Dear friends,
I want to sincerely thank sister Ishna ji for highlighting this article and bringing it to my attention. I am naturally disturbed by this individual priest's atrocious words towards women who are victims of domestic violence. The outrage in wider Italian society would surely be echoed by any sane, rational individual with even one ounce of compassion. There is nothing in the New Testament or in the Sacred Tradition of the Church which would in any way lay the blame for a sexually abused woman on some alleged and groundless choice of clothing on her part.
Quite a range of strong views have been expressed in this thread regarding Catholicism itself - rather than just this individual priest's words - and they are not without cause either. I feel compelled to answer everyone in kind because I am as far as I can tell the only active, practising Catholic on SPN and so really the only one able to provide some discussion/debate on a few points regarding my religion itself, rather than this priest's words which I am sure we are all on exacty the same page regarding.
A few posters seem to be from a Catholic background or heritage, so I can sympathise fully with the rawness that this issue might hold on a personal level for those people, if something connected to this or a similar circumstance might have been a contributing factor in their conversion to another faith and way of life.
I should say, first of all if it even needs to be said, that the words of this priest are in direct contravention to Catholic teachings. I can see that some, I would say especially our sister Akasha, would disagree with me and I welcome a fruitful dialogue on this front with her and I honestly hope that despite our obvious disagreements we can diverge from each other in a spirit of mutual respect and love.
To begin, I would like her to read an official document of Venerable Pope Paul VI:
"...If we were to reduce to a few brief essentials these brief indications concerning the place women should have in a renewed society, we might say: Let us willingly vote for
- (1) the recognition of the civil rights of women as the full equals of men, whenever these rights have not yet been acknowledged;
- (2) laws that will make it really possible for women to fill the same professional, social and political roles as men, according to the individual capacities of the person;
- (3) the acknowledgment, respect and protection of the special prerogatives of women in marriage, family, education and society;
- (4) the maintenance and defense of the dignity of women as persons, unmarried women, wives and widows; and the help they need, especially when the husband is absent, disabled or imprisoned, that is, when he cannot fulfill his function in the family..."
- Venerable Pope Paul VI (The Role of Women in Contemporary Society," The Pope Speaks, XIX (December 8, 1974), 316)
If Chile or any other Catholic majority nation failed to implement the principles outlined above, then they are not acting in accordance with official church teaching, as I feel Akasha to be intimating, just as many in the Punjab do not adhere to the gurus teachings on gender equality.
In 2009 Pope Benedict XVI wrote a letter to the bishops of Africa regarding the inferior status of and violence towards women in many African nations:
"...There are places and cultures where women are discriminated against or undervalued for the sole fact of being women, where acts of violence are consummated in regard to women.... Faced with such grave and persistent phenomena the Christian commitment appears all the more urgent so that everywhere it may promote a culture that recognizes the
dignity that belongs to women, in law and in concrete reality..."
Our friend Akasha wrote:
And the above is EXACTLY why I left the Catholic religion!!!! Well, in addition to that my beliefs in reincarnation etc really didn't sit well with Christianity either...but Catholicism is HUGELY mysogynistic!!! They believe that women should be barefoot, perpetually pregnant, and subordinate / slaves to men...It is in fact the opposite because Mary ... the very image of a virgin, submissive, mother, etc. is what all Catholic women
are being compared to. So unless a women is stuck at home raising kids, is submissive, etc then she is not seen as leading a worthwhile life.
Dear sister Akasha ji,
Thank you for your post, I have read over and reflected on it carefully.
You are correct that Catholicism would not accept reincarnation, and so I am glad that you had the courage to follow the dictates of your conscience and adhere to this belief in the face of church dogma which rejected it.
I would say first of all that official Catholic teaching does not suggest that the female gender is in any way inferior to men. We believe in the equality of human beings regardless of gender. The problem with the idea expressed above, is that the Early Church was most popular in its preaching amongst women:
Christianity seems to have been especially successful among women. It was often through the wives that it penetrated the upper classes of society in the first instance. Christians believed in the equality of men and women before God and found in the New Testament commands that husbands should treat their wives with such consideration and love as Christ manifested for his Church. Christian teaching about the sanctity of marriage offered a powerful safeguard to married women (Henry Chadwick, The Early Church, Penguin,
58–59).
Would it not be strange for women to flock to a new exotic religion which treated them with "misogynistic disdain"? Something about Christianity was particularly appealing to Roman women. What would you say it was Akasha?
The records are there. Women were the most fervent of missionaries. Mary Magdalene was the first witness to the resurrection. Phoebe, the deacon, was renowned by Paul. Women read letters such as Paul's out to their communities. Saint Perpetua, the most famous martyr of the early church, was of course a woman - and a noble one at that.
One of the ridicules that educated Christians received from Roman polemicists of the era, was that the church's central doctrine - the resurrection of the Christ (however understood literally or spiritually) was founded on the testimony of women.
Celsus, a Greek philosopher who lived in the second century A.D., was highly antagonistic to Christianity and wrote a number of works listing arguments against it. One of the arguments he believed most telling went like this: Christianity can’t be true, because the written accounts of the resurrection are based on the testimony of women—and we all know women are hysterical. And many of Celsus’ readers agreed: For them, that was a major problem. In ancient societies, as you know, women were marginalized, and the testimony of women was never given much credence.
Celsus wrote in part of Saint Mary Magdalene:
"...After death he rose again...But who saw this? A hysterical female and perhaps some other one of those who were deluded by the same sorcery" (apud Origen, C. Cels. 2.5s).
Elsewhere he dismissed the resurrection as the result of "womanish fantasies".
Compare this to how the Early Christian Church viewed it women heroines, in this case Junia a female Apostle referred to by Paul and Mary Magdalene, the Apostle to the Apostles:
"...[Junia] To be an Apostle is something great. But to be outstanding among the Apostles [as Paul says of Junia] - just think what a wonderful song of praise that is! They were outstanding on the basis of their works and virtous actions. Indeed, how great the wisdom of this woman must have been that she was deemed worthy of the title of Apostle...[Mary] How is this? A woman again is honored and proclaimed victorious! Again are we men put to shame. Or rather, we are not put to shame only,but have even an honor conferred upon us. For an honor we have, in that there are such women among us, but we are put to shame, in that we men are left so far behind by them. For the women of those days were more spirited than lions, sharing with the Apostles their labors for the Gospel’s sake. In this way they went travelling with them, and also performed all other ministries. And even in Christ’s day there followed Him women, “which ministered unto Him of their substance” (Luke viii. 3), and waited upon the Teacher..."
- Saint John Chrysostom (349–407), early catholic church father
I highly doubt that a religion which responds to Roman pagans ridiculing its women as "hysterical females" with the idea that they have the spirits of "lions" should be dismissed so easily as misogynistic.
Lion-like women do not strike me as submissive sterotypes. These were strong, courageous women like Saint Joan of Arc much later on the middle ages, she who was the greatest of all catholic soldier-saints, of which there were many but of whose number she is undoubtefly the queen and empress of them all.
You see Christianity was so popular amongst women and its early days were peopled with heroines who outshone the men because its often railed against Roman sexism towards women.
The Church influenced the status of women in various ways in the Roman Empire: condemning the
infanticide of girls (rife in the Empire because they could not earn money or prestige for the family), divorce (women could be dispensed rather easily), incest, polygamy and counting the marital infidelity of men as equally sinful to that of women. That last point particularly enraged the early church and endeared women to it.
In the
Roman Empire, husbands were allowed to leave their wife. Wives were denied a reciprocal right.
Early Church Fathers pointed to the Gospel of Mark, which describes Jesus labelling men or women who divorced and remarried as adulterers. In Rome men were allowed to have multiple lovers whilst women often ended up dead as punishment for their adulterous affairs. In the early Roman Law the jus tori belonged to the husband. There was, therefore, no such thing as the crime of <!--k23-->adultery on the part of a husband towards his wife. Saint Gregory of Nazianzus wrote vehemently against the practice of punishing women who committed adultery while overlooking the same acts by men.
"Married women were attracted to the Christian ideal that men and women shared the same obligatory moral code. Women often converted first and introduced the religion to their social network; it was in this way that the religion often spread to the upper classes of society."
In Roman marriages, after a period of 12 months, the husband assumed Manus (that is ownership) over his wife, as he would over any other of his moveable property. Marriages were often arranged between families for social benefit. Divorce was also incredibly easy, straightforward and common for men while woman were no consulted ar all. The Early Christians, alternatively, taught that marriage was an equal bond of love between a man and a woman that reflected the love between Christ and his Church. Saint Paul tells us that in a Christian marriage the wife owns the husband's body and he owns her body; that is a mutual ownership that completely runs counter to Roman understandings of marriage, and indeed Roman Law which stipulated the ownership only of the husband over the wife:
Quote:
<TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=6 width="100%"><TBODY><TR><TD style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 1px inset; BORDER-LEFT: 1px inset; BORDER-TOP: 1px inset; BORDER-RIGHT: 1px inset" class=alt2>"...For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife..."
- Corinthians 7:4
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
In many ways therefore, Christianity opposed the sexism of Roman law thus attracting women to en masse, such that Romans often derided it as a "religion of women, cripples and slaves" (partly true since Jesus was particularly close to the outcasts of society and some early popes had been former slaves).
Read this from the current pope:
"...Women in particular were sensitive to the new, different, noble, and mysterious something that made its appearence in Jesus, and in special ways he drew them into his company. In contrast to the contemporary Jewish custom, by which women were viewed as being secondary status, Jesus achieved something like an emancipation of women. Because of this social status, women belonged somehow in this category of little ones, who were assured of God's special love and his special attention. And by so doing he called forth the charism of womem. In their meeting with him, the two women of Bethany come especially into our field of vision. They show us how, from then on, women play an essential part, as living and active members, in the building up of the Church. It was the women who stayed by Jesus faithfully, to the foot of the Cross. In contrast to them, the [male] disciples had all long since made themselves scarce. Mary Magdalene...she in particular, not Peter or John, was now the first person permitted to report his Resurrection. A remarkable fact, when we consider that in the Orient women were simply not considered capable of bearing witness in court. On that account Saint Augustine called Mary Magdalene the Apostle of the Apostles. And that title has remained. Right up to 1962 the Preface of the Apostles was read in the liturgy on her day, because she was reckoned as being "the woman apostle". The fact that Mary Magdalene was the first to bring the message of the Resurrection to the Apostles shows once more the especially close and warm relationship Jesus had with this woman. We can also detect that in the dialogue, when he simply says, when she does not recognize him, the name "Mary". And then she recognizes him and falls at his feet: "Rabboni, my Master". That expresses reverence, distancing herself from his greatness, yet at the same time her great love for him..."
- Pope Benedict XVI, interviewed by Peter Seewald in "God and the World: believing and living in our time"
Consider also this medeival picture from the St Albans Psalter (created in the 12th century):
Read:
"...The St. Albans Psalter, probably commissioned by the anchoress and then prioress Christina of Markyate, depicts Mary authoritatively proclaiming the resurrection to the eleven remaining apostles. This illumination invites viewers to imagine Mary as the twelfth apostle....A column divides the scene into unequal parts, with Mary Magdalen in profile isolated commandingly in her own rectangle while the eleven apostles crowd together under an arch. Mary is telling the disciples that she has seen the risen Lord (John 20:18). The apostles look amazed, clutching books and raising their hands...Mary’s authoritative role as ‘apostle to the apostles’ derives from her witness of Christ’s risen body in the previous scene..."
Now consider this painting in light of this from
Pope John Paul II (1920-2005):
“...From the beginning of Christ's mission, women show to him and to his mystery a special sensitivity which is characteristic of their femininity. It must also be said that this is especially confirmed in the Paschal Mystery, not only at the Cross but also at the dawn of the Resurrection. The women are the first at the tomb. They are the first to find it empty. They are the first to hear "He is not here. He has risen, as he said." (Mt 28:6). They are the first to embrace his feet (cf. Mt 28:9), They are also the first to be called to announce this truth to the Apostles (cf. Mt 28:1-10, Lk 24:8-11). The Gospel of John (cf. also Mk 16:9) emphasizes the special role of Mary Magdalene. She is the first to meet the Risen Christ. At first she thinks he is the gardener; she recognizes him only when he calls her by name: "Jesus said to her, 'Mary'…. Hence she came to be called "the apostle of the Apostles". Mary Magdalene was the first eyewitness of the Risen Christ, and for this reason she was also the first to bear witness to him before the Apostles. This event, in a sense, crowns all that has been said previously about Christ entrusting divine truths to women as well as men. One can say that this fulfilled the words of the Prophet: 'I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy'. Everything that has been said so far about Christ's attitude to women confirms and clarifies, in the Holy Spirit, the truth about the equality of man and woman. One must speak of an essential "equality", since both of them - the woman as much as the man - are created in the image and likeness of God. Both of them are equally capable of receiving the outpouring of divine truth and love in the Holy Spirit..."(Jl 3:1) (cf. Mulieris Dignitatem, n.16)
