"Women Challenge Gender Apartheid in the Catholic Church" by Angela Bonavoglia

Roman Catholic Womenpriests'
Movement:Historic Ordination of
U.S. Bishops on April 19, 2009

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/angela-bonavoglia/women-take-on-gender-apar_b_678836.html


Ordination Ban Central to World’s Oldest Patriarchy
"In a world radically changed by the women’s movement, the Catholic Church stands –- proudly—as one of the last bastions of patriarchy. Led by an unapologetic boys’ club, it has embraced a system of gender apartheid, deeply hostile to women’s agency, power and voice. Central to that system is the absolute ban on women’s ordination. An all-male priesthood deprives women of power by locking them out of the highest levels of leadership and decision-making, including and especially on matters affecting women’s most intimate lives, on maternity and sexuality. It also sends a vivid and visible message that women cannot, must not, are utterly unequipped to represent the Divine."
"Because religion remains an extremely powerful force in the world, religiously countenanced discrimination against women has wide influence. It undergirds laws, policies and cultural practices that keep women in many places on earth silent and subservient, powerless over their reproductive health and lives, in abusive relationships, and in poverty. The Church refuses to endorse the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS, endangering the many women who are powerless to dictate the terms of their sexual relations and at highest risk for the disease; refuses to support birth control, even though spacing births helps reduce the hundreds of thousands of maternal deaths each year, while also increasing the survival of babies; and condemns pregnancy termination even in the most dire circumstances, in Brazil excommunicating the mother and the doctor who ended the pregnancy of a nine-year-old raped by her stepfather."