Pope stresses "fundamental" value of women in Church

[Peace Patriot]

37. "God does not choose according to human criteria." But that is exactly what...

...all the popes, cardinals, bishops and priests before him have done--presumed that God chooses THEM because they are men and does NOT "call" women to "holy orders" BECAUSE THEY ARE WOMEN.

So this is, quite remarkably, a statement that opens the way for women priests. The banning of women from the priesthood is one the most colossal sins of the Catholic hierarchy. It is nothing less than self-worship, by men, who quite hypocritically condemn the worship of false idols. This is what has led to all the abuses, to all the crimes, recent and past--male clergy enchanted by their own 'superiority" and worshipping not God, but their own image.

Popes and other prelates HAVE said, before this, that "women are important, blah, blah, blah." Of course they meant, important as baby-makers--to swell their congregations and fill Church coffers--important as servants, important IN THEIR PLACE. I found this insulting, from a very young age. I could be important as long as I was humble and subservient, and as long as I modeled myself on the 'Virgin Mary' or some other submissive female figure. It has always bothered me. I've done a lot of research on how this "original sin" of the Church first got committed and then infected the entirety of the Christian world, but most especially the male clergy of the Catholic Church, for well over a thousand years.

In any case, this Pope's statement IS different. Whether he really means it or not--whether he intends to expiate this great sin--remains to be seen. But--as with any inscrutable, secrecy-obsessed, power-hungry institution--you have to learn how to pick up the subtleties in statements like this. He CANNOT say, 'We are going to atone for this sin NOW and welcome women to the priesthood," or he would be dead tomorrow. That is how attached some men are to their notion that God prefers them. They would murder him. He has to be careful, lay ground work, send 'signals,' gain allies--a process that may have to go on well beyond his tenure before there is substantive change--and he also has to address the entrenched corruption that underpins and reinforces distorted, un-christian, and VERY long standing sins such as the Church's hatred of women (and its correlative, the Church's hatred of the Goddess). Reforming the Church--for instance, its very corrupt finances--is quite dangerous in itself. But the two things go together--vast, long-standring financial corruption and vast, long-standing spiritual corruption.

I'm willing to keep an open mind. The Church is like China, you know. Outsiders have trouble fathoming what is going on, because the decision-making processes are so completely foreign to what we know. I am utterly baffled by China, with its weird combination of "communism" and predatory capitalism. I know a lot more about the Church, and can explain some of its strangeness. For instance, it is a monarchy--and a monarchy of a unique kind; it has invented a sort of spiritual DNA ('back to St. Peter') that substitutes for a physical hereditary monarchy--ahem, which requires a woman to make a king; the Church leaves the woman out--the mother of the king--and believes in a strictly male 'line of succession' (of Popes)--and have distorted the "Holy Trinity" (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) in the same way, removing the mother entirely from the notion of God, and relegating the mother of Jesus to 'an instrument' of God--a mere human.

This is a male-worshiping and monarchical theology. That is the theoretical basis of it all--and of course this male-worshiping, monarchical institution doesn't call it "theory" but rather "dogma." You MUST believe it to belong to their Boys' Club, and even to be a servant to the Boys.

Total nonsense--that has led to many horrors and to the distortion of many, many peoples' lives, both women and men. But you need to grasp it to some extent to begin to fathom Church statements and policies, and its rather mind-boggling inertia, as to recognizing its own crimes and CHANGING--abandoning its sinful ways and becoming a truly Christian religion.