Mysogyny is Alive and Well

A friend just pointed me to this article about some enlightened tirade out of the Vatican. It took me a few minutes to read, and about an hour to calm down after I read it. I have long had my differences with that which passes for thought in the senior layers of the Vatican, but I have for the most part chosen to let it lie - until today.

A bit of digging on the Internet digs up the actual text on the Vatican website. It is, as I expected, a decidedly baroque piece of work. One which attempts to justify the position of the Roman Catholic Church in scriptural terms. Not being a theologian, I won't get into an analysis of the use of scripture here. Rather, I will take a lay person's stance, and point out much of what I take exception to.

First, the Church attempts to describe the notion of masculinity and femininity in scriptural terms. Given that most of the attributed authors of scripture were apparently men, I fail to see how any of them could describe a woman's experience in the world.

While these traits should be characteristic of every baptized person, women in fact live them with particular intensity and naturalness. In this way, women play a role of maximum importance in the Church's life by recalling these dispositions to all the baptized and contributing in a unique way to showing the true face of the Church, spouse of Christ and mother of believers.

In this perspective one understands how the reservation of priestly ordination solely to men²² does not hamper in any way women's access to the heart of Christian life. Women are called to be unique examples and witnesses for all Christians of how the Bride is to respond in love to the love of the Bridegroom.

I see the Church is continuing to play the role of 'pater familias' - in a Roman style family. I hate to point this out, but the Roman family structure no longer holds sway in the known world. (Or perhaps, there are still parts of the Vatican maps that say "Here be Dragons"?) The Cardinal continues to back up the blind notion that women should not be ordained as Priests in the Catholic Church.

Through the entire document, the author is very careful to appear to be giving "equal" hand to women, but in these two paragraphs, he snatches it away in one deft motion. No, if you believe this dogma, woman is supposed to be subservient to the will of the man.

"Separate but equal" arguments are inherently flawed. They are based on a notion of equality that is arbitrary and capricious. It strikes me that the Cardinal has yet to move beyond the notion of women anything other than bearers of the next generation. (no matter what the flowery language he chooses to bury the notion in) The argument goes to great length to extoll the virtues of the feminine, but then comes around to demanding that women take their seats - at the back of the room, thank you very much.

To look at Mary and imitate her does not mean, however, that the Church should adopt a passivity inspired by an outdated conception of femininity. Nor does it condemn the Church to a dangerous vulnerability in a world where what count above all are domination and power.

Roughly translated, this boils down to one thing - the Church has yet to recognize that personality is not grounded in biological gender. There are women out there who are phenomenally masculine; there are men who are very feminine.

When the Church recognizes that all people have something to contribute, and not just in narrowly defined roles that someone extracts from two thousand year old texts, then it will be in a position to make useful commentary on these issues. In the meantime, the opening claim that the Church is "expert in humanity" is at best hubris, grounded in the arrogance that two thousand years of cloistering men apart from the company of women produces.

For the most part, Cardinal Ratzinger has merely produced a document that the more conservative elements in the Church will use to continue to propogate their narrow-minded, blinkered view of the world. It is time for the clergy of the Roman Catholic church to emerge from their cloister and learn about the world in which they live. This means taking wives, raising families, and living like the rest of us do. Then, and only then, will the Church's leadership be able to interpret scripture in a manner that is meaningful and productive.