It's Time for a Female 'Pope' -- To Put an End to the Vatican's Apostasy

Web postings and op-ed commentaries voicing outrage at the Vatican's continuing, escalating war on women -- and on the American nuns who are at their forefront -- are now so vast that no individual blog could possibly provide links to them.  To sample the depth and breadth of the disgust, just try a Google search for Sister Elizabeth Johnson, the Vatican visitation of U.S. sisters, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), or Sister Margaret Farley. 

For a good summary of the National Catholic Reporter's coverage of the events leading up to the latest atrocity -- the Vatican's censure of Sister Margaret Farley for her award-winning, academically applauded book Just Love:  A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics -- try Tom Fox's excellent analysis Bishops' Move Against Women Religious a Hard Sell, Indeed.

So I need not expend time and space here to link to the wealth of global revulsion available on the internet.  What I will do is argue the obvious conclusion that needs to be drawn from the outrage: 

The Vatican's war on women is the final, intolerable instance of the papal apostasy from the Second Vatican Council. 

This apostasy dates from the issuance of Humanae vitae, Pope Paul VI's encyclical rejecting the strong theological consensus of the People of God in favor of responsible parenthood, through the reactionary papacy of Pope John Paul II, and into the darkness of the present day. 

And what might God's Spirit be telling us through these epic atrocities?  How 'bout this: 

The only way to salvage the Catholic Church is for the corrupt, misogynistic male despots of the Vatican to submit themselves to the oversight of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious! 

Yes, the Vatican gestapo has it exactly backwards.  Women religious, globally and in the United States, are par excellence the group that has faithfully implemented Vatican II.  It is they who should be critiquing and auditing and evaluating the Vatican's faithfulness to the Council. 

By separating themselves from Vatican II, the officials of the Vatican have ceased to be in communion with the People of God.  The LCWR is the perfect model for the kind of 'pope' the church requires in the 21st century. 

It is time for women religious to take the lead of the People of God and to put an end to the Vatican apostasy.  Now!