Woman Cardinals.

[Lilllabettt]

I am against it - and you know why? Activists, deep thinkers - they can debate the merits all they want. But they often don't think about little people.

I mean the simple people who are born into, live, suffer and a die in the Catholic Church, passing their days in pure faith, quietly loyal to their prayers and pious devotions week after week, committed to their business as Christian men and women. They are not pumped up by controversy, don't get revved up by debate. There are fewer and fewer of these people all the time it seems, but some of the larger machines of the Church are set up to protect their interests. The rights of theologians to be "heard" are routinely overrun in favor of the the rights of these people to journey through life with their faith unmolested.

 

Installing women cardinals at this moment would not be good for these people. It would cause disturbance and division among them, and in the the past 50 years they have endured enough of that. Jesus prefers them and it is unwise to trade their peace of mind for a pet political or social project.

 

 

[4588686]

I am against it - and you know why? Activists, deep thinkers - they can debate the merits all they want. But they often don't think about little people.

I mean the simple people who are born into, live, suffer and a die in the Catholic Church, passing their days in pure faith, quietly loyal to their prayers and pious devotions week after week, committed to their business as Christian men and women. They are not pumped up by controversy, don't get revved up by debate. There are fewer and fewer of these people all the time it seems, but some of the larger machines of the Church are set up to protect their interests. The rights of theologians to be "heard" are routinely overrun in favor of the the rights of these people to journey through life with their faith unmolested.

 

Installing women cardinals at this moment would not be good for these people. It would cause disturbance and division among them, and in the the past 50 years they have endured enough of that. Jesus prefers them and it is unwise to trade their peace of mind for a pet political or social project.

 

 

Thats a a pretty condescending view of people like that.  My grandmother fits your description pretty well and somehow the two or three sentences that would be required to explain why this was happening wouldn't rock her world.

[Lilllabettt]

its not about "rocking" anyone's world. Its about placing a burden on people so that we may make our preferred political gestures.

[4588686]

its not about "rocking" anyone's world. Its about placing a burden on people so that we may make our preferred political gestures.

 

What exactly is the 'burden' that normal people would be facing here?

[Semper Catholic]

Lol same argument was made in the South during the 50s. Sorry but there were plenty of racist grannies who just had to live with the fact times were a changing.

[Era Might]

Why not just create a new advisory committee of lay people. Then you don't have to graft something new onto something old.

[Lilllabettt]

What exactly is the 'burden' that normal people would be facing here?

 

I am not referring to normal people, if by normal you mean typical Catholics. But to answer your question - the same kind of burden they faced when the liturgy was changed, about 2 years ago.

 

Lol same argument was made in the South during the 50s. Sorry but there were plenty of racist grannies who just had to live with the fact times were a changing.

 

 

Here we have a white man wishing to draw equivalency between the injustice done to blacks in the Jim Crow South with the suffering of women who cannot be made cardinals.

 

Interesting.

[4588686]

I

 

Here we have a white man wishing to draw equivalency between the injustice done to blacks in the Jim Crow South with the suffering of women who cannot be made cardinals.

 

Interesting.

 

He's drawing an equivalency between your argument advocating maintaining the current Church power structure which excludes women (as well as the vast, vast majority of the laity) for the sake of your idealized depiction of the simple Catholic of pure faith with the common conservative trope of arguing that group 'x' needs to be excluded from the power structure or denied equal rights because I golly we just hate to think what it might to to the little man if he were able to direct his or her own life.  

 

Your intellectual hero William F Buckley used the same line of argument in his numerous racist pronouncement explaining why the civil rights movement was secretly bad for black southerners.

[Lilllabettt]

Okay  Semper Catholic and Hasan, catholics who gave up on the Church when it got too hard, or whatever -- YOU are right.

 

The people who have stuck with her through thick and thin the past 50 years dutifully adjusting to every massive new liberal (and conservative) program, initiative or "emphasis" that has come down the pike, THEY are clearly just a bunch of racist old grannies who should just be made to get "with" it one. more. time.

 

Because equal access to power structures - that's "justice" and "love' right?

Shared "power." This is Christianity now.

[An Historian]

 "Let the woman learn in silence, with all subjection.  But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to use authority over the man: but to be in silence.  For Adam was first formed; then Eve.  And Adam was not seduced; but the woman being seduced, was in the transgression.  Yet she shall be saved through childbearing; if she continue in faith, and love, and sanctification, with sobriety."

Was Saint Paul a sexist?

[Lilllabettt]

 "Let the woman learn in silence, with all subjection.  But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to use authority over the man: but to be in silence.  For Adam was first formed; then Eve.  And Adam was not seduced; but the woman being seduced, was in the transgression.  Yet she shall be saved through childbearing; if she continue in faith, and love, and sanctification, with sobriety."

Was Saint Paul a sexist?

 

god. bless america. you are a life ruiner!!!! arrrgggggghhh

[Maggyie]

 "Let the woman learn in silence, with all subjection.  But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to use authority over the man: but to be in silence.  For Adam was first formed; then Eve.  And Adam was not seduced; but the woman being seduced, was in the transgression.  Yet she shall be saved through childbearing; if she continue in faith, and love, and sanctification, with sobriety."

Was Saint Paul a sexist?

 

He wasn't a "sexist" per se but his time period was deeply sexist. He would never have been able to predict that one day religious orders would spring up in which women instructed converts (both male and female), governed hospitals, taught in seminaries, and founded and ran universities.

 

Just this statement, "yet she shall be saved through childbearing" indicates how retrograde many of his ideas were. While in some ways that is a beautiful reflection on becoming a mother, nowadays Catholic evangelizers are at pains to point out that having kids is not a prerequisite to a woman's being a true Christian or being saved. They focus on the positive part of the message (motherhood with all its ups, downs, challenges and blessings can truly be the part of her vocation that saves a woman's soul)!

 

And they leave out the underlying message, "well, Eve was a lying whore but somehow, someway, if you, her female descendents, dutifully lie back and pop some kids out for your man, you'll be saved." Your no-doubt literalist interpretation of this passage is very hurtful to women like me who bear the cross of not being able to bear children.

 

This passage, and your interpretation of it, is used by people who hate the Church to convince innocent young women that they are valued primarily for their wombs, that God does not value their voices (silence!) and that the entire female sex was the cause of the Fall (Adam, being a man, has no responsibility). When we cling to a distorted understanding of Scripture and holy tradition, we make the job of the Church's enemies so much easier.

[Maggyie]

god. bless america. you are a life ruiner!!!! arrrgggggghhh

 

Yes B, realize that's the side you're on! Come to the light!

[Ice_nine]

why is it AN historian? Do you not pronounce the voiceless glottal fricative?

 

[mortify ii]

Interesting thoughts poured out, however there is one notable drawback, the Church is not a democracy. It's not ruled by popular represented but through a Monarchy. The church operates top down and not vice versa, and so Im not sure how useful having lay, female, or other religions represented does use for the church. I just fail to see the need for introducing such a change, and with the inquiries into certain nuns and monasteries I'm really not sure it wouldn't just cause more trouble.