For the Roman Catholic Church, it’s time

In life and in religion, there comes a time when ancient mores must give way to common sense, to modernity, to righteousness. For the Roman Catholic Church, that time is now.

With the church reeling from another scandal involving its priests and children, as well as a fight at the top levels of the Vatican with accusations being lobbed at Pope Francis, the congregation of the faithful is rightly outraged and even concerned for their church. Catholic leaders have the opportunity, with this crisis, to show that they have learned from the scandals and are open to other ways of running a hierarchical, secretive church. The time is now. The church must reform its male only, unmarried clergy to attract new kinds of priests but also to reflect the breadth of human experience. Ministers from all walks of life can tend to their flocks with a greater understanding of the challenges of life.

Start by allowing priests who choose to marry; already, the Catholic Church allows Episcopal priests who are married when they convert to Catholicism to serve. It seems only right that current Roman Catholics be allowed the same opportunity. Already, married deacons are helping in parishes around the world. To open the priesthood to men who are married is not such a large step.

We call, too, on the church to allow women the opportunity to become Roman Catholic deacons and priests. Let women serve. Their wisdom, life experiences and faith are needed in this time of crisis.

But as we call upon the church to change, we ask its truest believers — those in its parishes worldwide — to demand these changes. Real power and real change starts at the grass roots, and if the call comes from the pews and not the pulpits, the church will be better for it.

Such reform is not merely a reaction to the screams of pain coming from Pennsylvania, where a grand jury report chronicles the length to which church officials in that state covered up sexual abuse committed by more than 300 priests over a 70 year period. Think about it: 300 priests. Seventy years. The hurt is so profound and wide-ranging that Archbishop of Santa Fe John Wester last month called for a day of “prayer, atonement and reparation” on Friday, perhaps because no state understands the havoc clergy sexual abuse can wreak upon a community better than New Mexico.

Before Pennsylvania, there was New Mexico. Before Boston, there was New Mexico. Before Nova Scotia, Ireland, Australia, the Philippines … there was New Mexico.

As other locales have seen, or will, it’s simply not enough to pledge to root out offenders and pay reparations to victims.

That happened in the Land of Enchantment in the 1990s and in the 2000s, and while excellent and necessary first steps, such moves deal only with symptoms, not causes. With Attorney General Hector Balderas announcing an investigation into the decades of sexual abuse of children by those related to the Catholic Church, the topic of clergy abuse is front and center again.

It is time for the church to come to grips with those building blocks, and one of them is inescapable: the makeup of its clergy.

If nothing else, the reality of the priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church is this: It is open to only one half of the flock it purports to serve, and only to men who voluntarily give up the opportunity to have a family.

Adding females to the priesthood — and allowing priests to marry — would modernize the church more than any single pope, or any encyclical. It would broaden its appeal; diversify its ability to help; offer a standard that would make Catholicism more accessible not only to women, but to men who cannot help but wonder why women can become presidents, CEOs, doctors, lawyers and fighter pilots, but not minister from the pulpit.

That women would join the priesthood does not, in itself, cure the ills of sexual abuse for the church. Others faiths where women serve as clergy face the same challenges — the same agony.

But we believe a modern Catholic Church, one in which women run parishes and eventually become bishops, cardinals or popes, creates the potential for more openness, a clergy committed to the people and a bureaucracy less rooted to centuries-old attitudes that simply do not work in the 21st century.

If nothing else, opening the priesthood to women allows the church the infusion of new talent, new energy and new experiences. Rather than hurting old traditions, it allows Vatican City to build new ones — and find willing and able candidates to minister to a world that needs every kind heart it can get.

Catholics in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe will pray on Friday at the suggestion of their archbishop. May they also begin to clamor for change, telling their leaders here and in Rome that a church in crisis can no longer afford to ignore those faithful barred by their gender or marital status from stepping up to serve.