Jerry Slevin: Pope Francis and Women Cardinals

Earlier today, I suggested that Pope Francis would do well to read some women theologians like Ivone Gebara as he continues to put both left feet into his mouth when he makes jaw-dropping strawberries-on-the-cake statements quips about women. I ended that posting saying, "One can dream, I suppose."

Here's Jerry Slevin dreaming today at his Christian Catholicism site:

As Pope Francis next week begins his 79th year, he needs to act boldly now. Women cardinals would surely be bold and constructive. 

Pope John XXIII understood shrewdly the advantage of "surprises" to shake the Vatican bureaucrats up. He did this with his dramatic and unexpected call in 1958 for a new ecumenical council and in 1962 with his papal birth control commission that had active women participants who made a real difference. Some women commission members reportedly explained, among other things, to some of the celibate members that thermometers and "natural family planning" were usually not conducive to a happy marriage. 

Francis should now follow St. Pope John XXIII's effective "surprise" examples and make some women Cardinals now. His silly strategy of all celibate male Synods on the Family is failing. Indeed, his own favorite theologian, Cardinal Walter Kasper, boldly said that omitting women as voting Synod participants was an absurd decision.

Jerry's right. 

The graphic is Spanish painter Fernando Gallego's "Pentecost," from the Italian Renaissance blog site. The original is in the church of the Assumption, Arcenillas, Spain.