International Women's Day

[Luis Gutierrez]

Kenneth Hyde wrote:

> While I'm not going to argue with the basic premise here (I agree  that 
> there needs to be a larger number of women in positions of  religious 
> leadership), I would like to point out that there are many  women who 
> are in positions of leadership and power within the  Catholic church: 
> the mothers superior of the various convents.   Historically, some of 
> these women have wielded enough power to affect  church policy and 
> doctrine.  While the current picture within the  Catholic Church is 
> fairly bleak, let's not make it worse than it  already is by ignoring 
> the bright lights that do exist.

Just for clarification ... by canon law, only those who are ordained 
(i.e., deacons, priests, bishops) can have authentically sacramental 
roles of authority in the Roman Catholic Church.  Certainly, many women 
have been influential in the history of the church.  Mother superiors 
cannot hear confessions or celebrate the eucharist for their nuns.  It 
is not a matter of "ignoring the bright lights that do exist."  It is a 
matter of recognizing that only ordained males can represent God and act 
sacramentally "in persona Christi."  This is a shameful situation, and 
one that harms both men and women in church and society.  Tokenism will 
not do.  I recently read a very interesting article:

South America and Women in Government
By Justin Vogler, The Globalist, 10 March 2006
http://www.theglobalist.com/storyid.aspx?StoryId=5163

I think the last three paragraphs are especially interesting:

"I asked Marta Lagos whether the number of women in power reflects a 
change in attitudes towards women in South America. “Politics is 
changing much quicker than society,” she replied. “It will take 
generations before fundamental attitudes change, but it is a step forward.”

"Angelica Vargas is 18 years old. She lives in a lower-middle class 
neighborhood in the Chilean port of Valparaiso and wants to study 
accounting. I asked her if a female president would change men’s 
attitudes towards women in Chile.

“Nothing changes,” cried Angelica. “What does it matter who the 
president is? The men around here are all terribly sexist — and they are 
going to go on being sexist.” She paused for an instant and then added: 
“What might help is if they elected a woman Pope.”"

Get the point?

Luis