When Emeritus Pope Benedict announced the fact that he would be denouncing his title as Pope of the Catholic Church, I heard many people talking about their hopes that the conclave would perhaps elect a young pope to bring some life back into the church and inspire the younger generations to return to god and to their religion.
I am not a religious person whatsoever and I really have little regard for the pope and his duties and I find the church to be an antiquated institution that shot itself in the foot by maintaining its archaic ideals and ridiculous social expectations and limitations alike.
Having said that I respect the choice of people to believe in the church and to have faith in its powers and in the power of their faith also. I also appreciate their hope and the ideas that they have expressed about wanting to rejuvenate the church and bring the younger generations back to their faith. Although a respect these ideas and hopes I must say that I also find them very naive. Nowadays it is difficult to get younger generations to be passionate about one topic in particular, it is also difficult to preach to a generation which has been brought up differently, who have more freedom than ever before, more access to the world and more possibilities than ever before.
I am going t talk about two areas in particular, the first the idea of gay-marriage and the church's negative stance on the matter.
Speaking from the point of view of a lesbian woman in her twenties I am obviously a little more than biased, however I think it is fair to say that the majority of young people that I know have family members, best friends, co-workers who are gay and who they care about a lot. I find it hard t believe that the church, even with its best efforts could persuade a generation , where the ideas of self - expression, freedom of speech, freedom to think, freedom to just be are so plentiful, that an institution with a reputation as tarred as that of the catholic church to come back to a religion that goes against the ideas that have developed. The church is effectively asking people to take a step backwards to forget about human rights and equality no matter what your sex and go back in time to a place where these things where forbidden, where society was on lock-down, they are asking that the struggles of thousands be forgotten and cast back into a dark space in the corner of your mind as you make your connection with god.
the second issue is the idea of equal rights for men and women, i hear regularly, people of older generations giving out and complaining about how young people no longer want to enter into the priesthood that there are a shortage of priests and that the older priests are now dying out. Then, I ask, why does the catholic church continually deny women from joining the priesthood, why do they continually reinforce the idea of chastity, of loneliness by maintaining the rule that priest cannot have sex or get married and have families. I think that a lot of young people who are still faithful and perhaps would like to join the priesthood will not do so because they do not want to live a life of loneliness, they do not want to give up their right to have children, to have love, to share their lives. Younger generations would be far more likely to commit themselves to the catholic religion (if they were that way inclined), if they could share their lives with someone that they love. I also think that this would help reduce the amount of child abuse within the church also.
I have hope that one day these things will change within the church and that the powers that be will realise that by maintaining their archaic values and old fashioned ideals they are preventing the very thing they want, to have more people, in particular younger generations, come back to the church and back to their faith.
For now we will just have to watch nd see what this new pope will do and hope that the realms of politics and religion do not overlap as a step back into the past is not something that any of us want.
D.M
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