xenologer: (human monsters)
Day Two: The Church Hates Women

Women can't be priests. Ordaining a woman is grounds for immediate excommunication, just like heresy, schism, and laying violent hands on the Pope himself. Giving women power within the organization is a serious serious crime and they will immediately kick you out for it. Enough said, right? Well, clearly not, because there are still women attending mass who don't hate themselves, so let's continue.

An individual Catholic priest argued that sexism is bad and women should be ordained, and the Vatican threatened to excommunicate him in the hopes it would shut him up. To be fair, he actually is being a rather poor representative of the church. He's giving people the wrong idea about what they actually stand for, which is sad because I happen to agree with him.

Here's the one that'll come as a surprise to those of you who have a "personal relationship" with Christ that doesn't require you to study the Bible personally. The RCC isn't against abortion because the Bible is pro-infant. They're against it because they hate women.

What, does that sound too unfair? A Catholic hospital performs an abortion to save the mother's life and is ordered by their Bishop never to do it again. Pro-life my ass. They're just anti-woman, and they're willing to leave her other four kids without their mother on this supposedly "pro-child/pro-family" stance.

Toledo Catholic Bishop Leonard Blair has banned parishes and parochial schools from raising funds for the Susan G. Komen Foundation, citing concerns that the global anti-cancer giant may someday fund embryonic stem-cell research. InteractiveLeaf summarized their apparent priorities well here. "It's not like breast cancer hurts real people. Just women, mostly."

Ever hear of Magdalene laundries? The last one finally closed in 1996. Oh, and by the way, if you're curious what happened to the ones who didn't survive, sometimes they were thrown in unmarked graves. But hey! I'm sure they at least got funerals, which is more than the RCC evidently owes gay people.

So yeah! In case there were any doubt, elevating the virginal mother of Jesus does not make you any less a tool of a misogynist system. If you missed it, here's Day One: The Church Hates Gays

Date: 2010-10-22 01:43 am (UTC)From: [identity profile] veronica-rich.livejournal.com
The hell of it is, the people in a Catholic (or any Christian, really, in my experience) family who make sure a tithe is set aside to go to the Church? It's usually a woman. Why, I haven't the foggiest.

Date: 2010-10-22 03:59 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] chibininja.livejournal.com
My mom is the one who handles the tithe because she's the one who handles the money.

Date: 2010-10-22 04:31 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] veronica-rich.livejournal.com
No - I don't understand why a woman would make sure any part of her money gets to an organization working against her own political interests.

Date: 2010-10-22 05:34 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] chibininja.livejournal.com
My family is not Catholic, for the purpose of clarification. However, my mother somewhat agrees with you when you say the RCC is not too female-friendly.

Date: 2010-10-22 05:40 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] virginia-fell.livejournal.com
"Somewhat?" I'm mildly surprised there's ambiguity at all. *headscratch*

Date: 2010-10-22 05:45 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] chibininja.livejournal.com
I'm not entirely sure on it myself. Both of my parents were Catholic for most of their lives, so that may color things somewhat.

Date: 2010-10-22 01:54 am (UTC)From: [identity profile] mothwentbad.livejournal.com
Hmmm. This is good, but I feel like it's not comprehensive enough somehow. I don't have specific recommendations. I'd appreciate it if you could find time to go back later and add more.

I'd mention the thing about who gets an excommunication if a raped pre-teen gets an abortion, but maybe you're going to file that under "the RCC hates children".

Date: 2010-10-22 01:57 am (UTC)From: [identity profile] virginia-fell.livejournal.com
That is indeed filed elsewhere. I considered including it here, but this is not actually the most important entry in the series.

Date: 2010-10-22 01:22 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] crysthewolf.livejournal.com
I like how this sums a lot of it up:

"We must protect and cherish the right to life of the already-born."

Particularly when you go on to the orphanages. The sad thing about things like that is that the church is so damned fucking slippery-slick about things like that. The protestant church is NO better, by the way... one reason I recognize the attitude so well is that I spent a lot of my time surrounded by it for a lot of years. I think I always hoped to change things from within. Now I don't think that's possible. As long as you label yourself as part of a religion, you declare your support for it, whether you agree with it in point of fact or not.

Date: 2010-10-22 03:16 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] shery-dewinter.livejournal.com
The articles on the Magdalene Sisters don't even begin to articulate the horrors that happened there. I did some extensive research after watching the movie (I happened to stumble across it on TV one night, I didn't even realize it was based on reality until the end credits rolled).

Date: 2010-10-22 03:34 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] virginia-fell.livejournal.com
Yeah. There's shit that happened there that just gets nastier and more frightening the deeper one digs. The links I gave really do not even scratch the surface of how utterly monstrous they were.

And the last one closed in the nineties. When I was watching Boy Meets World and playing with my Skip-It, girls only a little older than I was were being brutally exploited and absolutely mercilessly abused in ways that are difficult to even think about.

I think about things like this when American right-wingers whine and cry about how they don't feel like the government looks enough like God's kingdom. God's kingdom is fucking scary every single time they're allowed to start building it, and I want no part of that shit.

Date: 2010-10-23 02:30 pm (UTC)From: [identity profile] sparkindarkness.livejournal.com
It always terrifies me over and over that this evil shit is openly and completely supported and endorsed by the church - and literallyu millions of poeple give it their ok, support it with their numbers and their money and their presence

Date: 2010-10-28 03:46 am (UTC)From: [personal profile] zosimos
zosimos: (Default)
Fun fact: The RCC never repealed the bit of esoteric dogma that states that women don't have souls.

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