"Pontifical Council to Consider Challenges Women Face In Society and Church"/Bridget Mary's Response

http://www.catholicsun.org/2015/01/30/pontifical-council-to-consider-challenges-women-face-in-society-church/

Council members are not proposing a discussion of ordaining women priests, the document said and, in fact, statistics show ordination “is not something that women want.” However, it said, “if, as Pope Francis says, women have a central role in Christianity, this role must find a counterpart also in the ordinary life of the Church.”

Bridget Mary's Response to Pontifical Council: 

Unless women are ordained deacons, priests and  bishops, they will not have equality in decision making in the church according to Canon Law. Ordaining women is a justice and pastoral issue. Women need to be liturgical leaders at the altar and the gospels must be interpreted from the experiences and lives of women who are spiritual equals created in God's image. Women priests offer healing to centuries old misogyny of the institutional church! 

The vast majority of Catholic women today do not want a bishop’s “purple biretta,” it said, but would like to see Church doors open “to women so that they can offer their contribution in terms of skills and also sensitivity, intuition, passion, dedication, in full collaboration and integration” with men in the Church.

Bridget Mary's Response to Pontifical Council:

I agree that women do not want a bishop's purple biretta,forget the clerical clothing,  but women bishops need to be present at the decision making table at the Vatican on all issues especially those that apply to women's lives  such as contraception. 

The preparatory document looked at how much pressure women face regarding their body image and the way women’s bodies are exploited in the media, even to the point of provoking eating disorders or recourse to unnecessary surgery.

“Plastic surgery that is not medico-therapeutic can be aggressive toward the feminine identity, showing a refusal of the body in as much as it is a refusal of the ‘season’ that is being lived out,” it said.

“‘Plastic surgery is like a burqa made of flesh.’ One woman gave us this harsh and incisive description,” the document said. “Having been given freedom of choice for all, are we not under a new cultural yoke of a singular feminine model?” 

Bridget Mary's Response to Pontifical Council: How many women did the Pontifical Council consult on women's bodies and the dangers of plastic surgery to feminine identity? An all-male celibate clergy is ill-advised to plunge into the waters of the feminine identity? There is too steep a learning curve here, guys!

 document also denounced violence inflicted on women: “Selective abortion, infanticide, genital mutilation, crimes of honor, forced marriages, trafficking of women, sexual molestation, rape — which in some parts of the world are inflicted on a massive level and along ethnic lines — are some of the deepest injuries inflicted daily on the soul of the world, on the bodies of women and of girls, who become silent and invisible victims.” Bridget Mary's Response to Pontifical Council: Violence against women is an important area and patriarchy needs to acknowledge it complicity. One needed area of improvement is prevention of abortions through education and family planning including contraception.   By Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service.