Catholic church punishes women for supporting female priests

[ccharles000]

"Cry as if you have a million voices; it is silence that kills the world." ~ St. Catherine of Siena

Sister Louise Akers, a 66-year-old Cincinnati Catholic nun, was banned two weeks ago from teaching in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. Her crime? She supports the ordination of women priests.

The injustice of the disciplinary action inspired Dr. Carol Egner, a lifelong Catholic and gynecologist, to write a letter to The Cincininati Enquirer in support of Akers. In her letter, Egner said she could find no biblical justification for not allowing women to the priesthood and pointed out that allowing women priests could reduce the burdon of the current priest shortage. "I agree with ordaining women as priests now," she wrote. "And perhaps if we had already been doing this, words like sexual abuse would not be associated with the Catholic Church."

When the Rev. David Sunberg, the pastor of Egner's church, read her letter, he demanded she write another renouncing her position. When she refused, she was told she could no longer teach her religion class for sixth-graders at Our Lady of Lourdes parish. According to The Enquirer :

Egner, who has been a volunteer teacher for two years, said she never discussed her views on women priests in her religion class and she told Sunberg she never would bring it up. Her letter does not identify her as a teacher and does not name her parish.

"I feel the punishment is disproportionate," Egner said. "Priests have abused boys and their punishment was disproportionate the other way. I feel the church really hasn't taken responsibility and addressed that, and yet I can't write a letter to the editor. I don't get that."

http://community.feministing.com/2009/09/catholic-church-punishes-women.html

[virgogal]

1. As a female former Catholic I always felt that women should not give

one dime to the RC church.

You can be damned sure they would appreciate us when the money stopped.

[dalaigh lllama]

11. +1

Amen, sister!

[aquart]

14. Oh, probably not then, either.

They wouldn't even include Mary in the Trinity.

[I Have A Dream]

2. K&R. nt

[rwheeler31]

3. When the old thinking leaves the church,

we may consider working on their good ideas.

[FBaggins]

4. She certainly has a right to her opinion...

...and the pastor would be better served to discuss it with her politely rather than demanding that she retract it publicly.

But telling someone who publicly disagrees with the church's theology that she can't teach the church's theology to kids is hardly a "punishment".


I'll also say that it's pretty ridiculous to think that ordaining women would mean that sexual abuse would not be associated with the RCC...

[pnwmom]

12. It's not ridiculous to think that if we'd been ordaining women

then we wouldn't have such a priest shortage that we're forced to scrape the bottom of the barrel.

[FBaggins]

15. And yet

denominations that do (Episcopalians for instance) still have a shortage.

Regardless... it isn't a matter of "scraping the bottom of the barrel" because it isn't as if you can tell ahead of time that some guy will be a predator "but darn it... we just couldn't find anyone else so we had to hire him".

People who are attracted to the ability to have access to kids while having the implied credibility of a collar - will always be attracted to that kind of role.

[justiceischeap]

17. There is no balance within the catholic church

I'm not gonna make an over general statement about all men just the hierarchy of the Catholic church. I think if women were ordained priests and on a level playing field with their male counterparts, the whole sexual abuse situation would have been handled differently. Instead, I suspect, you have fellow pedophiles covering for their brethren. I also suspect if women were on a level playing field with the priests, that pedophiles wouldn't simply be shipped to a new parish to continue their harmful ways. Maybe that is the real meaning behind women eradicating sexual abuse in the church (though I think it would only lessen, not be gone completely).

[pnwmom]

21. Episcopalians don't have a priest shortage. Neither do other mainline denominations

that I"ve heard of.

Because of the shortage in the Catholic Church, the molesting priests were allowed to keep their positions, or just take transfers. If we didn't have such a shortage, that wouldn't have happened.

[Mrs. Overall]

16. It is a "punishment"--

It is basically being fired from your job for your opinion. If you have been a nun all of your life and have taught children and then you express an opinion (and the Church always seems to forget that nearly every saint is a saint precisely because at one point he or she disagreed with an element of the Church and then went about to change it) and then you are subsequently told you can no longer teach in the parish--that is a "punishment" -- the priest, the bishop, and the nun all know that it is a rebuke and an attempt to silence her on a controversial issue.

It is an attempt to publicly shame her (while abuse by priests is often kept secret within a parish).

I hope she is able to move to another parish and continue teaching.

[Vidar]

5. The Lutherans & Episcopalians will welcome any refugee Catholics.

[HeresyLives]

10. In Canada, Episcopalians are called Anglicans.

And they call themselves Catholic-lite. 'All the ritual, none of the guilt.' :rofl:

[Vidar]

22. Good Point.

[abumbyanyothername]

6. This is the issue that drove me out . . .

A Jesuit put a band aid on the wound for a while with the metaphor, "If you were in the middle of the ocean and you discovered your captain was an idiot, you wouldn't just jump overboard, would you?" I was especially furious with the Pope's justification for ending the discussion: "There are certain cultures in this world that just will not accept women in authority." And I thought, "Yes, that is what Jesus is all about. Expediency. Do what it takes to get along. Principles, Schminciples."

My ties were further weakened following the onset of my relationship with my wife, who is celebrating the New Year tomorrow.

Finally, the response to the breaking child abuse scandal, made it clear in my mind that the Roman Catholic Church is simply operating as any other multi-national corporation intent on increasing revenue and decreasing expenses more or less by any and all means necessary.

[patrice]

8. Except for Catholic Worker House and, the more Ecumenical, Fellowship of Reconciliation

[patrice]

7. They fear them, because they know the Nuns are right about sexual abuse

[TlalocW]

9. Kick-ass nun

I bet that bit about the priests abusing boys being punished less than she will put her in more hot water.

TlalocW

[midnight]

13. Time has come for the men in the church to step up and see

their female counterparts as equal to the task.

[Brickbat]

18. The Catholic church punishes women for a lot more than just supporting female priests, and has since

day one.

[Mari333]

19. I tried, back in the early 80s, to change things from within

but it was like sisyphus, all i could do was push that frigging rock up a hill and it came tumbling down
I have long since been out of that church, and after yrs of studying mythology I realize how damaging it was to be born into a religion that taught me to hate myself.

[pipi_k]

20. Cutting off their own noses...

I don't know about anywhere else, but around here we've seen quite a few parishes shut down or have to merge with others because of two things...

lawsuits from sexual abuse cases that have run into the millions of dollars...

and dwindling membership rolls at the same time there are fewer and fewer priests coming out of the Seminaries


One would think these people would be wanting to do everything in their power to stop the virtual bleeding.

But no...

the gross idiocy continues.

Well good...that's how I feel about it. If they want to choke off their own religion by being stupid, then go for it. Allow the priests to continue molesting little kids. Keep treating the nuns like dirt.

To hell with the Pope and the Catholic church.