By Eric Gorski and Felisa Cardona
Denver Post Staff Writers

Special / Jack Dempsey Denver's Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception

As the princes of the Roman Catholic Church prepare to elect a successor to Pope John Paul II, the church in the United States remains a house divided.

Some Catholics pray for another strong-willed figure to continue John Paul's vision of evangelization through strict adherence to church teachings.

Others look for a man who could usher in an era of reform, perhaps allowing freer debate of Catholic thought or reconsidering the celibate, male- only priesthood, seeing that so many parishes lack priests.

The clergy sexual-abuse crisis, advancing secularism and the role of laypeople and women also rank high as issues in the U.S. church.

Although the largest faith group in the U.S., the nation's 64.3 million Catholics represent only 6 percent of Catholics worldwide. Experts say, however, that the U.S. church wields influence because of its wealth and because the Vatican admires its democratic ideals.

At the same time, U.S. issues such as divorce and women's ordination are not priorities globally and are unlikely to be discussed any time soon because John Paul II spoke so definitively on them, experts say.

George Weigel, a Catholic theologian and senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, argues that despite talk of division, the U.S. church is the most vibrant in the developed world. He sees an important generational shift in seminaries and religious orders that form church culture.

"The generation of '60s dissent is getting old and gray and is not replicating itself," he said. "That generation is still in control of a lot of universities, but younger scholars are simply not interested in that."

Denver seeing shift

In many ways, Denver is an incubator for this new brand of orthodox Catholicism.

Archbishop Charles Chaput's profile is growing in a school of thought that says "real Catholics must follow church teachings"; groups for orthodox Catholic women and college students have germinated here; and pious young adults fill the pews every Sunday night at a downtown cathedral to hear Chaput preach.

"I would like the new pope to be faithful to the teachings of the church," said Lexie Wagner, a student at the University of Colorado at Boulder who is active in a campus Respect Life group. "Most teachings people would like to see change, but the theology behind those teachings may never change. Youth in America have really started to realize that."

Tom Kerwin, a Catholic and a retired lawyer from Denver, believes the priest shortage will force the church to open the priesthood to married people and women, though he believes the latter will take longer.

"For years, (church leaders) have mistreated women and managed women as if they were children," said Kerwin, 74. "It may be hard for men who have had it their way all these years."

Yet expectations are lower in the U.S. church's reform wing because John Paul II reigned for so long. His ideological brothers-in-arms are cardinals, bishops, priests and seminarians.

"The best we can hope for at this point is that we get a pope who is more of a listener than the previous pope," said Linda Pieczynski of the Catholic reform group Call to Action. "... Instead of a strong authoritarian disciplinarian, we get someone who recognizes there are actually good things that come out of people disagreeing."

While some Catholics yearn for a broader role for women, others say John Paul II made extraordinary progress. Last year, he named a U.S. nun and a German laywoman to the Vatican's top theology group and appointed an Italian nun as undersecretary of a Vatican congregation. Women hold more than one- quarter of the top positions in U.S. Catholic dioceses, working as school superintendents and financial managers.

Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard University law professor, was appointed by John Paul II in 2004 to head the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, an advisory panel. Glendon said in Rome last week that U.S. Catholics are too concerned about roles inside the church and should seek to influence culture in their areas of expertise, such as politics, law or education.

"We're a church where the roles of women have expanded tremendously and will continue to do so," she said. "But the main role for women and all laypeople is going to be in the secular sphere."

What's more important?

U.S. Catholics also stand divided over the idea of a hierarchy of church teachings.

Sister Pat McCormick of the Sisters of Loretto in Denver supports a "seamless garment," in which issues from conception to natural death carry the same weight as war, AIDS and the death penalty.

Other Catholics believe some issues should be elevated above others. Chaput, for example, in 2004 called abortion the pre-eminent issue for Catholic voters.

"I don't think everything should be emphasized equally," said Mark Bauman, retired president of Starz Encore and chairman of the Catholic Foundation in Denver. "'Thou shall not kill' is a whole lot more important than 'Thou shall not steal."'

In reality all U.S. Catholics are "cafeteria Catholics," said David Gibson, author of "The Coming Catholic Church." Liberals oppose the death penalty and support workers' rights and economic justice. Conservatives fight abortion, gay marriage and stem-cell research.

Gibson does not believe the U.S. church will become smaller and more orthodox as tradition-minded bishops crack the whip on dissent.

"What you're going to get is a smaller, more orthodox priesthood, which will be more at odds with the flock," he said.

Catholic laypeople say the clergy abuse scandal is the most serious problem facing the U.S. church, polls show. The next pope could decentralize power to allow local bishops to act more decisively in the future.

"It would be an absolute disaster if a new pope said the scandal was a creation of the media and sent (abusive) priests back into churches," said the Rev. Tom Reese, editor of the Jesuit magazine America. "The U.S. church would never recover."

U.S. cardinals have said the next pope should stand ready to tackle interfaith relations, rising secularism, care for the poor and bioethics issues.

Inside the Vatican, there is some incredulity when Catholics talk about changes a new pope might bring.

Calls for reform underscore what many in the Roman curia and beyond perceive as major problem in the U.S. church: that despite being the world's most educated laity, U.S. Catholics are poorly educated in the faith.

Consider the priesthood, said Archbishop Michael Miller, secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education.

John Paul II settled the question in a 1994 letter saying Jesus had anointed only men as apostles and that the church "has no authority whatsoever" to ordain women, Miller said.

But married male priests are within the bounds of discussion, he said, because they already serve in Eastern rite Catholic churches, which are self-governing but are in full communion with the Roman church.

"I sometimes marvel when people say, 'The next pope will do this or that,"' Miller said. "Who do they think the next pope is? He's only the pope. He's not Jesus. He can't overturn the Christian tradition.

"You're not going to get a pope who doesn't believe in the sacredness of human life," he said. "You're not going to get a pope who's going to say, 'Yeah, we're going to ordain women.' That's never going to happen. Those things can't happen."