PopeMobile

So, friends, the Pope arrives today. Big news. Sad, though, isn't it, that we have to put the earthly representative of the Prince of Peace behind bullet-proof glass?

I've heard that some people want him to apologize (again?) for those naughty priests who couldn't keep their hands under their own cassocks. Okay, but I think there's bigger work to be done, addressing the whole issue of the church's insistence on priestly celibacy--which, as I see it, is at the root of the sexual abuse problem. To require them to surrender so vital a part of their humanity seems, well, inhuman. Not to mention unrealistic. Come to think of it, is it not time to revisit the concept of sin, guilt, hell, and eternal damnation? The simple Buddhist injunction to "do no harm" seems to me so much more comprehensive, so much healthier, so much more human...

Oh, and while he's at it, if the Pope wants to do some really useful, really urgent, really world-changing, would it not be appropriate and laudable if he were to seriously revisit the church's attitude toward contraception in his United Nations homily? That, of course, would be a miracle--but surely one within his papal powers.