Furthermore, he should not become a slave to some of the time-worn structures and teachings of the Catholic Church.

On the contrary, he should go out to the ends of the earth and reach out to all people, especially those disenchanted and marginal Catholics -- women divorced and separated Catholics, gays and lesbians, victims of clerical sexual abuse, and those who feel alienated from the church because of some of its sterner moral and spiritual prescriptions.

The boundaries of ethical and doctrinal discourse are shifting in a radical way. It should be the task of the new pope to help make the Catholic Church a community of faith of people of many colors; a church that embraces social change and cultures as a friend, and endorses through her laws and practices the dignity of differences.

This way, the Catholic Church will become truly a household of God, where blacks and whites, saints and sinners, men and women, liberals and conservatives, rich and poor, gays and straights are all treated as equal children of God, without regard to rank or status.