{"id":29133,"date":"2016-02-10T01:00:20","date_gmt":"2016-02-10T06:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=29133"},"modified":"2016-01-31T10:26:43","modified_gmt":"2016-01-31T15:26:43","slug":"qotd-the-catholic-church-is-unique-among-institutions-in-the-modern-west-in-taking-women-seriously-as-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/02\/10\/qotd-the-catholic-church-is-unique-among-institutions-in-the-modern-west-in-taking-women-seriously-as-women\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: “The Catholic Church is unique among institutions in the modern West, in taking women seriously \u2014 as women<\/em>“"},"content":{"rendered":"

Parse [the headline] carefully and one will find less overstatement than one might have hoped for. I did not use \u201cunique\u201d to mean \u201cexclusive\u201d; and \u201cmodern\u201d may be restricted to the last half-century or so. Focus, rather, on what is plainly intended: the italicized qualification after the long dash.<\/p>\n

Many individuals, of both sexes, do in fact take women seriously (as women). In many jurisdictions, this is now against the law, but it happens all the same. Various other \u201cfaith groups\u201d continue to recognize women as having their own distinct nature and identity \u2014 Orthodox Jews come first to mind, then Orthodox Christians. Lots of Evangelicals.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, most mainstream Protestant congregations, so far as they have any members left at all, formally withdraw this recognition. Too, many \u201cmodern\u201d or \u201cliberal\u201d or \u201crecovering\u201d Catholics (nominal ones who look upon Church teaching as merely quaint) reject the notion that women could be women. But the Catholic Church cannot always be held responsible for the views of those who contradict her. (Even if, in the long run, she probably can, as I argued here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Certainly, the post-Christian, post-rational \u201csecular\u201d authorities deny that women (or men) exist, and have gone to the trouble of eliminating \u201cfather,\u201d \u201cmother,\u201d \u201cson,\u201d \u201cdaughter,\u201d \u201cbrother,\u201d \u201csister,\u201d \u201cuncle,\u201d \u201caunt,\u201d and any other terms that seem to imply a sexual identity, from all legislation \u2014 making much of it retroactively quite insane. Their attack on what they call the \u201ctraditional\u201d (i.e. normal) family is unambiguous. For it was and remains highly sexed, whereas the new State-protected \u201calternative families\u201d are invariably sterile. (Some wiggle-room is still left for \u201cbreeders,\u201d however, pending the invention of new reproductive technology.)<\/p>\n

A good test of this \u2014 fanatic denial of the blatantly obvious \u2014 may be conducted by using the word \u201cpriestess.\u201d Those demanding female priests (an unCatholic notion if there ever was one) are likely as not to freak at the use of that word. They do not like the connotation, and will declare that it is \u201csexist.\u201d They want females to be priests the same as men. It would defeat this intention to call them \u201cpriestesses,\u201d as well as calling attention (among the historically informed) to the very conscious decision made by the early Church to avoid the cultural and spiritual implications of the priestess function within ancient and pagan religions. For priestess cults, and their reputations, were something early Christians wanted to get away from.<\/p>\n

David Warren, “Sexes & saxes”, Essays In Idleness<\/em><\/a>, 2014-12-03.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Parse [the headline] carefully and one will find less overstatement than one might have hoped for. I did not use \u201cunique\u201d to mean \u201cexclusive\u201d; and \u201cmodern\u201d may be restricted to the last half-century or so. Focus, rather, on what is plainly intended: the italicized qualification after the long dash. Many individuals, of both sexes, do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,11],"tags":[360,303,43],"class_list":["post-29133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-quotations","category-religion","tag-christianity","tag-sexism","tag-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7zT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29133"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29133\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29134,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29133\/revisions\/29134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}