loosened the rules on requiring Latin. He worked not through decree, but by calling a congress of the world's bishops called the Second Vatican Council.
"It was a great, though not yet fully implemented, attempt at entering into dialogue with the modern world," said Max Bonilla, vice president for academic affairs at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio.
It led to some of the church's most significant recent changes.
"But there is the core which cannot be changed," said the Rev. Gregory Bednarz, director of public relations at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. "The problem is, where is this border, the limit of the things that cannot be changed, and the things we will change?"
Not everyone agrees where that border lies.
Contraception
For example, Thibodeau said he thinks it's time the church reconsider its ban on all forms of artificial birth control. If it doesn't, "in light of the AIDS epidemic, the church is going to have to do a much better job of articulating why" it won't.
In the 1960s, after the commission charged by John XXIII concluded that birth control was not intrinsically evil, Pope Paul VI affirmed the ban in his encyclical "Humanae Vitae" in 1968.
He said that every marriage act must be open to the creation of life and that sex without artificial barriers unified couples.
Like the ordination of women, there is some disagreement over whether a pope can change the church's stance. Some say that even Paul VI called it a moral issue, and did not call the ban on artificial contraception to be church doctrine.
Either way, Bonilla said the next pope is unlikely to take on that issue.
"This is grounded in the understanding of the dignity of the human person, and is not within the prerogatives of any human, including a pope, to change," he said.
"Contraception, contrary to what most lay people and some clergy believe, is part of a comprehensive understanding of the good of the human person, that is to say, of morality."
Michael Skerter, adjunct professor in the religious studies department at DePaul University, added, "All the sexual issues in Catholic ethics are linked. If the policy on contraception is changed, the change would weaken the positions on premarital sex, marriage and homosexuality, and ultimately every other moral issue."
Pamela Gesund, an Auburn Hills Catholic, supported John Paul II and the church's position on priestly celibacy, female clergy and contraception.
"He defended the faith and never backed down," said Gesund, 41. "He was very loving and compassionate, yet he upheld the churches' teachings like any pope should."
Bednarz said to truly understand what will drive the pope's decision making, one has to have faith.
"Theoretically, he could change many things," he said. "But if we look on the history, we see that the pope really is assisted by God. It's difficult to understand this institution without faith."
You can reach Kim Kozlowski at (313) 222-2024 or kkozlowski@detnews.com.
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