What Color is Vatican Smoke?

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While I do not doubt that there are certain similarities between apartheid (as well as US segregation) and the exclusion of women from Roman Catholic ordination, and while I can believe that Fresen’s feelings about these two injustices are similar, it is not ethically acceptable to say that they are “just the same.”

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Rome vs. the Sisters

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Throughout the history of the Church, bishops and popes have struggled mightily to keep committed celibate Catholic women under control. Already in the early Christian centuries male Church leaders forced virgins to describe themselves as “brides of Christ” rather than use the male martial imagery they had come to use during the Roman persecutions. The early equality between male and female desert monastics was likewise undercut when eighth century bishops began taking control of women’s monasteries and ordained monks to the priesthood for the first time (but not nuns, of course). And as, throughout the following centuries, groups of dedicated Christian women came together—canonesses, Beguines, beatas, recluses—popes, bishops, and male theologians went to great lengths to rein them in.

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