Witness

March Madness:

The spectacle of a stadium full of single male catholic clergy marching as to war on the Anniversary of Roe v. Wade on the
Supreme Court to make a statement about the evils of abortion would be quite moving were it not for the fact that these are men who by choice or capacity have either totally rejected or are totally incapable of forming intimate loving supportive respectful relationships with women they call their wife, and have no children of their own, either adopted or natural. They would have light-years more credibility if they actually had children, or remotely understood the realities of intimately relating with the opposite sex from a distance closer than a confessional screen, put their money where their mouths are in supporting pregnant women or in any remote capacity attempted to have their own families for whom they were directly responsible.

If they actually truly wholly loved women in word and deed people might pay more attention to them.

The family model of church relationships where women get to support male priests who have no responsibility financially for any woman is not one that provides the sort of lessons or model for young men who are encouraged to emotionally support their girl friends or wives during pregnancy instead of pressuring abortions to avoid the life time of child support obligations. Priests don't have much sway or say with these sorts of people because they don't trust the empathy factor on this point. Anything a Priest would say is often deemed experientially irrelevant. The "do as I say, not as I do" preaching method to young men has only so much preaching to the choir effectiveness.

Some Priests , even ones considered good priests, sometimes make or model supremely rotten bad examples to young men who are desperately looking for solid role models in relating to girls/women, in that they only know how to support and veer males into vocations, away from any real responsibility for women and they themselves sometimes treat women with abysmal disrespect. Some love-them-and-leave-them priests will emotionally exploit women in a way that causes more emotional harm-trauma even- than casual sex ever does. This is scandal, brings disrespect on the church, and mocks the Church's mission to create cultures where families are positively built up and women truly honored and protected. You could fill a stadium with the Catholic women who felt at any time disrespected, emotionally dishonorably misled, abandoned, exploited or mistreated by a priest.

The only women elevated by the hierarchy of male priests are the ones who swear off childbearing in "holy" orders or are incapable of it by virtue of advanced years. That is no model for empowering women to bring children in the world. This does not model love for womenhood.

The Church is in some aspects more decidedly rooted in the misogynist blatantly sexist women bashing demeaning writings of Saint Thomas Acquinas than it is on the Word of Jesus the Lord with regard to relational issues and respect for women. I was shocked to learn from one highly placed Monsignor that they actually teach how NOT to be friends with women in Seminary- and that their dealings with women are supposed to be along the lines of a business relationship. They are instructed not to bond in friendship with women. Basically, so long as the women don't get too close and keep writing checks everything will be fine. The Dominican order of friars actually contains as part of their rule that they are to avoid the gaze of women and never look any of them in the eye because they are intrinsic temptation. They don't know how to view them as anything other than check-writers with temptation potential. This is just juvenile and totally evil- as if an entire culture of clergy were time warped in an adolescent fear of Cooties.

Contrary to the Canon Law 208 statement and instruction that there is an equality of all baptized believers such that there is a church mandate to respect the dignity of all persons which is necessary to build up the body of Christ, the church in practice preaches that women cannot be peers of priests or good enough to marry them and live with them. The inherent disrespect and institutional demeaning of women in this regard communicates a message to the wider society. It also screams hypocrisy from the foundations of the Canon Law.

On top of that general disregard for the emotional well being of women perverted as a taught virtue, now there is the overladen near hysteria of litigation paranoia such that clergy fear even trying to get close to women as friends for fear it will generate a lawsuit if it doesn't work out well. They thus view women as threats to their very livelihoods.
Perhaps they would have peace of mind if they could require women to sign waiver forms like the ones signed when participating in school sports: "I understand that Priest......(fill in name) likes me and has expressed an intention to get to know me outside church. This intrinsically poses certain risks of getting hurt. I fully assume all the risks and agree to participate understanding that no Priest will require me to disrobe without first presenting a four carat ring and a marriage certificate and engaging in some sort of ceremony involving peach roses, singing an Ave Maria and playing Ode to Joy." I am joking, but I am not. A waiver might allay the wierdness that irrational litigation paranoia has generated which has caused clergy to really deeply harm women emotionally. This waiver could come with a friendship ring. Imagine a church culture where everyone had to respect the women who had the friendship rings rather than lob vicious gossip at them. Imagine a church culture where it was applauded that male priests could form loving long term stable holy healthy monogamous relationships that honored one woman as their beloved. If it doesn't work out they get the ring back and can pawn it for the
organ fund.

All of this fear and loathing of women and keeping them down and at a distance is completely contrary to the Holy Spirit who overpowered Mary sufficiently to impregnate her, creates an ethic that destroys families and undermines God's mission in the world. It also insults Mary, who wouldn't be anything to anyone if she were not a Mother.

If one in Five Women in America are getting abortions, lots of them are Catholic and lots of Catholic boys are getting them pregnant. That means lots of Priests are not getting through.

A cultural institution which allows Priests only to be friends of men and fears women dooms the entire culture to a profound spiritual deadly disrespect of women- which disrespect piled on top of the extant cultural disrespect is manifesting itself in 48 Million abortions. One in Five women get an abortion in America at some time in their lives. One in Five women have been failed, dumped, disrespected and their offspring discarded by men who fail, dump, disrespect and discard them and their offspring. The cultural norm in America is that Men do not know how to be friends with women, how to uniquely respect them, how to protect their emotions, or how to honor them. In short, they don't know or act as if they know what love really means. A man who does is a rare diamond in the dung pile of sexploitation, abuse, neglect, adultery, whoremongering and emotional manipulation that pervades the current culture. Where Jesus intended his leaders to model this (instructing all Bishops and Deacons to be married honorably to one woman) the church spits it back in his face- and destroys women who in turn destroy their offspring.

Men do not get modeling relationships with women from the media- they get rampant sexploitation. They don't get it from home as the families disintegrate and the economy forces both parents to work more and spend less time raising children. They get a selfish fend for yourself ethic there. They don't get it at catholic church from the priests because they can only befriend men, and they can only live with men. The catholic church puts on a pedestal and worships the Virginity of Mary which distorts the scriptural teachings on proper healthy holy inter-relationships between the genders. The homosexual and other sex scandals do nothing for modeling proper heterosexual friendship behavior toward women either.

The Church does not need another Pavone -style 75 million dollar lobbying enterprise order of single men to lecture pregnant women. The Church needs an order of Married Priests who are actual fathers living community as faith families to model to society- this is the Biblical model. It is pure scandal that only the Protestant world gets this and attempts to model it-- and stupid that the Catholic world rejects it as being too Protestant. It is biblical.

The current all male cast of quasi-castrati institutional gender slighting priests spits in the face of Saint Joseph. It is the exact opposite of what he did to provide solid care, support and protection for Mary. It spits in the face of Jesus who did know how to love, respect, befriend and honor women.

This lack of respect for the relevance of catholic clergy is another obvious fall out from the scriptural disobedience of forbidding any priest to marry. In this case it's directly traceable
affect on the decline of the moral fabric has profoundly deadly consequences. If Priests knew how to conduct relationships such that they modeled the "no sex before marriage" rule, actually did marry and had babies in the morally ordered way the church envisions, loved their wives enough to support them emotionally and even financially so that their wives sung of their loving kindness forever, society would have to sit up and take notice- and the entire culture of death would be resurrected.

As it is now, young men more often than not have an OH PalEEZE "talk to the hand Padre" disregard for any moral authority who cannot say he has been there.