Religion: pissed off feminist nuns!
Freakin' sweet.
From feministing:
“We have to tell the cardinals this: We no longer want a secret, sexist selection process,” said Sister Donna Quinn of the Coalition of American Nuns. Many of the protesters there said that this message is also directed towards the new pope-to-be.
After the morning mass at Holy Name, the women set off some small smoke bombs (pink smoke, I must add) as a symbol of their movement.
4 comments:
The Church is a society of its own values. It's certainly unfortunate when some of its members are co-opted by contradictory worldviews and their attendant values, but why would they think it so easy to convince some cardinals?
Democracy for its own sake isn't always the best idea...
I'm not entirely sure I understand exactly what you mean.
I guess I view some values as being absolute (in the Kierkegaardian sense), equality of genders being one of them. Thus, any society, at large or specifically, that rejects that value is, inherently, wrong in that respect.
Misogyny in the church is a simple vestige of the societies in which the church was founded. The church hasn't been willing to admit, "hmm... the Greek and Hebrew cultures shat on women, and THAT's why women are excluded from everything. Not because God necessarily wanted it that way."
At least, there's no evidence to dismiss that interpretation. One could argue that since God chose the Hebrew people and the Greek Jews to relay his word, that their societies somehow reflect God's chosen cultures. But if that were true, then all of us reading the Bible in our native language are most certainly being disserviced, and biblical Hebrew and koine are most certainly God's chosen language. The latter seems like a silly notion, and I believe the former is equally silly.
We live in a culture that fortunately, for the most part, understands that gender differences are at best artificial socialized constructs. Our genitals might determine our sex, but they certainly don't de facto determine our gender, or determine the ways in which we can contribute to society, and sequitur contribute to God's work.
Am I saying God's word is culturally dependent? Not necessarily. But I do believe it's true that we only have limited understanding of the Bible, and our culture does somehow determine how we interpret the text. Just as I believe that Greek and Hebrew culture negatively affected the presentation of truth, and the modern reader is left to decide which things are Paul being crotchety (i.e. woman having short hair is bad! everybody knows the long haired whores are cheaper, and Jews, even reformed ones, should be thrifty!) and which things are still relevant (i.e. the blood of Christ).
Does the church have the right, as a people, to be wrong? Sure. But will I celebrate when any of its members decide to target what I consider to be the sin of misogyny? Absolutely. Kierkegaard would pat me on the head and hiss some Danish at me that would sound like he was hocking up a lung.
I'm sure you have a lot more intelligent things to say about this, many of which might make me seem silly, so I'm eagerly awaiting the reply :)
Those are good points. I would even consider misogyny to be a sin endemic to humanity and its brokenness, not just some cultural institutions.
But must gender equality necessitate the interchangability of office? The Church of Jesus Christ is not a community that can find its identity in demarcation of rights that we must assert against one another. We can talk about responsibilities toward one another, however.
Our culture shits on women in its own ways. (The ERA probably should have passed, for that matter, and the focus of the left and right on abortion instead of the things that lead to the demand of abortions is sad indeed.)
The transmission of truth through any culture will be hampered by the failings of that culture. It's a big discussion in the field of missiology how to open up our eyes (all of us) to engage the gospel's continuing critique of all our cultures.
Finally, I think it very possible (nay, probable) that both intentional and latent mysogyny is responsible for the denial of many leadership roles to women in the Christian Church. But not everyone who upholds those traditions is necessarily a latent mysogynist.
If they can't be adversaries in good faith, one can't talk to them at all, really.
Oh, and for my part, I uphold the ordination of women, but not because ordination is some kind of "civil right," or that denying it is a denial of a woman's worth and humanity.
Cheers,
K+
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