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Papal Fallibility

In choosing a new Pope, the Catholic church faces a stark choice. The new Pope can either move to an accommodation with the rest of the world, and consign his church to the same position of irrelevance already enjoyed by the Anglicans. Or he can continue with the church's backwards, bigoted position, and make a conflict with the rest of the world inevitable. Quite simply, the world has moved on whilst the Catholic church has not. Three opposed power blocks - secular, evangelical Christianity, and Islam - have grown to prominence, and if the Catholic church will not accommodate, they must confront. For the last two decades that confrontation has been delayed by the expectation that John Paul II could not last much longer. That excuse is obviously no longer valid.

The signal as to which path the Vatican will take will be the first statement on family planning. John Paul's opposition to family planning has condemned untold millions to death, poverty, and disaster. If the new Pope intends to repeat that evil, the Vatican must be opposed and side-lined by every person who cares more about real human beings than about abstract, perverse religious sensibilities. However much the Catholic church would like to prevent people from enjoying sex, the simple truth is that people do. It is time that the right of all adults to enjoy consensual sex without fear of pregnancy or disease was recognised as a fundamental human right.

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