the pope's visit to the UK?

Micrówave wrote:

I went to church Sunday and was administered communion BY A WOMAN.  Oh my God!!!  Life seemed so much better after that.  The grass was greener, the sky was a lighter hue of blue.  Terrorists laid down their rifles.
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Precisely.  Women give communion, they're readers at mass, they're huge forces in the auxilliary and social/community life of a parish.  Tradition still dictates that men are the only people who may be ordained, but critics should be aware that the practical effect for the majority of everybody is naught, and the traditions are experienced as something positive, or at least neutral, for most.

There are much more hurtful and limiting gender injustices in everyday life.  Just yesterday I had to deal with a silly but hurtful bit of sexism from my boss who doesn't mean harm, but just bumbles into these things because he's just not good at them. I worry far more about how girls and women are taught by society to despise and mutilate their own bodies.  I worry far more about how men can be stripped of dignity and too many rights of fatherhood in the family court system.  There are much bigger problems in the world than who gets to sign up for the privilege of life as a member of the Catholic clergy.

Since I know we have at least one Toronto person following this thread I'd like to add one other significant advance in gender equality.  Not for the first time, and certainly not the last, the Toronto Maple Leafs of the NHL appear to have dressed a team of ladies last night and sent them out to be humilated 5-0 by my mighty Ottawa Senators, who drew first blood in the 2010/2011 Battle of Ontario.  Another chance tonight.  Maybe the men will be available...

While I do have my own personal problems with the Catholic Church, I don't know all that much about the abuse scandal specifically (beyond what I read in the papers), so I'm not going to comment on it, other than to respond to something.


Micrówave wrote: "Yet, I bet you're all big fans of Bill Clinton. Yeah, the guy that spurned his wife and shagged a young intern in the oval office. So when he visits England, I'm sure Bob, TQ, Barb, and everyone else will condemn his visit, too.

Hipocracy is alive and well on Queenzone."

There is no comparison. Bill Clinton slept with a consenting woman*. He did not sexually abuse children. One can perhaps criticise him from a moral perspective for committing adultery (although I personally wouldn't but that's another discussion), however he didn't break the law and what he did can not in any way be compared to what priests have been accused of doing. There is nothing hypocritical about being a fan of Clinton and criticising the Church.

*One could argue that there was a imbalance of power, which is true, and which would make it sexual harrassment. However there is a massive difference beween this and sexual abuse.

As usual you did not bother to read my post, microwave. I did not condemn the Pope's visit to England at all. I happen to think that the Queen invited much worse state visitors over the decades. I did not blame the pope for child abuse or the status of women in the church, either. However, he is the "deputy" and he decides which way the church is going - and nobody ever called Benedetto an innovator.

I do not see what Bill Clinton has to do with the issue. He is not a Catholic as far as I know. Surely, you are not suggesting that he was unfaithful to his wife because he is not a Catholic.  JFK was a Catholic and legend has it that he was not the most faithful husband, either.  Which brings us to the core of the whole issue of organised religion. I have no problem with people who follow the rules of their religion and are happy with that. I only have a problem when the church has the power to dictate the moral behaviour of people. It has not been so long ago that the church had exactly this power in my country:  divorced woman were social outcasts, homosexuality was a crime, "illegal" children (born to unmarried mothers) were second-rate citizens who could not carry their father's name or inherit his money. There was no legal abortion and rape in a marriage was not a crime because the woman had no right to refuse her husband.

Today we are over this. Our president is a divorced Catholic, our chancellor is a woman and our foreign minister a married gay man. You do not need to be a specific race, gender, religion or anything else in order to be respected as a person. Only half of the population is Catholic or Protestant and the numbers are falling -  the churches are still  very privileged, anyway  and nobody has a big problem with that. As long as they keep their sexual moral theology within the church and do not harrass other people it's really not a problem at all. It's in other parts of the globe that the Catholic church has still the power to make women miserable or even put them in danger (AIDS) by enforcing their sexual morality upon them.

You may have received communion from a woman but that does not mean that women are in any way equal in the Catholic church, they are not. If that is okay for you and gratefulfan, it's definitely okay for me, too. The church has definitely more to offer for their members than equal opportunity. Child abuse is a different story, it's not the private business of the church although they seem to have treated it that way in many cases. That is exactly what causes the outrage: the assumed moral superiority on the one hand and the protection of child molesters with obviously no compassion for the victims on the other hand.

As for Microwave's second posed thesis, which is

The Pope is responsible for women not being priests, cardinals, or popes.

Technically, this is the case. Sure, he will get criticism and dissent, people will leave the church (but never that many as we see now), but at the end of the day, the pope can decide that henceforth the priesthood is no longer reserved for men. Some theologians will agree, some disagree. At the end of the day, most Catholics will stay Catholics because, whomever the people behind it, it is Catholicism, something beyond people. One can disagree with or even look down on this, but it is a fact.

There's some misunderstanding here. A church in Brazil - I can't hardly think of a more Catholic country, and very liberal at that on the other hand - has recently been punished by the Vatican for allowing women to give communion. There was a minor outcry because the Brazilian Bishop's Council, which is as liberal, or even outright left-wing in politics as it gets, has strongly condemned the practice and, even more recently, has been out speaking against one of the Presidential candidates for being pro-abortion. It's the official stance of the church, it's not about what happens at an isolated church house. For sure, abortion is not such a clear-cut matter as simply excluding women from the decision-making structure of the Church and its holiest rituals.    

What is the official theological basis for not allowing women to give communion? It was stated officially that, being the most sacred part of the mass, the women, who had not - and could not have in any case - been ordained, would be "defiling Christ's body". Yes, unordained males can't give it either, except that women can't even be ordained and fully represent Christ on earth - something which happens when the (male) priest consacrates the bread. One might say, hey, Christ was a male. For sure, but nowhere in the Gospels he says: "And women shall not be allowed to reenact this ritual": the last bit was the creation of a society controlled by men.   

You may call it whatever you want: voluntary submission, tradition, playing traditional roles with relish. I call it for what it is taking into account the official stance of the Church and the historical context in which these traditions have been brought about: mysoginy, as I don't think there's any shred of credible evidence to support the claim that, first, there is a God who endorses all this and, if that was not enough, that he speaks mainly through the pope. It's a matter of faith, and I think that using faith to manipulate the counsciousness of individuals is sad. They are sure allowed to, but, boy, this is regressive!   

It's a grave sin for a woman to preside over the holiest part of the Catholic ceremony (there was threat of excommunication if that happened again). I happen to think this is slightly mysoginist, and I strongly disagree that something ceases to be mysoginist as soon as women are really or supposedly submitting to it with relish, flair and gusto.

I'm sure many Muslim women use the burkha because they want to. That doesn't prevent me from thinking that this is a barbaric, mysoginist and hateful practice.

I think the Catholic Church has been far too condescending with perpetrators of child abuse over the years for people to take it so easy on the institution. It's not only a deeply hierarchical structure based on secrecy; it's a hierarchical structure based on secrets held by men. And, yes, although the church is growing ever more irrelevant in many parts of the world, and I can tell this for sure at least about the U.S (see the PEW research of 2008, for instance) , Brazil and Israel, it still makes its impact on wordly affairs which belong to everyone of us.

The way the Catholic Church has traditionally handled the cases of such a hedious crime is simply indecent. It's no wonder that people may have a feeling of distrust towards catholic priests and institutions. The amount of literature - some serious, some stupid, some factual, some conspiratory - about abuses against women in such Catholic institutions as Opus Dei - which is directly subordinate to the pope - is so overwhelming that I really can't bring myself to have a more generous stance over all this.

The use of laypersons (men and women) as Extraordinary MInisters of Holy Communion has been in very officially in place via Papal decree for something like 35 or 40 years Yara.   Perhaps the Brazil situation was about consecration, which can only be done by a priest, or some of the purification rituals, or some other fine point of order?  Look up  'Immensae caritatis' for the original document, which has since been written into Canon Law.

The Catholic Church believes it has no authority to ordain women as it views God's choice to become a man, specifically, in Christ, and then further Christ's choice of men for apostles is a statement of immutable, divine law as it pertains to ordaining clergy.  That's the thinking, whether some of us think it's crap or not. At some level a whole lot of religious dogma and ritual is crap.  They're old, old institutions trying to find a place in the modern world, and though that presents clear challenges and problems, I believe the world would be a lesser place if every last voice was relentlessly and exclusively progressive.  There is value in tradition and voices of conservatism, and that's spoken by a person about as liberal as one can get and still have her feet on the ground.

In essence this is nothing but an exercise in theological pedantry. The Catholic Church has always held that *in case of an accute emergency* the functions normally fulfilled by a priest can and must be performed by *any and every Catholic* available. The reason for this stance, already established in medieval times, was to prevent infants from dying unbaptized if the priest couldn't make it in time, but because it was phrased so generally, and 'emergencies' are ill-defined, there is plenty of room for interpretation.

[i]ThomasQuinn wrote: In essence this is nothing but an exercise in theological pedantry. The Catholic Church has always held that *in case of an accute emergency* the functions normally fulfilled by a priest can and must be performed by *any and every Catholic* available. The reason for this stance, already established in medieval times, was to prevent infants from dying unbaptized if the priest couldn't make it in time, but because it was phrased so generally, and 'emergencies' are ill-defined, there is plenty of room for interpretation.[/i]
Yeah! Always good to have a historian around!!!  There was something about it in the document issued by the Bishop's Council. I remember they argued there was no emergency and that the local church should avoid whenever possible letting those women give the communion because of the big risk of "defiling Christ's body". It was not about consecration, I'm sure about it; if it were, the condemnation would have been far more harsh. Lay people were invited to take part in the ceremony, and so on, but that when it came to the sacraments the exception should not be turned into the rule. I guess it was pretty much what you're saying - a narrower interpretation of the rule.  

I agree with you (Gratefulfan) about there being wisdom in reliIgious tradition. This discussion reminded me of that recent movie "Doubt" casting Meryl Streep and Seymour Hoffmann. The latter plays a priest who's suspected of having committed child abuse; Meryl is in the role of a nun with very rigid morals and a pre-second vatican council mindset. 

The movie is really worth seeing - what's also sad about the whole story is that, even if one assumes that Seymour's character did commit the abuse, there was no way for a woman inside the male hierarchy of the church to get him either denounced or punished. 

I found it beautiful, though, and I shall grant Gratefulfan this point, how Meryl's character, as conservative as she was, went out of her way to try to protect a black kid in an all-white Irish environment. She couldn't care less about people's color and was really committed at protecting and saving the boy, even if that meant that she could get in serious trouble.  I read somewhere when the movie was released that her character was based on a real-life nun.

>>> Micrówave wrote: Yet, I bet you're all big fans of Bill Clinton.  Yeah, the guy that spurned his wife and shagged a young intern in the oval office.  So when he visits England, I'm sure Bob, TQ, Barb, and everyone else will condemn his visit, too.

Hipocracy is alive and well on Queenzone.<<<

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There is no hypocrisy. There is no comparison. Abuse victims of all ages suffer not just the abuse but the often life-time effects of it. Nightmares, paranoia, fear, diminished or non-existent self-esteem, dysfunctional relationships. The list goes on. To compare consensual sex with abuse is a disgusting, brutally unfeeling and dismissive insult to the victims.

The victims of church sex abuse were children. Innocents. Children who trusted their parents, who did what their parents told them to do, who went to church, volunteered, interacted with priests they were told they should trust and obey. They believed priests were men closest to god. Children raised in catholic families are often told they will be punished by their god for disagreeing, for doubting, for resisting or questioning. And so those children were trapped - it was their bodies or their souls. It’s horrifying to think how they suffered, not just physically, but emotionally, having no one to confide in who would believe them or help. It’s like a victim of domestic abuse finally finding the courage to leave the abuser only to be told to go back, or to have it implied the abuse was somehow the fault of the abused.

Children are supposed to be protected, guided and loved so their childhood is a happy one. Happy enough for them to grow into productive and happy adults… adults who will make society that much better. For everyone. Instead, these children were sacrificed in the name of some god, in the name of men representative of that god. There is no way to compare any of that to any form of consensual sex whether or not you approve of the sex or the people involved in it.