The Vatican's Lady Problem

The Vatican just doesn't seem able to get past its misogyny. Once again it is debating whether or not to allow women some role in the Church hierarchy. The Pope has created a commission of experts to examine whether women can be deacons, the bottom rung of the ecclesiastical ladder. In at least one concession to the fair sex, the commission includes equal numbers of men and women. Some of the fustiest clergy are upset that the idea is even being considered at all, insisting that allowing women to be deacons would become a slippery slope toward ordaining women as priests. And who knows what mischief women priests might get up to.

Not that the Pope has any intention of allowing women any power over men. He hews to tradition on that point, affirming that only men can become priests and referencing an ecclesiastical letter written by Pope John Paul II in which that pontiff declared “that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.” So there, ladies.

The Church has long based its prejudice on the fact that Christ chose only men for his apostles.This argument overlooks the fact that Christ also chose only Jews for his apostles. So how did all those Italian guys get into the act? Indeed, I understand that the first Christians debated over whether Gentiles should even be baptized and allowed into the Church.

And it isn't as if the institution can't change its mind. At one time it accepted abortion. Now it doesn't. At one time it rejected evolution. Now it doesn't. Were all the popes before these changes wrong, or all the ones after? So much for papal infallibility.

Although the Pope's commission includes women, it is still under the stern stewardship of men. Its president is the archbishop of the Italian city of L'Aquila and second in command is an official from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Church's KGB. Both needless to say, are male.

Here in the 21st century what other institution would need a commission to deliberate upon whether or not women can be allowed, not to hold power of any sort, but just to enter the lowest level of the hierarchy. The entire exercise serves to illustrate nothing more than just how deeply misogyny remains entrenched in the Catholic psyche.