January 1 is a holy day in the Catholic Church, honoring Mary as the Mother of God. To the best of my understanding, one of the biggest differences between Catholics and other denominations of Christianity is the way in which Mary is worshipped.
I find it ironic then that the Catholic Church places Mary on this pedestal, but they lag behind other religions in how women are treated overall.
Growing up, only the boys in my class were trained to be altar servers. I don’t recall many women reading at mass in those earlier days. About the only place you’d find a woman involved was as an organist or member of the choir.
This changed slowly. Girls were allowed to be acolytes a couple years after I started. Women are more prevalent in all aspects of mass roles. Except one.
When will women be allowed a place in becoming priests? I used to think, “Not in my lifetime,” but Pope Francis sure seems to be a little more liberal in his thinking. He raised eyebrows during his first Holy Week as the pontiff last year in allowing women to be part of the traditional foot-washing ceremony on Holy Thursday. This had not been done before, with the rationale that these people represented the apostles of Jesus.
I always want to shake my head when people use the Bible as an excuse for being prejudiced. “It’s in the Bible!” Really? Shall we dive into both the Old and New Testaments’ rules about slaves? Apparently, it’s okay to buy them from the countries around you, but not any farther away. How about the rules for food that is clean or unclean? Our menus would be a lot shorter if we followed biblical rules.
So before someone says women can’t be priests because they represent the Apostles, who were all men, and the Bible says so, hold your horses. You don’t get to pick and choose which Bible verses you follow. You either follow ALL of them word for word or go with the understanding that, historically, things change.
During Jesus’ time, women were not considered anywhere near equal to men, so of course He would not call them to be his closest companions – who would take Him seriously? If Jesus showed up today and cavorted around with 12 men, many would question that. It’s much more likely that he would have a more diverse group of friends.
Before Pope Francis was picked, I used this forum to wish the Catholic Church would pick someone who could modernize the church in order to bring people back to worship. The pope has begun this process through his welcoming of all people, no matter who they are, what area of diversity they represent, or what they believe.
I bet the pope would even invite Phil Robertson to come for a visit. All the hype about the Duck Dynasty star’s comments received much more attention than they deserved. Everyone’s entitled to an opinion, and whether you agree with someone or not does not make your antagonist a bad person. I’m sure there will be people who disagree with my ideas in this column, but I’m not going to hate you because you don’t agree with me.
Let’s face it: the Catholic Church has a couple of big problems right now – a lack of priests and the abuse scandal. Don’t for a minute think those two aren’t related. If women could be priests and especially if priests could be married, the abuse would not be so widespread.
The Church continues to lose people though; it’s not surprising folks won’t trust an institution that allows and covers up a scandal, but then turns around and says being a leader in that Church is a calling that only 50% of the population can have. Plus, the Church has always said its leaders are infallible and have tried to worm out of laws in our country, hiding behind some old-fashioned code of separation of church and state in that arena.
Perhaps Pope Francis is laying the groundwork already to allow 100% of people who feel called by God to become priests. It sure seems like it if you examine his words closely. I pray this is so, because it would go a long way to saving the church in so many areas.
Word of the Week: This week’s word is pecksniffian, which means pretending to have high moral standards, as in, “The columnist hoped he did not come off as pecksniffian since he really stood by what he said.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!