Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl says it’s not that the church disrespects women. Oh fuck no, said the chair of the US bishops’ Committee on Doctrine, the church thinks women are just lovely.
Noting that women hold a variety of church leadership positions in parishes and dioceses, Archbishop Wuerl said, “The church’s gratitude toward women cannot be stated strongly enough.”
“Women offer unique insight, creative abilities and unstinting generosity at the very heart of the Catholic Church,” he said.
They have that there women’s intuition, and they’re so creative with the flowers and the packed lunches and the…the flowers, and the generosity just never quits, they give us all their money and a lot of the time they let us fuck their children. But. When all is said and done, you know, however insightful and creative and generous the dear little things are, they are after all still women. They’re soft in the head, and their crotches are all ew yuck, so they can make lunch all they like, but they can’t be priests. That’s fair. Plus it’s traditional.
But, the archbishop said, “the Catholic Church through its long and constant teaching holds that ordination has been, from the beginning, reserved to men, a fact which cannot be changed despite changing times.”
That’s unanswerable, I’m sure you’ll agree. Ordination has been from the beginning reserved to men, therefore, that is a fact which cannot be changed despite the fact that people have become slightly less stupid and narrow-minded and rigid than they were back at that beginning. No. Yes we realize that some things have changed since “the beginning,” it’s just that the maleness of the clergy isn’t one of them and isn’t going to be one of them.
You may wonder why. It’s like this. It has to do with the fitness of things. Men are better, and that’s why God is always called he, I mean He; if God were called she or She that would sound all weak and bubble-headed and wrong. It’s not that we don’t love you, it’s just that we think you’re not good enough. We love you to bits but you have to be subordinate to us and do what we say and not try to do jobs only we can do, like telling everybody not to use contraception and not to end pregnancies. If we let you share in the rule-making you might start to make rules that would suit you instead of us, and we don’t want that.
Comments
29 responses to “Theology”
How do women put up with this bullshit? Why bother supporting the asymmetrical relationship. It’s not like having meat and two veg. between the legs is obviously better, is it?
Women put up with it because they buy into their own slavery. We’re made to feel “sacred” and “holy vessels” and “protected by our men” – we are told our “power” lies in our “quiet strength”, something men could just never have…so we buy it. Eternal reward for obedient submission and fulfillment of “holy” wifely and motherly duty.
It’s quite sick.
Yeah, I guess so. Islam excels at that doesn’t it? I remember one online discussion with a Muslim who reckoned that contrary to my assertions, Islam wasn’t misogynistic, because it has a saying that the way to heaven is at your mothers lap. I never did ask him if that means childless women are damned and how that squares with it not being misogynistic.
By and large, people buy into and put up with whatever they’ve socialised into buying into. Sad but true. Very few of us are into serious interrogation of whatever we were taught as children. Very few of us are into serious interrogation of much of anything.
I still find it hard to believe that Ann Widdecombe left the Church of England for the Catholic Church over the ordination of women. As she explained in her debate with Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens, a priest is supposed to represent Christ, and Christ was a man, so obviously a woman can’t do that.
I probably shouldn’t speculate about private motivations, but I can’t see how this position makes sense (coming from a woman) unless it is arising from some sort of weird personal sexual obsession. How are the sex organs of the priest relevant to any of the official ceremonies of the church? The only hypothesis that makes any sense to me is that, as Ann kneels in front of the priest to receive the Eucharist, she gets a nice tingly sensation thinking about his naughty bits dangling right there in front of her face (or even rising up to meet her — who knows what might be happening under those robes?). With a woman taking his place, the whole ceremony just seems so dull and insipid; why even bother coming to church at all?
I’m glad to be involved in this discussion. It is time people looked properly at the contradictions of Christianity in its various forms. The contradiction of the Catholics in welcoming help from women but denying the access to higher positions is the worst, but others more knowledgeable than I can surely think of others.
The misbehaviour of the clergy, and the half-hearted conduct of the churches over it, make it easier and easier to remain steadfast in my atheism.
You’re right of course Russell. I’m sure most of my beliefs weren’t arrived at via rational methods. Sometimes though it is a bit hard to fathom why those who are at the bottom of the heap don’t make for shaky foundations.
Who knows how she thinks? But here’s the deal. To me, and to all reality-based people, we are a particular species of mammal. We come in (approximately) two biological sexes. The sexes are different in various ways, and not just in reproductive bits: e.g., men tend to be considerably larger and hairier than women. But none of the non-reproductive differences are all that frakking important, let alone of cosmic significance. In particular, outside of their respective roles in reproduction, men and women are approximately as capable as each other. Differences in strength (where men have an advantage) or some kinds of endurance (where women may have an advantage) aren’t all that great in the scheme of things – think how much stronger an elephant is than either. There are no real differences in intelligence, creativity, or moral virtue.
Okay, that’s how I see it. Men and women are, for all practical purposes, equal, and there’s no role that can be performed by men with appropriate abilities that could not be performed by a women with similar abilities. That’s the kind of animal we are. The biological differences are not all that great or important, or relevant to most areas of policy. Subordination of one sex by another makes no sense, jobs should be open to everyone, individual differences are what really matter, and so on.
But if you’re seriously religious the world looks very different. Human sexual dimorphism is not a biological matter with little in the way of social implications. Rather, it is cosmically meaningful and important.
It’s easy enough to see why pre-scientific societies thought in that way. Religion tends to fossilise that sort of pre-scientific thinking long after it is intellectually tenable. Where, exactly, it takes you will vary from religion to religion, but seriously religious people are looking at reality, including the reality of sexual dimorphism in Homo sapiens, from a totally different angle. That, of course, often leads religion to take attitudes that oppress women (and many men as well). But when you’re truly in the grip of a pre-scientific way of thinking in which essentially unimportant biological differences are given cosmic significance, you can’t even see your own oppression.
The “reasoning” behind this teaching stems from the sacramental theology of the Catholic church. A sacramental sign should signify the reality being signified. The church is called the “bride of Christ,” and since the priest represents Christ the groom, he has to be male according to this reasoning. But then, by the same reasoning, the church, the bride, should only be female. The congregation should really consist of only women and girls. A liturgy in a monastery should be considered a homosexual orgy. Crazy, I know, but that’s sacramental theology for you—and theology is, as Sam Harris said, simply “another branch of ignorance.”
First, it is obvious to New Testament scholars that the woman-hating passages from Paul are most likely the work of redactors. A lot of this is covered in Misquoting Jesus. So education alone should squash this.
But logic should squash it as well. Male and female are not well-defined, biologically. There is a continuous function from male to female, and a person can be anywhere in between. What is the canon for the in-betweens? Without doubt many have been priests and many are today.
See the Caster Semenya case for more info.
Quote: “the Catholic Church through its long and constant teaching holds that ordination has been, from the beginning, reserved to men, a fact which cannot be changed despite changing times.”
Never mind opinions – one way or another – let’s look at facts. The man quotes as a fact that the Church teaches ordination has been reserved to men. He may be right on that, I’m not a historian. The church may well have taught that right from the beginning. If that is so, then we cannot change that fact. We cannot change history just because we don’t like what has happened in the past – although I suspect that the Catholic Church has occasionally done its best to change past history.
But just because the church has always held a certain opinion in the past is not a reason not to change that opinion in the future. It is not a fact that having had an opinion in the past (even if it spans the odd 1700 years or whatever) prevents you from changing that opinion. Just because most right-thinking people believed for thousands of years that the sun moved round the earth didn’t mean that eventually right-thinking people didn’t eventually believe that the earth moves round the sun, even although one particular group of people (no names, please) had great difficulty changing their mind.
In the same way, just because one group of people have held one particular opinion since the church was founded doesn’t mean that they cannot change their opinion. Could it possible be that there is a slight confusion between “cannot” and “don’t want to”? The same sort of confusion between “fact” and “opinion”.
You’ll just have to blame Jesus for women being nothing more than char ladies, (no offence intended to the latter) within the body of the church. You see, the former choose men from the very outset as his disciples.
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_letters/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_22051994_ordinatio-sacerdotalis_en.html
Nevertheless, from a theological perspective:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Christianity
Oops! link for above quote somehow got lost.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus'_interactions_with_women
The question is, however, why anybody who would prefer the RCC to not exist in the first place would fret about them not allowing women among their cadre.
There’s an important point being missed here. In an essay written recently and posted on RD.net, Richard Dawkins has said that he sees nothing wrong with tradition, and that it has its place, just so long as it doesn’t interefere with how we deal with matters of fact. Here’s an example where tradition simply has no place, no matter what the facts are. The burqa is another. FGM is another. And we could go on. There are all sorts of cultural traditions which simply stink, from a reasonably humane point of view. The problem arises, in Dawkins’ view,
Well, I think the problem is deeper than that, and this example shows us why. Roman catholics and orthodox (Greek and Russian, etc.) have a tradition that women can’t be priests, because Jesus was a man, and he only chose men as disciples. Of course, Jesus never chose men as priests, because there were no priests in Jesus’ day. But the tradition is there, and it was expanded in a number of canonical writings which subordinated women within the growing Christian movement. And even if you want to say that this subordination was a later development, it’s still canonical, and, anyway, the development of priesthood was a later development too, and so were a lot of other things.
The problem with religious traditions is that they are all of them infected by the supernatural beliefs which underlie them, every single one of them, from the apotropaic sign of the cross to the steeples on churches. Some of them, no doubt, can be looked upon as quaint customs of the tribe, and where religion has atrophied, they may be colourful, and even, on occasion, may give a fillip to tourism. But it’s only in the latter guise that they cease doing harm. So long as they’re still taken seriously, they distort and skew the relationships between people, and provide reasons for erecting completely factitious reasons for doing things which can not only actually harm people, but can also give reasons for people to ignore the harm.
And that’s the answer to Alex SL’s question, because the harm that religions do to people is not restricted to the harm that is done to their voluntary members. It reaches out to children, and to people who do not belong. Because religious people do not only worry about their members. They think their rules are for everyone, and so they make sure, through all sorts of political organisations, that their peculiaries are visited on people who haven’t even heard of them or want anything to do with their rules.
I didn’t mean to coin an new word: ‘peculiaries’ is supposed to be ‘peculiarities’. How come we see these things only after something is posted?
@Alex SL: That’s a fair point about the RCC, my response would be that if they allowed women into the priesthood that would be a step on the road to the church losing at least some of it’s bigotry and mindless adherence to autocratic rule, that is of course why the Patriarchy are so opposed to it, nothing to do with theology really, which as we all know can be twisted to allow anything if the powers that be see fit.
Unfortunately, we seem to living in a time where the Catholic Church finds it expedient to promote its misogyny. They’re competing in an unenlightened world with Islam, and that’s a tough trough to get under.
The silver lining is that every time this issue comes up, and somebody like Archbishop Wuerl says something like this, another few Catholics are forced to confront the true nature of the institution that they’ve been supporting. And, frankly, I hope this strengthens the Women’s Ordination Conference. Rationality notwithstanding, I’ve long admired the intellectual passion of radical Catholics.
The Catholic Church is hardly going to be swayed on this issue when the dominant voices for allowing female ordination are so strident and antagonistic. They’re Not Helping. If they want to get their point across they should steer away from these relentless attacks. Look at the language used by these female-ordination zealots – it’s so agressive, so hostile, so antagonistic:
Yes, it’s all about issuing agressive ‘demands’, labelling, using scare quotes to suggest that the Church does not have any real authority… The shrill, strident agressiveness of the Ordination of Women Noise Machine just alienates the Church authorities, and it’s not hard to see why. I’m not saying they should shut up; I’ve never said anyone should ‘shut up’. But if they want to be taken seriously they should be more civil, more ready to foster dialogue, more ready to build bridges. And if they can’t, or won’t then they should just be quiet.
It’s all a matter of <i>framing</i>.
(Disclaimer: I hate to have to end with a disclaimer, but do consider yourselves disclaimed. I can all-too-easily imagine someone taking that seriously.)
I figure all priests should be Jews, Jews from what was known in the first century AD as Palestine. If it was good enough for Jesus, it should be good enough for the Catholic Church. Surely the Jewishness of the disciples was as important as their maleness.
Sarcasm aside, I agree with Eric above. Even if I would prefer that the Catholic Church (and all other organized religions) would just quietly go away as people simply stopped believing, I think it would be an improvement if all such institutions were decent and humane to everyone. Maybe there would be fewer stonings for adultery in Iran if women were held in higher regard and held positions of authority equal to men within the religious institutions. Maybe there would be less interference in public policy regarding reproductive choice from religious institutions. Then again maybe not. But I still think doing away with harmful traditions enshrining inequality, dominance and disrespect would be a good thing.
Actually, I think this hardening of positions by the Catholic Church may be a good thing in the long term: “The more you tighten your grip, Benedict, the more Catholics will slip through your fingers.”
Abusers in general, since Methuselah, have been quietly shifted off to monasteries and far-off flung mission- fields. They have been protected even unto death, with most of them having been buried in consecrated ground. Yet the church has the audacity to excommunicate women who have not wronged anyone. They only want to feel a part of Mother church. But in the eyes of the Patriarchal church that calls itself a she, women are seen as despicable she creatures. To be reduced to subserviency Kinder Kuche Kirche roles and frowned upon if they should want to rear their saintly heads and dare to been seen to be equal.
Regina Nicolosi, a program coordinator for Roman Catholic Womenpriests, who was ordained two years ago sums it up succinctly.
Never, never never. Women are the bane of Mother Church.
As for the idea that priests must be male because jesus and his apostles were all male, that’s not very consistent. Jesus and his apostles were not japanese or deaf or plenty of other things priests are allowed to be.
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Far as I know Jesus wasn’t a paedo either.
Quite. This is something I made heavy weather of in Does God Hate Women? Jesus and the disciples were Palestinians, Jews, Aramaic-speakers, working class, perhaps illiterate; they were a lot of things that are not criteria for the priesthood; gender is singled out; well why is that?
This post is more blunt about the reason than I allowed myself to be in the book. It’s because male priests want to keep the male monopoly on priestly power, and because they think women are inferior. Nice, generous, creative, intuitive, sure, but inferior.
I am reminded of Anne Widdecombe at the Intelligence Squared debate, who when asked about women priests said that the question itself “really does betray a vast ignorance,” which generated laughter from the audience. In retrospect it is a double entendre: ignorance on the part of whom? She then gave the following refudiation (yes, I am pushing that word into the lexicon), “I don’t believe that it is any more possible for a woman to represent Christ at the point of consecration than for a man to be the Virgin Mary.”
Here is my rough translation of an article by a Catholic priest on why the ban on the ordination of women is not biblical: