Abandon the Church because of the Vatican = scapegoating millions of people who depend on the generosity of good Catholics who live out of being centred in Christ, and not the Vatican.

It is a challenge to hold the tension.

The contradiction with my mother was that she also believed, like JPII, that a woman’s primary responsibility was as a wife and mother. In other words get an education and then give it all up to stay home and have babies.
This caused a great divide between us. At one point I stopped talking to her which after two days drove her to tears. After that we talked but avoided all conversations about women’s roles in society....
 
...She went from my harshest critic to my strongest ally. She has been the voice of encouragement for me ever since.
I never asked my mother what caused her transformation and she never volunteered an explanation. We simply went on as if it had always been that way."

 
I believe change is possible, but that change only happens when people perceive that the costs of not-changing weigh increasingly heavily upon them, to the point of becoming increasingly unbearable. 
 
An outside observer might conclude that your mother changed her views when she perceived that they actually did cost her something in terms of her ability to be a supportive mother and maintain a good relationship with her daugher, and to demonstrate herself as a supportive mother maintaining a good relationship with her daughter in front of the community.
 
It is why I brought up the question of the costs of the spiritual subordination of women on motherhood.  The hierarchy claims that the spiritual subordination of women supports motherhood, but I observe that the spiritual subordination of women is a direct source of vicious arguments, power ploys, and alienation between mothers and their children.  There are direct costs to families and to society when women are not granted their own spiritual identity as human beings in their own right apart from their sexuality and the possible successes and achievements of their children, and it's not a theoretical nor theological nor traditional argument, but one that actually has the potential to create change when people begin to observe the very real, very personal, costs of not changing.   
 
woman who votes with feet
 

Abandon the Church because of the Vatican = scapegoating millions of people who depend on the generosity of good Catholics who live out of being centred in Christ, and not the Vatican.

What kind of arrogance is it that believes that the Catholic Church is somehow the sole organization helping educate humanity and improve conditions on the face of the earth?
What kind of ignorance believes the Catholic Church provides the world with an adequate model of functional family, community, and society and doesn't see schools and social services being closed and sold to pay off lawsuits incurred solely by an irresponsible incompetent hierarchy that offers apology and no real change?
 

This is a poignant reminder to North Americans that not everyone in the world is in the position to rally for the highest rung of maszlo's heirarchy of human needs.

I'd like to point out that there are missions also in North America.  There is horrendous poverty in the streets and hills of North America.  There are places and situations in North America that are as bad as any of the worst in the world.  My grandmother learned to read and write at a mission school, with the sisters.  By the time she was a grandmother, she had a lot of hard-earned life experience, and a lot to say about a lot of things in North America, including the Church.
What she said by the end of her life was exactly this:
"All those years they spent teaching me to read and write, all those years!  All those years of struggling to learn to read and write.  Now I can read and write and speak in their language.  Now I can be heard like a human being can be heard!
And now they tell me to shut up.
They tell me to shut up.
So what was it all for?
What was it all for all those years of struggling to learn to read and write and speak their language?
In the end they just told me to shut up.  I'm a woman."
 
That is a direct cost of the spiritual subordination of women.  It goes way beyond putting bread on the table and way beyond Maslow.  It involves God-given talents suppressed and wasted.  It involves truths that will never be spoken nor heeded in the community.  It involves changes that need to be made for the betterment of all mankind and the healing of the earth that won't be made as long a people are content with apologies in the name of God rather than change in the name of God.  It involves disconnecting people from one another and from God, doing it all in the name of God, and calling that representing Christ on earth.  There are costs incurred by the spiritual subordination of women.
 
woman who votes with feet

The spiritual subordination of women destroys motherhood, it does not support motherhood.
 
The spiritual subordination of women creates a culture of demeaning and denying economic, social, legal, religious support to mothers, children ,family .  It  entitles men to be able to abandon their families due to the perceived 'worthlessness' of the women and 'her issue' the children.  After all, children and childraising are "women's work', and thus must be 'beneath' the man's work and his time. Solely a woman's role: parenthood, alone her 'punishment' for sin and being 'female' and not a male, a wonderful male, the supposed icon of Christ, a male. 
 
 Subordination, subjugation of women, being lesser, leads to abuse and neglect. of both women and children.

Nonetheless let us be clear about this:  God is female and male, male and female are both images of God, created in God's image.  One in Christ, both sexes to be mutually loving and supportive, serve each other, serve one another in love and humility.  Subordinate, dominant is not the way of Jesus at all.  All this stuff about women being evil sinful downfall of man is error and all this women submit to men stuff is error too as Jesus does not teach that or treat women like that.  That is an iinvention of men and it is wrong.

What kind of arrogance is it that believes that the Catholic Church is somehow the sole organization helping educate humanity and improve conditions on the face of the earth?

 
Who said this?

Abandon the Church because of the Vatican = scapegoating millions of people who depend on the generosity of good Catholics who live out of being centred in Christ, and not the Vatican.

What kind of arrogance is it that believes that the Catholic Church is somehow the sole organization helping educate humanity and improve conditions on the face of the earth?

Who said this?

I am asking why someone would apparently equate standing up to the Vatican and refusing to be allegiant to the Vatican as "scapegoating millions of people who depend on the generosity of good Catholics" as though the Catholic Church were somehow the only organization helping educate humanity and improve conditions on the face of the earth, as though Catholic Charities (and other charitable Catholic and ecumenical organizations) were not financial entities separate from the Vatican, as though one must somehow be faithful to the Vatican or a "good Catholic" in order to support them, and as though the majority of the generosity of good Catholics were not currently paying off the bankruptcy, secrecy, and corruption of its leadership.
 
woman who votes with feet
 
 

???

ORIGINAL: Guest

An outside observer might conclude that your mother changed her views when she perceived that they actually did cost her something in terms of her ability to be a supportive mother and maintain a good relationship with her daugher, and to demonstrate herself as a supportive mother maintaining a good relationship with her daughter in front of the community.
 

 
 
My mother’s support never came across as lip service. She did not agree just to have a good relationship. If I conveyed that impression I am sorry. She had no problem disagreeing with me publically when she held a different point of view.
 
Her conversion was real.
 
And I never withdrew from my mother. I might have disagreed with her and been angry with her views. But I would never abandon her. She knew that.
 
You have within you the power to bring about change.
 
Have you tried talking to people in your family, community or the Church? Have you engaged in dialog and listened to them? Have they seen how acutely their beliefs and actions have hurt you and others? If rejected, have you gone back? Have you showed them that you love them even with all their personal failings? Have you refused to relinquish ownership of your Church to ignorance and stood steadfast in your beliefs and convictions?
 
Ideas are powerful. Words are powerful especially when they are uplifting, inspiring, and delivered with all the love for humanity that is needed to heal a wounded heart.
 
Change is not always instant. Often it is gradual, in fact so gradual that you don’t even realize it is happening.
 

Ideas are powerful. Words are powerful especially when they are uplifting, inspiring, and delivered with all the love for humanity that is needed to heal a wounded heart.

 
 
beautifully said.

 
Have you tried talking to people in your family, community or the Church? Have you engaged in dialog and listened to them? Have they seen how acutely their beliefs and actions have hurt you and others? If rejected, have you gone back? Have you showed them that you love them even with all their personal failings? Have you refused to relinquish ownership of your Church to ignorance and stood steadfast in your beliefs and convictions?

I have talked with countless people, including the ex-altar boy contemplating suicide with his loaded handgun, the old man with tears in his eyes relaying the story of trying to document and preserve the Native American language the mission school beat his father as a child for speaking, and too many victims of rape and incest and abortion to count, and I think that nothing is going to change regarding the ordination of women and the spiritual subordination of women in the name of God until people observe and document the real life tangible costs of the spiritual subordination of women on motherhood, family, community, and world. 
 
Are we simply going to continue shaking our heads wondering how one of her sons ended up a burned out honors student while the other ended up a drug addict and refuse to take personal responsibility for having taught her from childhood that her sole ordained mission in life was to entirely sacrifice herself for her children and live out her own ambitions through them (irregardless of the fact their own interests, talents, and ambitions in life were different from her own?)  Are we simply going to keep blaming the victims of abortion, disfunctional relationship, and failed and abusive marriage, and refuse to take personal responsibility for not having spiritually empowered our daughters from birth as children?  Are we simply going to keep shaking our heads in wonder and amazement at how priests could ever end up as alcoholics and pedophiles in spite of all their education and training and not take personal responsibility for having made both gods and shadows of men?  Are we going to continue defining the spirituality of women to be a function of their sexuality and not expect rape or divorce or breast cancer or age or widowhood or childlessness to destroy women's sense of identity and self worth entirely?  
Such are the real, tangible costs of the spiritual subordination of women.
 
The hierarchy officially and legally owns, controls, and disposes of the Church according to its will.  The members of the Church are officially and legally guests of the hierachy in the Church, over which the membership has no real control nor authority.  It is a monarchy, based on Roman law.
My arguments are not with family nor community and they do not involve hurt, rejection, nor personal failings on the part of anybody.  My argument is not with the membership of the Church.
 
My arguments are on the absolute necessity of no longer teaching children that Roman law defines and represents the teachings of Christ and the will of God on earth, because what we teach them today is the future they build tomorrow. 
 
The Roman Catholic Church would cease to be Roman if it ever ordains women.  Its sense of self, its very sense of personal identity as a church and tradition is very deeply tied to being, looking, and behaving Roman.  It is literally the Roman Catholic Church:  the Roman Universal Church.  I do stand steadfast in my convictions. I believe that people are entitled to be Romans and continue to teach their children to be Romans all they like, but I personally have hung up my toga.
 
woman who votes with feet

The Roman Catholic Church would cease to be Roman if it ever ordains women

 
Oh?  The Creed is the deposit of faith.  There is nothing in it that says, "I believe in men only priests." 

Oh I wish it was that easy,  Sadly the Roman church is more than the Creed, and outside of Jesus and the New Testament.  Seriously, the Vatican and the Pope have really made Tertullian, Ambrose, Aquinas and Augustine, etc. all who teach women as outside of religion, unworthy, animalistic, subordinate to godlike men, made these writers """God"""", not Jesus or God or the Holy Spirit.
 
The Vatican and Pope crush and deny and demean women, exclude women and subordinate women spiritually and it is very toxic.  It is very harmful to the society, world and the church.  Note the only Catholics who get excommunicated or interdicted are the ones who support women or are women.

No redemption for Romans just because they are Roman?
 
 

No redemption for Romans just because they are Roman?

The Roman Empire died off some years ago... it was in all the papers...
I'm sure they took the redemption issue up with God sometime about the first millennia.
The big question is, can we afford to value Roman tradition above Christ's own words and example into the third millennia?
 
woman who votes with feet

ORIGINAL: Guest

 
Have you tried talking to people in your family, community or the Church? Have you engaged in dialog and listened to them? Have they seen how acutely their beliefs and actions have hurt you and others? If rejected, have you gone back? Have you showed them that you love them even with all their personal failings? Have you refused to relinquish ownership of your Church to ignorance and stood steadfast in your beliefs and convictions?

I have talked with countless people, including the ex-altar boy contemplating suicide with his loaded handgun, the old man with tears in his eyes relaying the story of trying to document and preserve the Native American language the mission school beat his father as a child for speaking, and too many victims of rape and incest and abortion to count, and I think that nothing is going to change regarding the ordination of women and the spiritual subordination of women in the name of God until people observe and document the real life tangible costs of the spiritual subordination of women on motherhood, family, community, and world. 

 
My questions dealt more with the people at the root of the problem (priests, family members, neighbors who hold sexist views.) Not the victims of abuse.
 
I do not believe all the sins in the Church can be blamed solely on Roman Culture. You give Romans too much credit. There is a point where people have to take responsibility for their own actions.
 
The Roman Catholic Church can be transformed in Jesus Christ. Women can and will be ordained. But I also believe that to make this happen, the Church needs active voices such as your own within the Church to hold them accountable.
 
Make an appointment to see your parish priest and talk to him. Talk to the family and neighbors who oppose ordination. Explain why this is wrong. As I noted previously, there is great power within you. Use it. The choice is yours.
 

The Roman Catholic Church can be transformed in Jesus Christ.

 
I believe this.  Christ's message is one about redemption and the triumph of good over evil.
 
 

Where you find no love, put love and you will find love.
 
*St. John of the Cross
 
 
~there is a choice.

How to deal with Popes, the boss of the organization , who dictates that no woman is allowed to touch eucharist chalice, linens, or be ordained?
 
When the Pope refuses to acknowledge women in any way, Early Church or since, how to deal with that ?
 
Lack of love , lack of honesty and good will , lack of Christianity and lack of the Pope really acknowledging Jesus's teachings and actions in regards to women, is the huge problem here.
 
The Pope controls the church and undermines Jesus. The laity are stymied by him and the hierarchy.  Laity boycots do work.
 
 How can love conquer such evil discrimination and hypocrisy on his part?  I suppose it is public pressure, people not giving money to the church, people staying away from the church, that forced the apology to the pedophile priest victims-
 
--yet no reform or change to stop the abuse from continuing so even that apology does not really make the church any safer from abuse of children---