UNITED STATES
The Mercury News
By A.W. Richard Sipe
The white smoke that billows from the Sistine Chapel when a new pope is chosen is at once a sign of change and of constancy. It is a tradition that links a new Roman Catholic pope to all those before him, and to the challenges they faced. In a church that evolves slowly, those challenges often remain the same for decades, if not centuries.
It should come as no surprise, then, that the latest pope -- whose cloud of smoke rose in April -- is facing an issue that is as old as the church he leads: sex.
Recent reports that the Vatican is likely to ban gays from becoming priests is partly about the church's feelings on homosexuality. But it is also about the Vatican's general queasiness on the subject of sexuality and its frustration at the inability to get American Catholics to follow its teachings on the subject.