Modern Antiquity

It’s quaint that Francis 1 has cooked
His meals and taken trains to work.
But what I fear he’s overlooked,
A new pope can no longer shirk
Within his clergy, sins immense:
Abuse brought on by abstinence.

Solution’s simple, let them wed,
As priests of most persuasions can.
Like inmates who a mate can’t bed,
Too many solve their marriage ban
By manufacturing a toy
Of, God forbid, an altar boy.

In re of who can marry whom
This far in century 21st
An ordered planting of the womb
When normal reproduction’s cursed,
The Holy See should full well know
It’s not two thousand years ago.

Why must its clergy all be men
The way it’s not in other faiths?
The ghost of Mary Magdalene
And martyred women aren’t mere wraiths
On them, equality is owed
As to the nuns, who pull more load.

He fought in Argentina rights
To same-sex marriage, thence made law.
To do so otherwise invites
The notion it’s a man-made flaw
To come into the world unclean
Conveying some abnormal gene.

Like Benedict, the pope’s too old
To modernize the ancient church.
It needs someone much younger, bold,
Next time its conclave makes a search
For someone who’ll at least discuss
Such change for souls a billion-plus.