Yahoo! News - Liberal U.S. Catholics Dismayed at Choice of Pope
Meet the new Pope...same as the old Pope...

BOSTON (Reuters) - Liberal U.S. Catholics on Tuesday expressed dismay at the choice of a conservative new pope and doubted he will heal an institution racked by disillusionment and tarnished by a sex abuse scandal among the clergy.

The election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI rankled those who advocate married priests, a bigger role for women within the church and softening its policy on homosexuality, birth control, euthanasia and abortion.

Since taking over the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith as the Roman Catholic Church's chief ideologue, Ratzinger has denounced homosexuality and even branded other Christian churches as deficient.

"Gay and lesbian Catholics are going to be very hurt by this election because Cardinal Ratzinger was the lightning rod for so much of the anger they felt under the previous pope," said Francis DeBernardo, executive director of the New Ways Ministry, a national ministry for lesbian and gay Catholics.

Under the Pope John Paul II, American Catholics' attendance at weekly Mass declined as many were put off by what they saw as increasingly conservative Vatican doctrine.

The sense of alienation deepened with a well-publicized scandal over pedophile priests, which erupted in 2002 in the Archdiocese of Boston as court documents showed bishops shuttled pedophile priests from parish to parish.

Let's wait and see what he does. If the Catholic Church wants to keep losing people and render itself irrelevant, by all means stay on this course. Eventually they will be forced to grow and change. But for now, the current Catholic 15 minutes should be OVER.

And Dad, once again I must say, "THANK YOU, thank you, thank you, for not raising me a Catholic. Liberal Catholics go through so much anguish and grief and GUILT, and as you know, that is my natural state anyway. It would be twice as bad if I were Catholic. So, thanks.