Pope John Paul II died over the weekend. Regardless of religion, almost everyone can respect… Pope John Paul II died over the weekend. Regardless of religion, almost everyone can respect what he has done. Long overdue, this man brought the Catholic Church into the 20th century. He apologized for mistakes of the past, such as the Spanish Inquisition and the trial of Galileo, and made strong, successful and concerted efforts to bridge religious divides.

He is already being called “John Paul the Great” by many in the Vatican and in the media, and an obvious observation is that he will be a tough act to follow.

The only way somebody can follow up John Paul is to finish what he started. John Paul liberalized the church and reached out to people of different races and backgrounds to try and make it more inclusive from a political standpoint.

The next pope should open up the religion and make it more inclusive from a social standpoint.

The first and biggest thing the new pope can do is make it acceptable to use birth control. We live in a world where STDs are a deadly reality. Using condoms or other forms of birth control doesn’t negate the late pope’s tenet that life is sacred from beginning to end. Most contraceptives stop fertilization from happening. This does not destroy a human life; it merely prevents its formation. Compassion and forgiveness must come before punishment of sin. Even if premarital sex is a sin, forbidding the use of condoms could be a death sentence to millions of people.

A more controversial, but equally necessary, step would be to change the church’s stance on homosexuality. If the new pope really wants to follow the message of Jesus — that all are welcome in his kingdom — as long as they have faith, the church needs to stop mandating that people conform to a specific way of life under the threat of hellfire. God’s children come in all shapes and sizes, walks of life and styles, and it is time that the church stop using an outdated and bigoted dogma.

Another thing the new pope should do is to give women a more equal role in the church. The bible and the history of the Catholic Church are rife with gender inequality. A large portion of the success of the Catholic Church in recent years, if not from the beginning, has come from the efforts of women. Women are allowed to be saints and rightfully have a place of high respect in the Catholic Church. Some people revere Mary and Mary Magdalene as highly as they do Jesus. It is time that women be placed in the positions of authority in the church and be allowed to become priests, bishops and cardinals.

Finally, a much more reasonable step toward modernizing the church would be to allow priests to marry. This is not a new idea: The Eastern Catholic Church in Ukraine, a fully recognized part of the Catholic Church, allows its priests to marry.

Romantic love between two people is a huge part of the human experience. It seems completely nonsensical for God to put us on Earth with the desire to procreate and make love and then tell his closest adherents to abandon this desire.

Also, allowing priests to marry would make them better able to understand the lives of their parishioners. I’ve often felt that priests aren’t really qualified to tell couples how to live their lives and approach their marriages because they do not have to face any of the same challenges.

It’s no secret that the Catholic Church is facing a huge shortage of new priests. A big reason for this is that they are not allowed to marry. Also, any man (or woman) who decides to dedicate his or her life to God, but wants to marry, can find many other sects of Christianity in which he or she can do both.

It’s time that the Church truly be made all-inclusive and become an organization that can reclaim the faith of all of God’s children.

Dan Masny is waiting for the white smoke. E-mail him at [email protected].