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Monday, February 02, 2015

The church gets it wrong yet again

Remember the Pontifical Council for Culture, the author of that YouTube video that was laughed off the site? ...

[...] "You can't make this up," wrote columnist Phyllis Zagano, an academic at Hofstra University in New York. "The Vatican's Pontifical Council for Culture has posted a two-minute video of a sexy blonde woman inviting other women to crowdsource another video for its February meeting. "Aside from the obvious - sexy sell has long gone by the boards in developed nations and is totally unacceptable in predominantly Muslim countries - the fact of the matter is that highlighting a stereotypical spokeswoman is not the way to ask for women's input." .... Consuela Corradi, a sociologist who was one of 15 women to advise on the initiative, complained that criticism of the video was unfair. "If we had chosen an ugly woman, would that have changed the message? I don't think so," she told Associated Press.

Right, heaven forbid we should have to look at an ugly women :( Well, the Council is in the news again with an issues paper released ahead of the conference ... Pontifical council to consider challenges women face in society, church. In the paper, which aptly begins with a quote from complementarisnist Edith Stein, the Council criticizes what it considers secular society's negative treatment of women while totally ignoring the negative ways the church itself treats women, and in fact the Council opines that women are really really different than men (we have intuition!) and that women don't actually care at all about women's ordination. What a bunch of rubbish.

Listen to a podcast on sexism in the church with the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church Katharine Jefferts-Schori, the recent US ambassador for Religious Freedom the Rev. Dr. Suzan Johnson Cook, The President of Union Theological Seminary, The Rev. Dr. Serene Jones, and the one and only Sister Joan Chittister, from this article: Sexism: The Original Sin Of The Church (All Together Podcast). Here's a bit of the article ...

[...] Recently, Rev. Libby Lane was consecrated as Bishop of Stockport making her the first woman Bishop in the Church of England. The stain glass ceiling break-through only occurred after years of debate and still, at her consecration, a priest stood and objected. In Orthodox Christianity, the Roman Catholic Church and in some Protestant denominations, women are not allowed to serve as pastors or priests. Pope Francis, who has been so open on many issues, has slammed the door shut to any debate on women serving as priests.

Given that women surrounded Jesus during his ministry, were the last to stay with Jesus at the cross, and the first to see him resurrected; it appears clear that Jesus believed in the spiritual power and perception of women. So, why does the church not hold women in the same esteem as did Jesus, the founder and center of the faith?

To help him understand the continuing sexism in the Christian Church, Raushenbush spoke with four extraordinary women: the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church Katharine Jefferts-Schori, the recent US ambassador for Religious Freedom the Rev. Dr. Suzan Johnson Cook, The President of Union Theological Seminary, The Rev. Dr. Serene Jones, and the one and only Sister Joan Chittister ....


Listen to the podcast at the link above.

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