Category: Support

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Women are a problem for the Catholic Church

— An institution with ingrained misogyny

Women comprise half of the Catholic Church but end up being a category.

Papal plámás is no substitute for an end to discrimination against women

By Soline Humbert

The Catholic Church is bedevilled by sex … the female sex. Church men, who claim a privileged insight into the mind of God, earnestly agonise over what women can be and do. Mostly, what they can’t be and can’t do. Obstat sexus: “her sex prevents her”. It is ubiquitous and overrides Christ’s great commandment “love one another as I have loved you”.

Three years ago the Catholic Church worldwide embarked on what it called a synodal journey, described as the largest consultation process ever, involving in theory at least, every church member. This led to two assemblies in Rome, one last year and the final one which just concluded last weekend.

A 52-page document is the fruit of that process. Each of the 155 paragraphs was voted on by the members, mostly bishops but with some “non–bishops” too, including 14 per cent of women. Women had campaigned long and hard to get these few votes.

All through his pontificate Pope Francis has reaffirmed: ‘That door is closed.’

In September an obituary for American Sr Teresa Kane reminded us how in 1979 she had made worldwide news when she publicly implored John Paul II: “The Church, in its struggle to be faithful to its call for reverence and dignity for all persons, must respond by providing the possibility of women as persons being included in all the ministries in our church.” Not only did this fall on deaf ears but the closed doors got even more tightly locked and woe to whoever dared raise the issue.

All through his pontificate Pope Francis has reaffirmed: “That door is closed.” Not just to the priesthood. Asked whether a young girl could dream of becoming a deacon his curt answer was “No”.

So it is hardly news when in 2024 the Synodal Document states: “By virtue of Baptism, women and men have equal dignity as members of the People of God. However, women continue to encounter obstacles in obtaining a fuller recognition of their charisms, vocation and roles in all the various areas of the Church’s life. This is to the detriment of serving the Church’s shared mission.”

Women deacons will continue being studied ‘ad infinitum’ in a Vatican commission

The issue of women’s second-class status generally, and their ordination to the diaconate and presbyterate, was raised in many countries during the earlier consultation phases, including here in Ireland, but was filtered out. Any mention of women priests was carefully excised. Out of sight, out of mind.

Women deacons will continue being studied “ad infinitum” in a Vatican commission. This is the 4th commission and the second one under Pope Francis; the first one set up in 2016 never published its findings, and this one, set up in 2020, still hasn’t produced an interim report. No hurry since in any case the female diaconate is deemed “not ripe”.

Women are half of the church but end up being a category, an issue, a problem in a patriarchal institution with ingrained misogyny.

In fact, this women’s issue was deemed too contentious to be on the table at last month’s synodal gathering. Pope Francis entrusted it to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) who will report, if possible, next June.

It doesn’t matter whether one has the same mind that was in Christ Jesus, one must have the same sex

The DDF is an all-male clerical body with 28 consultors, mostly Italian priest theologians and six women. They are studying women saints, mystics, doctors of the church. Dead women, safely canonised, are easier to deal with than live ones, especially those with a calling deemed impossible because “her sex prevents it”.

It doesn’t matter whether one has the same mind that was in Christ Jesus, one must have the same sex.

Coinciding with the opening of the Assembly last month, Pope Francis published a book on women: Sei Unica (You are unique), subtitled: A Hymn To The Feminine Genius. The seven special talents he lists are obviously not needed in the ordained ministries. It’s hard not to cringe at the stereotyping. All the papal plámás in the world are no substitute for equality, justice and an end to discrimination.

When I read in the document its recommendation for more women to be involved in training men for the priesthood, I thought of another woman who had also just died. As a Dominican Sister in South Africa, Patricia Fresen had courageously fought the apartheid regime.

To answer her call she was ordained in the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests and ministered as a priest and a bishop

Later when she trained seminarians to deliver homilies, she became aware that as a woman she could never preach at Mass and her eyes were opened to the gender apartheid in the church, which is no more godly than the racial one was. To answer her call she was ordained in the Roman Catholic Women Priests Movement and ministered as a priest and a bishop.

No more walking the synodal pathway hopelessly kicking cans down the road. That gender apartheid must be dismantled now. The Gospel requires it and the Spirit shows the way.

Soline Humbert is a spiritual director and the author of the forthcoming memoir God Calls, Rome Stalls

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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‘Comfortable being gay’: a priest speaks

An Irish priest who has come out to many friends and colleagues says that he is ‘happy in his life’ and that the Catholic Church’s teaching on sexuality needs to change

by Patsy McGarry

He asks to be described as a religious-order priest comfortable with his sexuality. He is gay. It is “one aspect of his life”. He doesn’t like the term “gay priest”. Before this interview he pondered whether to let us publish his name. But, he realised, “I don’t have any desire to make a major dramatic statement. It doesn’t define me, and I don’t want to be defined by it. I don’t want to draw huge attention.”

A few years after his ordination he began to tell people about his sexuality. “I began to open up to friends and colleagues. Then it got to the point where I got tired telling. The need went away. Anyone who needs to know knows. It’s not an issue.”

He has been aware of his orientation since puberty. It played a part in his realising he had a vocation to the priesthood. “Despite the [church’s] negative teaching I never had the sense that God didn’t love me.”

In his teens he “used to call into the church on the way home from school. It was the one place where I could be myself. God knew who I was. My sense of a calling had its seeds there.”

He also realised that priesthood was “a way of doing something worthwhile without declaring orientation”. He feels he was lucky being an order priest when it came to formation. There was “none of the narrow-mindedness” he associated with the seminary in Maynooth. He and fellow students had “more freedom within the self. There was never a negative message. It was very broad-minded.”

While not spelling out issues around their own sexuality, they were encouraged to be “as open as we could be” and “to grow in relationships”. It helped too that he could read the works of contemporary moral theologians who wrote compassionately about homosexuality.

He came to realise some colleagues shared the same orientation but “very few were naming it as gay, but many were and still are, in hindsight.”

He agrees with former president Mary McAleese, who said in a Glasgow Herald interview, published last Tuesday, that significant numbers of Catholic priests are gay.

As a priest he has preached sympathetically about gay people and challenged the church’s teaching on homosexuality and its treatment of gay people. He was called in by a bishop once for doing so. In the main he has experienced no problems from the laity when he does so, apart from a few right-wing Catholics.

Running away
He believes that for some colleagues who share his orientation, becoming a priest was about “running away from sex while having a role and status in life”. Indeed, he felt that “probably a lot of men and women, gay or straight”, who became priests or nuns, “were running away from sexuality”.

But “if that is their primary reason, it is not enough unless you are willing to become comfortable with yourself”. Failure to achieve this comfort is why some clergy became “angry, short [with people], bitter”, he believes.

Accepting himself as he is has contributed positively to his sense of vocation. “I know the margins. I know the edges, the fear of rejection, insult. I know what those experiences are like. If you grow, be honest, be true; that can be positive when dealing with other people on the margins,” he says.

In 1986 in a Vatican document the then cardinal Joseph Ratzinger described homosexuality as “a more or less strong tendency ordered towards an intrinsic moral evil; and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder”.

Complete Article HERE!

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Nurse destroys archbishop’s gay marriage stance with a stroke of her pen

A 65-year-old former nurse has told the leader of England’s Catholics to ditch the robes, the Latin and activism against gays and start helping the needy

A 65-year-old former nurse has delivered a withering telling off to the Archbishop of Westminster – England’s most senior Catholic – for his stance on gay marriage.

The woman, who now works with animals and lives in northern England, says she has been married for 30 years but gay marriage doesn’t threaten the status of her relationship whatsoever.

The Most Reverend Vincent Nichols arrives at Westminster Cathedral in central London, ahead of the formal service to install him as the 11th Archbishop of Westminster, on May 21, 2009. AFP PHOTO/Leon Neal (Photo credit should read Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images)

And she says Archbishop Vincent Nichols and his church have become obsessed with gay sex, ignoring the real problems of society – the economy, schools, hospitals and our children’s future.

She tells him the so-called ‘Princes of the Church’ should ditch the ‘silk, the gold, the Gucci shoes, the ridiculous tall hats’ in favor of a simple pilgrim’s staff and get on with helping real people.

And she says Jesus ‘appears to have happily shared meals with prostitutes, drunkards, lepers, Gentiles and I do not doubt with people of same-sex orientation’.

Nichols has campaigned vigorously against same-sex marriage but she warns him the church’s propaganda calling homosexuality ‘disordered’ and ‘evil’ makes it impossible for the LGBT faithful to feel at home in Catholicism.

She has requested to remain anonymous but asked GSN to share her letter. We understand that she has received a reply from Nichols, but it failed to address the substance of her comments.

You can read her letter here:

Dear Archbishop,

I listened to your letter of Sunday 3 February in which you asked us as a matter of urgency to either send a postcard provided or write to our local MP to request him to vote against the government’s proposed legislation to legalize same-sex marriage. I came out of the church with two thoughts and one resolve. Firstly I thought ‘Lord pity and help any gay person sitting listening to that letter’ not a word a charity or understanding did it contain. Secondly I thought or asked ‘Where in that is the love of Christ for all humankind?’ My resolve was not to contact my MP.

That decision was not made because of the tone of your letter however. I do not find it at all easy or even possible to uphold the church’s teaching on homosexuality. Among gay people of my acquaintance are those who have a deep spiritual life, to have one’s sexual orientation, an orientation that one is born with, described as an ‘objective disorder’ and to hear homosexual acts described as ‘intrinsically evil’ surely makes it almost impossible to feel at home or welcome in the church. It is utterly unrealistic to expect homosexual people to live celibate lives (We all know that many priests find this very difficult and sometimes impossible). The revelations of clerical sex abuse have led many of us to look with a very critical eye on the so-called celibate life and to realize that it has all to often lead to warped and destructive behavior.

To return to same-sex marriage, can it be abhorrent that two people of the same sex would wish to experience that emotional and physical closeness that marriage offers? We believe that God is love and so it must follow that in every loving and committed relationship God must be present – or does this, in your understanding, only apply in heterosexual relationships? Is heterosexuality more valued by God and by the church than homosexuality? You are, I suppose, aware that there are more than a few homosexual men in the priesthood and that nowadays heterosexual men are much less willing to embrace the celibate life. Is the good work done by such men less valuable in the eyes of this church? If so is it further evidence of its dysfunctional state?

I am 65 years of age and have been married for almost 30 years. I would so have appreciated an explanation from you or any of the hierarchy exactly how my long and happy marriage will be threatened by the union of gay couples. When I meet people in my day to day existence they talk about the economic climate (bad), lack of employment (bad), uncertain future for their children (bad), state of schools, hospitals (bad) – never ever has anybody expressed concern about a threat to their marriage by the proposed legalizing of same-sex marriage. You, the church, claim that marriage is the bedrock of society and indeed it is but you also seem to consider it so fragile that allowing a few gay people access to it will endanger it forever. Here the implicit homophobia cannot be ignored.

Sadly you still think your pronouncements will be accepted without question by a meek credulous herd. You have spent far too much time telling us just how sinful we are while drawing veils of respectability over your own grievous wrongdoings.

I sometimes despair of this church, this institution. It seems to me in my reading of the Gospels that Jesus had no problem whatsoever with those who were considered outsiders or exceptions. He appears to have happily shared meals with prostitutes, drunkards, lepers, Gentiles and I do not doubt with people of same-sex orientation since such an orientation has existed since time began. The church seems much happier with its version of order over compassion and love towards the so-called exceptions. It has an appalling history of excluding and torturing those who do not think or subscribe to its definition of ‘right’.

The world is facing disaster on all levels and this church, when not obsessing about matters sexual, spends an inordinate amount of time on pointless activities such as changing the liturgy back to a correct translation of the original Latin – a language not spoken by Jesus but spoken by the oppressors of his time and country. Do you imagine that this obsession with precisely translated texts will win you a single new adherent? To me, you (particularly but not exclusively the hierarchy) appear to be a frightened group of men preoccupied with titles, clothing and other religious externals. You seem, with some wonderful and brave exceptions, to pay only lip service to ecumenism and matters of social justice. I would love to see the so-called ‘Princes of the Church’ (Where did all these triumphant, utterly anti-Gospel titles you award yourselves come from?) get rid of the silk, the gold, the Gucci shoes, the ridiculous tall hats, croziers, fancy soutanes etc etc and substitute bare heads and a simple pilgrim’s staff on all liturgical occasions and that might be taken as a small outward sign of your inner acceptance of fundamental Gospel values.

I seem to have digressed somewhat but to return to where I started, same-sex marriage. I will always be unsure of the validity of any principle or opinion that makes one act in an unkind or intolerant way. Toleration, of course, has its limits, I want you to cry out against injustice and cruelty. Explain to me please exactly how marriage will be ‘changed forever’ by the proposed new laws, specifically tell me how my marriage will be threatened.

I admit that I am not very well versed on biblical texts and I know that there are those who can find a text to confirm any prejudice without having to resort to any sort of reasonable debate but surely if we accept one piece of scripture (Lev 18:22) which declares homosexuality to be an abomination, to judge what is right or wrong, we must accept them all. Following this logic we are therefore forbidden to wear garments made of two different kinds of thread (Lev 19:19), men must never have their hair trimmed especially around the temples (Lev 19:27). According to Lev 25:44 I may possess slaves provided they are purchased from neighboring nations, not sure if this applies to non-members of the EU! As for organizing the stoning of transgressors – well, a logistical nightmare!

Archbishop, we have grasped the principles of evolution, stopped burning witches and holding heresy trials, discounted the flat earth theory. Do you now think we could move the debate about equal human rights for people of same-sex orientation and also the status of women in the church on by a few millennia please?

Complete Article HERE!

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Lower house of French parliament approves bill that would legalize gay marriage, adoption

France’s lower house of parliament has approved a sweeping bill to legalize gay marriage and allow same-sex couples to adopt children.

President Francois Hollande’s Socialists have pushed the measure through the National Assembly and put France on track to join about a dozen, mostly European nations that grant marriage and adoption rights to homosexuals.

The measure, approved in a 329-to-229 vote Tuesday, comes despite an array of demonstrations in recent weeks by opponents of the “marriage for all” bill. Polls show most French support legalizing gay marriage, though that backing softens when children come into play.

The Assembly has been debating the bill and voting on its individual articles in recent weeks. The overall bill now goes to the Senate, which is also controlled by the Socialists and their allies.

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NZ advertising authority dismisses complaints against Pope gay marriage ad

New Zealand Advertising Standards Authority rules billboard advert depicting the Pope blessing a male couple did not cause widespread offense

By Anna Leach
New Zealand electricity company Powershop’s advert depicting the Pope blessing a gay wedding

New Zealand’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has dismissed complaints against an advert depicted the Pope blessing a gay marriage.

The billboards that were displayed in Auckland and Wellington last month with the slogan ‘Same Power, Different Attitude’ prompted four complaints.

One complainant, B Pender said the advert ‘is offensive to me as a Christian as it features two males exchanging rings as part of a marriage ceremony in the presence of The Pope … it is attempting to imply that The Catholic Church and The Vatican condone same sex marriage despite no formal communication of said claim.’

ASA Chair Jenny Robson said the advert did not cause widespread offense, ‘neither did it breach the due sense of responsibility to consumers and society’, APNZ reports.

The advert was created by electricity company Powershop as part of a series that communicated a message about individual choice and control.

‘Like previous editions, this latest version of Powershop’s long-running campaign is intended to be both thought provoking and satirical,’ said a post on the company’s blog.

‘Kiwis have widely debated the issue of marriage equality over the last year, so we’ve used the issue to point out that large institutions can sometimes lose touch with their modern constituents.

‘We live in a world that has embraced freedom and equality. If something’s working for you and it’s not hurting anyone else, then we support your right to do it. We also believe it’s the responsibility of anybody in a position of power to consider whether their exercise of that power is bringing a greater or lesser happiness to the world.’

Complete Article HERE!

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This is what you shall do

“This is what you shall do;
Love the earth and sun and the animals,
despise riches, give alms to every one that asks,
stand up for the stupid and crazy,
devote your income and labor to others,
hate tyrants, argue not concerning God,
have patience and indulgence toward the people,
take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men,
go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families,
read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul,
and your very flesh shall be a great poem
and have the richest fluency not only in its words
but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”

~ WALT WHITMAN Leaves of Grass

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Website helps Dutch Catholics “de-baptize” over gay marriage

Thousands of Dutch Catholics are researching how they can leave the church in protest at its opposition to gay marriage, according to the creator of a website aimed at helping them find the information.

Benedict ClausTom Roes, whose website allows people to download the documents needed to leave the church, said traffic on ontdopen.nl – “de-baptise.nl” – had soared from about 10 visits a day to more than 10,000 after Pope Benedict’s latest denunciation of gay marriage this month.

“Of course it’s not possible to be ‘de-baptized’ because a baptism is an event, but this way people can unsubscribe or de-register themselves as Catholics,” Roes told Reuters.

He said he did not know how many visitors to the site actually go ahead and leave the church.

About 28 percent of the population in the Netherlands is Catholic and 18 percent is Protestant, while a much larger proportion – roughly 44 percent – is not religious, according to official statistics.

The country is famous for its liberal attitudes, for example to drugs and prostitution, and in April 2001 it was the first in the world to legalize same-sex marriages.

In a Christmas address to Vatican officials, the pope signaled the he was ready to forge alliances with other religions against gay marriage, saying the family was threatened “to its foundations” by attempts to change its “true structure”.

Roes, a television director, said he left the church and set up his website partly because he was angry about the way the church downplayed or covered-up sexual abuse in Catholic orphanages, boarding schools and seminaries.

A report by an independent commission published a year ago said there had been tens of thousands of victims of child sexual abuse in the Netherlands since 1945 and criticized the church’s culture of silence.

Complete Article HERE!

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Bread for All, Work for All, Dignity for All

I was invited to share with you a pastoral letter from the bishop of an inclusive Catholic church. You’ll find nothing like this coming from the Roman church.

Bread for All, Work for All, Dignity for All:
A Christian Revolution

A Pastoral Letter

 

Bishop James Alan Wilkowski
Evangelical Catholic Bishop for the Diocese of the Northwest

The Latin word “revolution” means to turn around, to take an opposite direction or make often drastic changes.

An infinite variety of reasons have been explored by historian presenting both justification for revolution as well as purely emotional and even irrational reasons for humankind’s behavior in this regard. Is there a “gold thread” as it was that has appeared in history which can shed some light on the causes of revolts?

It is necessary to travel back in time, perhaps tens of thousands of years to a time we call pre-history. Let’s look at a time when human population was small and our hunter gatherer ancestors were pretty much on their own in eking out an existence. There was a time when families joined together for their own survival. More and more families came together to form a clan, a group with the belief in the strength in numbers. Ultimately, there came a time when a structure was needed to address mutual issues. Nature was always a problem and it was much easier for a large group working together to provide protection and to insure food clothing and shelter be available.

Eventually, it became clear that a social structure was needed and leaders were selected as well as rules for living together. There came into existence what was called “the unwritten social contract”. This was a concept that stated that each individual would surrender some of his personal freedom so that there could be a harmonious social relationship. In order to receive assistance from the group, I will agree to abide by the rules, the structure of the group and I will be able to participate in the goods and services available to the members of the group. There was a group leader and members of a council responsible for organization of the distribution of goods and services as well as providing for the safety and protection of group members.

Complete Letter HERE!

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Joyful same-sex couples wed in Washington state

By Matt Pearce

Some had waited decades for this. So early Sunday, the first day they could legally wed, same-sex couples in Washington state held marriage ceremonies immediately after midnight and made plans to get hitched en masse.

At the King County Courthouse, Sarah and Emily Cofer got married in casual clothes at 12:01 a.m., with their 9-month-old daughter in attendance.

 

At the same time, the Seattle Times reported, another ceremony took place between Mary Davidson and Monica Rozgay at the Seattle Yacht Club. The brides wore twin white dresses. A photo from the celebration showed a 6-year-old nephew snoozing in a chair after the late-night ceremony.

Sunday morning’s red-eye ceremonies were expected to be followed by waves more throughout the day after the state’s voter-approved law legalizing same-sex marriage took effect.

Robyn Wyss, of Seattle, told the Associated Press that her marriage to five-months-pregnant Danielle Yung was “more emotional than I thought it would be,” adding, “Our friends are here, it’s a beautiful space and there’s all this love and appreciation. We’ve been thinking about this as more of a political celebration for all of Washington state, but obviously it’s very meaningful for us and our future child as well.”

Washington’s same-sex marriage law look effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday, allowing couples to buy marriage licenses. But the three-day waiting period meant they could not wed before Sunday.

A maximum of 841 same-sex couples could marry Sunday. That’s how many were issued licenses issued across the state on Thursday, according to a tally by county auditors. But that tally could include a few different-sex couples in three counties — including King, the largest — that declined to track licenses by gender.

King County accounted for more than half the licenses issued, and in the three-day gap between licensing and matrimony, officials said they issued an “unprecedented” 623 marriage licenses.

The result: 140 couples were scheduled to marry at Seattle City Hall between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. Sunday, with each ceremony lasting about 15 minutes.

Sixteen judges volunteered to perform the nuptials for the Seattle couples, which were about two-thirds female, the city said in a blog it set up to document and celebrate the day.

The number of newlyweds could grow even larger by the end of the day.

“We’re ahead of schedule here at City Hall — we can take 10 more couples,” Seattle Mayor Mike McGuinn tweeted. “If you want to marry here, check in at standby on 5th Ave.”

The city set up a live feed that showed the bustling scene inside City Hall, with friends and and families milling around as couples hustled in to be wed.

Among them was syndicated “Savage Love” columnist Dan Savage, who arrived with his partner, Terry Miller, in tuxes even though the two had already wed in Vancouver in 2005. “This happened,” Savage tweeted afterward, with an Instagram photo of him and his husband descending a flight of stairs together.

Other couples showed up in matching outfits, some in military uniforms. More events were scheduled around the city.

The Washington Legislature passed the same-sex marriage bill in February, but foes gathered enough signatures to require a referendum and put the law on hold. Voters ratified the law Nov. 6, along with an aggressive ballot initiative to legalize the sale and possession of marijuana. That law also took effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday.

Maine and Maryland voters also approved same-sex marriages on Nov. 6, but weddings have yet to begin there.

Same-sex marriage is also legal in Massachusetts, Vermont, Iowa, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York and the District of Columbia.

Vicky Dalton, the Spokane County auditor who headed the statewide marriage licensing effort, said the turnout Thursday for same-sex marriage licenses in Spokane County was lighter than she expected. People filed into the auditor’s office to celebrate and to applaud couples who picked up new licenses, but only 23 were issued that day.

Then that number came into perspective when she heard someone ask a visitor why he hadn’t gotten one.

“They said, ‘I thought you guys would have been one of the first,’” she recalled, “and he said, ‘You know, we woke up and we realized, we don’t have to rush. We don’t have to worry. This is not going away. We can get a marriage license wherever we want now.’ ”

“There’s no rush, nobody has to get down here immediately,” Dalton repeated to herself. “That was probably one of the most powerful moments of the day for me.”

Complete Article HERE!