Pope Needs To Lead Renewal

When it comes to news from around the world, the reporting is mostly about death and destruction. In a welcome break from that daily flow of information misery, much of the media now has its focus on a little chimney protruding from the roof of the Sistine chapel in Vatican City. As the media and others awaiting the flow of white smoke signalling the election of a new pope watch with some degree of curiosity and trepidation, many with the hope that a new pope will lead a process of renewal, the likelihood of any significant change within the Roman Catholic religion is probably not in the distant future. Religious traditions, regardless of their origins, evolve slower than molasses going uphill in the winter. No matter who is elected pope, and notwithstanding any personal preference he may have to advance change, the organizational bureaucracy of the Catholic church is so stuck in outdated thinking that it will likely constrain efforts at changing too quickly, if at all. From my perspective, that unwillingness and/or inability to adapt to the changing world will just keep pushing organized religions closer and closer to irrelevancy.