Aussie Priest is Excommunicated for Support of Women’s Ordination
Soon, many optimistic, not to say naïve, Catholics—and Protestants—are going to be shocked to learn that the kindly new Pope Francis has excommunicated an Australian priest…
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Note to the New Pope: Half of the World’s Poor are Women
Let’s be clear: half of the world’s poor are women, and the church’s effort to deprive the Catholic women among them of contraceptives, of the use of condoms that could protect them from HIV-AIDS, and of the ministry of women priests who would marry, absolve, and anoint them, is no service to them.
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What Color is Vatican Smoke?
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.”
Read MoreWomen in Combat and the Priesthood: A Response to Mary Hunt
Ordination as subordination? Perhaps there’s another way to look at it…
Read MoreCatholic Sex Teaching is No Laughing Matter
Bishops are not only concerned with nuns and girl scouts.
Read MoreCatholic Church is Lucky it’s Just Same-Sex Marriage
When the Church claims that marriage exists between “one man” and “one woman,” which kind of man or woman do they mean?
Read MoreIs Football a Pro-Life Sport?
The bishops might want to investigate…
Read More$upport Our $ister$
The only thing that will get the bishops’ attention? Money.
Read MoreOnly 5 Million “Real” Catholics in the U.S.?
Perhaps the Vatican’s hard-line tactics are an intentional purge.
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Rome vs. the Sisters
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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