Pope Francis' recent encyclical
Your Holiness: Earlier this month, you threw down the gauntlet, giving witness against the depravity and duplicity embedded in so many of our institutions and customs, and embodied in the American president. Your new encyclical, Fratelli Tutti ('brothers all'), published in Assisi on October 3, encourages a new vision of the future post-plague, wherein boundless gratitude and compassion must flourish in a world now riven by wars over dwindling resources.
You letter stands in stark contrast to the vision of the president, that the caprice of the present overrides any concerns for the future. If his whim now causes catastrophe later, so be it. It is what it is.
Whose vision will shape the post-pandemic world?
(A brief summary of Fratelli Tutti is published by the Vatican at: Click Here)
Having said all this, Holy Father, I believe that the mark of true friendship is the ability to be perfectly honest with one another. So in that spirit of respect and affection, allow me to be your true friend, and speak openly with you, cor ad cor, heart to heart.
I would like to offer, with respect and affection, some thoughts on how the Church itself must do some mid-course correcting as we venture together into new and uncharted territory.
First, there's the problem with women. The encyclical is titled Brothers All, and although your opening lines do refer to brothers and sisters, the headline reads, Brothers All, from the Holy Father, on the subject of Fraternity.
It's long past time for the Roman Catholic Church to acknowledge both the existence and the equality of women. A good place to start is to change the opening to the Lord's Prayer: Our Father in Heaven. There is no 'ancient of days' ensconced on a marble throne 15 billion light years away waiting for us to screw up, so he has reason to screw us into the ground. I know for myself it took decades to let the terrifying image go, but it has to be done.
So I would like to discuss this among three issues the Church must address now if it intends to be speak credibly to the post-modern world:
 · The Nicene Creed, an Ancient Aliens fable made dogma;
 · The ongoing belief that a static god made such a dynamic universe;
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