My Response:
I agree with Jamie Manson's excellent analysis on the Church's complicity in violence against women. The challenge the Church faces is to change its teachings and laws to reflect the full equality of women as images of the divine and decision-makers. In order to achieve this, Pope Francis must begin by acting on his words that women are equal to men. It is also important that the Church abandon a theology of complementarity which asserts male superiority that men have a "God-given"right to rule over women." And it is time to stop blaming God for sexism in the Church and embrace the full equality of women in every aspect of the Church's teachings, liturgies, laws and practices! Bridget Mary Meehan ARCWP, https://arcwp.org
I agree with Jamie Manson's excellent analysis on the Church's complicity in violence against women. The challenge the Church faces is to change its teachings and laws to reflect the full equality of women as images of the divine and decision-makers. In order to achieve this, Pope Francis must begin by acting on his words that women are equal to men. It is also important that the Church abandon a theology of complementarity which asserts male superiority that men have a "God-given"right to rule over women." And it is time to stop blaming God for sexism in the Church and embrace the full equality of women in every aspect of the Church's teachings, liturgies, laws and practices! Bridget Mary Meehan ARCWP, https://arcwp.org
Of all of the religious instruction classes that my mother took as a girl, one lesson in particular always seemed to stay with her: the day that the nun explained the church's teaching on divorce.
A girl in the class asked the sister whether it would be okay to leave her husband if he hit her.
"No," the nun replied. "Even if he beats you, you have to stay with him."
When she got home from class, my mother told my grandparents about the lesson. Horrified, they vehemently disagreed with the nun and told her she would have to divorce any man who put his hands on her.
My mother has recounted this story many times throughout my life, and what strikes me most about it is that she, in fact, did stay with a man who hit her. He was my stepfather, and I was 4 years old when I witnessed him punch her. I was never the same again...
...And yet the pope is the leader of a church that still to this day does not clearly teach that divorce is acceptable in situations of domestic violence. Francis' apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia quotes Pope John Paul II in telling those in abusive marriages that "separation must be considered as a last resort, after all other reasonable attempts at reconciliation have proved vain..."
And Francis still has not managed to definitively change the church's teaching that those who are divorced and remarried outside the church should be denied Communion, a spiritual violence that only exacerbates the shame and guilt heaped on those who have ended their marriages...
For all of the pope's concern about women, he still does not believe that they are equal to men. The day that teaching changes, the church can really begin confronting all forms of harm, oppression and degradation forced on women because of the dehumanizing belief that they are inferior simply on the basis of their sex.
The next time the pope wants to preach about the horrors of domestic violence or any other violence against women, he should first examine the ways in which the teachings of his own church play a role in creating or reinforcing women's suffering."
[Jamie L. Manson is books editor and an award-winning columnist at the National Catholic Reporter. Follow her on Twitter: @jamielmanson.]
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