by Dolores M. Klein, Peoria, IL

Feminist activism is bent on eroding cultural and legal obstacles to women’s equality, but we have always been aware that religious barriers are too often behind them. Will the new Pope continue the concentration on outlawing abortion, criminalizing contraception and even demonizing progressive nuns?

Whoever he is, he could look back at former Papacies. It’s ironic that at the same time that Betty Friedan’s “Feminine Mystique” was published in 1963, Pope John Twenty Third wrote: “Women are gaining an increasing awareness of their natural dignity. Far from being content with a purely passive role of allowing themselves to be regarded as a kind of instrument, they are demanding both in domestic and public life the rights and duties which belong to them as human persons.”

Another Pope called theologians and married couples to a conference in Rome. The results were shelved! The new Pontiff could release the conclusions about a new dialogue on contraception. It should come down through the parishes. And the Pope could discontinue silencing the discussion of women priests, etc.

The status of women throughout the world could be affected.