Personal Reflection on Women's Issues, Synodality and Clericalism

The Cappa Magna

It is my considered opinion that a denied misogyny, thinly camouflaged by exaggeratedly lauding great female saints such as Teresa of Avila and Mother Teresa, while stressing the traditional roles of women and showing orthodoxy by promoting traditional pious practices, is at the root of not only the lack of progress with the ordination of women to the priesthood but also with a reluctance to discuss women deacons and the insistence upon celibacy for priests. In my opinion, the beast that cultivates, and is animated and fed by that misogyny, and that devours all discussion on women's issues at a synodal level, is clericalism. 

Clericalism as about clerics defending their position and lording it over everyone else below them in the hierarchy, verbally and symbolically.

I realize that I sound like a conspiracy theorist. Nevertheless, I am convinced that until we make clericalism unfashionable among a critical mass of clergy influencers and Catholics in general, I fear we will not make any meaningful progress in the synodal discussion on women's ordination or married priests. My point is that while I believe that we have to fight on all fronts that are occasions for ecclesial misogyny, our critical fight has to be with clericalism which is the ritualized bastion of ecclesial misogyny. We have to identify it and expose it. But how?

Simply being angry and casting stones will not be effective. I think that one of the foundations supporting clericalism is the beaten, defeated and compliant world view of the average lay man and woman Catholic who accepts and supports the presumption of clericalism. Those who are not beaten down, defeated and compliant have mostly left the Church - beaten, but now indifferent.

I leave you with two Scriptural quotes.

But everything exposed by the light becomes visible — and everything that is illuminated becomes a light. This is why it is said: “Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” Eph. 5:13-14

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another... Heb. 10:24-25

An Atomic Bomb on Gaza?

 

I am NOT Anti-Semitic. I am NOT  Islamophobic. 

I have a few, albeit a very few, Muslim friends, acquaintances and neighbours.

I have more who are Jewish.

I appeal to my Jewish friends: please do what you can to get the message to Netanyahu and his government that he has gone way beyond Exodus 21:23–25 - "An eye for an eye" עַיִן תַּחַת עַיִן.

The rabbis will tell you that this passage does not demand revenge, but rather places a constraint on reciprocal justice. I fear that, with this merciless, vicious response, Netanyahu has blasted a bottomless pit of revenge and counter-revenge for generations to come.

The Path to Justice and Peace

 

There can be no justification for anti-Semitism just as there can be no justification for Islamaphobia or other religious persecution.

The slaughter of children and civilians can never be justified, nor can sexual and other abuse perpetrated by armed political extremists, militia or government forces.
... not in Hiroshima or Nagasaki
... not in Myanmar
... not in Ukraine
... not in Israel
... not in Gaza
... not in Ethiopia or the Sudan

Nowhere.

Frederic Ozanam

We absolutely need to understand and explain the causes for such serious crimes against humanity, or we will never address the problems.

But understanding or explaining is not justifying. We must never confuse the two.

Punishing perpetrators by perpetrating the same crimes against them is revenge without understanding and addressing the problems. Revenge is not justice and only intensifies the malignant spiral of prejudice, hatred and violence.

Mahatma Ghandi

Truth, respect, restitution and reconciliation are the necessary milestones along the only path towards true justice and peace. 

Who will walk ahead? Followers will not follow without someone showing the way.
Some are trying. They need our support.

Orange Shirt Day - and Silence

Every word has consequences. Every silence, too. - Sartre

 

September 30th was Orange Shirt Day in Canada. On this day Indigenous people were remembering the cultural genocide and abuse that took place in the Indian Residential Schools that were operated by Catholic and other Christian denominations on behalf of the Government of Canada to "take the Indian out of the child.” (Sir John A. Macdonald)

At an Orange Shirt Day event in downtown Peterborough on Saturday, one of the organizers acknowledged the presence of some civic and political leaders, and police officers, who came, not to speak, but to listen. To my mind, that is a good silence, a silence that begets good consequences.

I was also aware of the conspicuous absence of any mention of representatives from Christian churches in Peterborough, notably for me, the Catholic Church. That silence was deafening - and severely consequential.

#everychildmatters

Help Me Say Goodbye

 

Help me say goodbye
To the flowers when they die
And to remember their beauty
Not just wistfully
But gratefully recall
The happiness once shared
The loveliness we rightly feared
Could not last forever

But last a little longer
In the graveyard of the mind
In the earthy soil of kind
And loving memories
In the soil of a heart made rich
By laughter, love and tears
Turned now into reveries.

    - Terry