Katherine Jean Lopez peers out from her cloister and espies some women spoiling the pope’s reception with complaints about ecclesiastical inequality, and mutters darkly, “Who will rid me of these turbulent bitches?”
In the run-up to Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United States, there was a tremendous display of unseriousness at the National Press Club, followed by a sacrilege at a nearby Washington, D.C., church.
…and then bars and punch in the Fellowship Hall.
A misguided group called the Women’s Ordination Conference held a protest — a press conference and an all-woman “mass” at a local Methodist church. The group, as the name suggests, wants to see “the ordination of women as priests, deacons and bishops.” Sadly, the group doesn’t understand women or the Catholic Church.
I have to agree with K-Lo; the vast majority of my relationships failed because the girls — try as I might to explain it to them — just didn’t understand women, and it led to many tearful confrontations. Which is why I now exclusively date octogenerian bachelors with a taste for hierarchy and high fashion, because 1) if you’re looking for a top, you can’t do much better than an ex-Nazi and former head of the Catholic Inquisition, 2) what woman could pull off red Prada slippers with a ten gallon mitre, 3) if opposites attract, then who is better equipped to really understand and appreciate a woman’s needs than a celibate old man who rules a patriarchal city-state?
“In the three years of his papacy, Pope Benedict XVI has made a few encouraging statements about women, but he has done nothing that suggests willingness to open the discussion on women’s ordination. That’s why for his 81st birthday, we are offering the pope a present: the gift of women, their leadership, talents, experiences and unique perspectives.” The group trailed the pope mobile to papal events with a billboard truck that asked: “Pope Benedict, How long must women wait for equality? Ordain Catholic Women.”
As they are stuck on their version of “equality,” the fundamental problem with the group and its message is that whatever Benedict says or does will not be enough for them.
You know how it is. You come home late from the Conclave, you’ve had one chalice of benediction too many, and you eat all the cookies left out on the kitchen counter in an effort to sober up, but it turns out they were supposed to be for the reception at the parish house after Mass, and then you throw ‘em all up in that stupid potpourri bowl she keeps on the coffee table. And the next morning or afternoon or whatever the hell time it is when you can finally get off the toilet you make a special trip downstairs to apologize, and is it enough?
No. It is not.
They are not open to listening, but to dictating an unworkable agenda. If they were open to it, they would hear and see the Roman Catholic Church’s embrace and celebration of women. Women will not be priests, but they will always be an essential part of the Church.
Every foot needs a sandal.
Pope John Paul II may have been best in articulating the Catholic perspective on women — with great love, appreciation and, to use a popular word, empowerment. He wrote in his 1995 encyclical “Evangelium Vitae” (“The Gospel of Life”): “In transforming culture so that it supports life, women occupy a place, in thought and action, which is unique and decisive. It depends on them to promote a ‘new feminism’ which rejects the temptation of imitating models of ‘male domination,’ in order to acknowledge and affirm the true genius of women in every aspect of the life of society, and overcome all discrimination, violence and exploitation.”
In other words, don’t start getting any big ideas about treating us the way we’ve been treating you for the past two millenia.
During a speech in Rome this February, Benedict reiterated John Paul’s message: “In the face of cultural and political currents that attempt to eliminate, or at least to obfuscate and confuse, the sexual differences written into human nature, considering them to be cultural constructions, it is necessary to recall the design of God that created the human being male and female, with a unity and at the same time an original and complementary difference. Human nature and the cultural dimension are integrated in an ample and complex process that constitutes the formation of the identity of each, where both dimensions — the feminine and the masculine — correspond to and complete each other.”
Men and women both have brains, hands, hearts, and can each work many wonders. But you’ve got to have a dick if you want to wear a dress and pass out wafers.
John Paul the Great…
I’m glad that they’ve finally decided on a postmortem honorific for John Paul, although I cast my call-in vote for “King of Pop” at the end of last week’s American Graven Idol.
…and the former Cardinal Ratzinger have not been reinventing a women-hating church.
Why reinvent the wheel when there’s a Pep Boys down the block?
They have been reiterating what Christ taught and what’s at the very heart of the Catholic Church.
I’m no biblical scholar, and even less qualified to comment on Catholic dogma, but I don’t recall Jesus spending a lot of time assigning duties based on sex. But apparently Mary Magdalene wasn’t invited to the Last Supper, which was something of a sausage fest if you believe the frescoes, and theologians have inferred from this that Christ’s motto was therefore “Bro’s before Ho’s.”
The Gospel tells us that the people left standing at the foot of Christ’s crucifixion were women — no weaker sex, but stalwart supports. Women are building the foundation, which is carved into the walls of the Church. When I recently toured St. Peter’s Basilica for the first time, my group of traveling American female commentators noticed the overwhelming presence of women in the home of St. Peter and his papal successors. Female saints and virtues portrayed as women: Charity, Truth, Prudence and Justice. Charity is presented as a mother nursing a baby, with additional children at her feet. I thought of the many stay-at-home moms doing the grassroots work of civilization-building. Perhaps the most famous work of art in St. Peter’s is the “Piet,” a moving tribute to a mother’s sacrificial devotion and love, depicting the Mother of God with her dying child in her arms.
So please stay out of our club, unless we’re sick or dying, then please come in and make us soup and give us a sponge bath and pick up the place.
There. Don’t you feel empowered?
