It’s Time for Women to Run the Catholic Church
As if my faith hasn’t been tested enough lately, last week I awoke to the news shows discussing yet another scandal in the Catholic Church. The pedophilia scandal was successful in altering my perception of priests and the priesthood and the lack of divinity in both. Yes, I said divinity. I grew up as a practicing Roman Catholic. We were taught by the scary, mean old nuns that priests were somehow above human frailty, a higher calling gave them a status somewhere between us sinners and God. Yea, right, I know. Now I think they’re all just men. Some good ones and some bad ones, but just men in the end, either answering a calling or finding refuge in a system that not only allows them to indulge their own demons but protects them while they do it at the physical and emotional expense of children.
Even though it’s been years now and the continued exposure of pedophile priests and their protectors just doesn’t seem to end, I decided to try to understand that debacle and somehow separate it from my faith. Spirituality is important in this world, and Catholicism is the only club I belong to, so I soldiered on and hoped that the Church would clean house.
This latest scandal seems to indicate that the Pope’s house isn’t so clean either. There have been some shady shenanigans going on within the Vatican to further the wealth and power of the Holy See. Geez, and I thought they were there to protect the Holy Gospel and the Holy Church, not line the pockets of some very long red robes. Hmmm, more men behaving badly.
And speaking of men behaving badly, let’s get back to those scary, mean old nuns and the latest news to come from Rome. Turns out the ladies aren’t so bad after all. The Vatican sent a letter to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious chastising nuns for spending too much time on helping the sick and the poor instead of supporting the Church’s stance on gay marriage and abortion, claiming the sisters have fallen under the sway of radical feminism.
We’re talking about nuns.
Leave us alone, the nuns responded. While it’s true that some orders have been vocal in their ministry of gays and lesbians and have also called for the Church to relax its stance on birth control, it’s a stretch to call such behavior radical feminism. In fact, the group asserts that they are only doing what they believe is their calling, to minister to God’s people. Nuns run schools and hospitals, and minister to the sick and poor all over the world. They don’t make church policy, and they don’t like being mandated to alter their focus to politics rather than healing and education. You go, Sisters. The Conference has been, as a punishment of sorts for their “radical behavior,” put under the control of a trio of bishops. That’s right, let the boys take over. We all know what a good job they’ve been doing.
