N Y Times columnist Maureen Dowd this past Saturday wrote an
article lamenting the fact that she's just as oppressed by Catholicism as a group of Saudi women she met with in Saudi Arabia.
I asked why they were not more upset about living in a country where women’s rights were strangled, an inbred and autocratic state more like an archaic men’s club than a modern nation. They told me, somewhat defensively, that the kingdom was moving at its own pace, glacial as that seemed to outsiders.
How could such spirited women, smart and successful on every other level, acquiesce in their own subordination?
I was puzzling over that one when it hit me: As a Catholic woman, I was doing the same thing.
I, too, belonged to an inbred and wealthy men’s club cloistered behind walls and disdaining modernity.
I, too, remained part of an autocratic society that repressed women and ignored their progress in the secular world.
I, too, rationalized as men in dresses allowed our religious kingdom to decay and to cling to outdated misogynistic rituals, blind to the benefits of welcoming women’s brains, talents and hearts into their ancient fraternity.
Can any sensible, self honest person believe that she suffers as much as a member of the Catholic Church as a Muslim woman in Iraq or Saudi Arabia?
A similar
article in "Newsweek" by Lisa Miller,
The chasm between the church's stated principles and its functional reality yawns wide. In the U.S., 60 percent of Sunday massgoers are women; thus most of the contributions to the collection plate—$6 billion a year—are made by women. And yet the presence of women anywhere within the institutional power structure is virtually nil. The number of women who hold top-tier positions in any of the dicasteries, or committees, that make up the Vatican structure can be counted on one hand. Few women retain high-profile management jobs, such as chancellor, within dioceses. And though nuns dramatically outnumber priests worldwide, they are mostly so invisible that when a group of them speaks up, as they did recently on health-care reform, everyone takes notice.
Actually there are more women represented in positions of power than there are in corporations.
Here's a PDF of the breakdown.
The Church hierarchy allowed women to accomplish great things throughout history.
Nathanial Hawthorne's daughter Rose founded the Hawthorne Dominicans, and they took care of cancer patients for free, and did it all on donations.
General Patton's daughter worked with a nun Mother Benedict of France after WWII and formed the Abbey of Regina Laudis here in the U S, and is world renowned for the all the artists, writers and musicians it has trained. Mother Benedict during WWII was a doctor that hid Jews.
Teresa of Avila built and managed several monasteries. I'll write later about monasteries; they were the center of Western Civilization for centuries. Of course Dowd and Miller seem to think that isn't such a good thing, being that Christianity, Islamofascism, and Muslim misogyny are all equally as oppressive.
The Church, both Protestant and Catholic have for centuries supported women's achievements. Of course stupid men said and did stupid things, but overall, there's a record of allowing women to serve and grow. “I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans of fullness, not of harm, to give you a future and a hope…” (Jeremiah 29:11) This is for women too.
How free are women like Dowd and Miller, when having ultimate freedom, the result of Judaic-Christian principals, claim to be oppressed, when there is nothing at all that kept them from becoming the successes they are now? How many women in Islamofacist countries have done what they have?
