Catholic chances

American Catholics are an odd lot, stuck in the tough position of following a conservative, monarch-style church but living in a liberal democratic society.\nAn article in last week's National Catholic Reporter highlighted this problem. Though more than 90 percent of American Catholics saw Pope John Paul II as an effective leader, according to a recent Zogby International poll, the majority disagreed with him on the subjects of marriage in the priesthood, birth control and stem cell research.\nMaybe a lot of Catholics, such as myself, spent too much time in a Catholic school.\nI pretty much rejected most of the Church's teachings when I was in eighth grade, and the pastor came in and showed the class a video about how much God loves everyone's genitals.\nBut I'm actually more than willing to give it another chance as the Church's cardinals gather together this week to select a new pope.\nOn one hand, John Paul II did a lot of good fighting for the rights of the developing world, and he played an incredibly active and positive role in international politics.\nOn the other hand, some of his ideas seem rather archaic to the modern American who is well-informed about sex and believes women have a place outside of the kitchen and bedroom.\nNow, I know from my eighth grade Catholic sex education class that God loves my genitals as much as the rest of me, but once I'm married, why is it so bad to want to use a condom?\nThe whole denouncing of birth control only brings up visions of Monty Python's "Every Sperm is Sacred" song.\nAnd what about those Catholics who want to touch their beloved genitals with someone of the same sex? That doesn't seem all that bad to me as long as it's consensual and the two people involved care about each other.\nIn 1958, a Gallup poll showed that 74 percent of Catholics attended church weekly. In 2000, a Fordham University professor showed that number had dropped to 25 percent. I think a big part of such a steep decline is the Church's refusal to accept birth control and gay men and lesbians.\nThen there's the issue of women in the church. The old folks in charge simply refuse to o rdain them or let priests marry, yet the Church loves to preach equality. \nBecause of this, the number of newly ordained priests keeps decreasing. By 2020, there will only be 31,000 priests in the United States, and less than half of them will be under 70. Something needs to be done to attract more priests if the Church is to continue to thrive in this country, and the answer is greater acceptance of women.\nAnd maybe if priests could marry, many wouldn't have the urge to be Michael Jackson impersonators (and I'm not talking about impersonating his singing).\nCertainly any real religion has a duty to promote morals, but as technology and culture change, some morals do as well. For instance, persecution and rejection of gay men and lesbians, once accepted in most cultures, is now seen as little more than hate-mongering.\nThe Catholic Church hates to change. It was only under John Paul II that it finally apologized to Galileo for denying that Earth revolved around the sun. If the Church doesn't modernize its views about birth control, gay men and lesbians and women soon, it's going to lose much of its American flock.