CANADA
Ottawa Citizen
By Lisa Van Dusen, Ottawa Citizen February 11, 2013
About 24 hours before Pope Benedict XVI shocked the world by announcing he’d retire from a job men have so rarely retired from, I’d been sitting in a pew in a church, whiffing pancakes from the basement and marvelling at just how badly the Catholic Church needs a re-brand.
Most Catholics, lapsed or not, have had plenty of occasion to ponder the same issue in the time since Pope Benedict was elected in 2005. On this occasion, I was listening to a clearly talented priest wax nostalgic about the days when nobody ate meat on Fridays and wondering why it is that scrambling to hold onto any filament of an already overtaken status quo is so often the last redoubt of organizations in crisis.
Pope Benedict had a tough act to follow in what are arguably the toughest days the church has faced in modern times. He made the papacy more accessible with his own Twitter account, reassured some and offended others with his public pronouncements and showed perhaps his most convincing concession to the demands of modernity in recognizing that these days, being pope is a younger man’s job.
In the eight years since Pope John Paul II died, there have been more abuse scandals; almost uniformly, avoidably ultrascandalous for their component of coverup. There has been much debate and as much pushback on the nagging questions of female priests and open homosexuality in the clergy as opposed to the shushed-up and tarnished kind, and there have been gagging scandals over the attempted silencing of dissident priests and uppity nuns who dare to want to change the church they love.
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