Monday, April 04, 2005
And Ain’t I A Woman?
Unless you’ve been living in a cave (or lined up outside Toys ‘R’ Us for three days, waiting to buy Revenge of the Sith action figures), you know that Pope John Paul II died on Saturday night. A solemn and momentous occasion, losing the man who’s been the leader of one of the world’s most prolific churches. But I’m finding it impossible to achieve any level of actual papal-passing grief.
Listen, I know some of you out there are JP2 fans, and I think that’s just great. I think it’s really swell to love the pope. And he did a lot of good stuff, what with the reconciling with other religious and visiting 129 countries and all. But before we all get caught up in funeral fever, let’s just check ourselves, shall we? To begin with, the man was 84 years old. That’s old. This is not a man cut down tragically in his prime. He lived a full life. And he got to be pope for an ungodly amount of time (no pun intended).
Then there’s the real issue. This pope, this benevolent, everyone’s-best-friend, Karol-from-Poland pope, was an unbelievable misogynist. News flash, kids: JP2 did not like women. And he spent the last 26 years working overtime to keep us in our place. When it comes right down to it, all the globetrotting and rift-mending in the world doesn’t quite make up for the fact that Pope John Paul II obviously believed that, on a fundamental level, women are not as good as men: that we can’t hold the same offices or fulfill the same responsibilities, that we are unfit for service at the same level, and that we should generally be subservient in pretty much every way. (And in this case, actions and words ran at about the same decibel level.) I can’t bring myself to feel too much remorse at the timely death of a man who clearly held me in such low regard without ever having met me.
I read an interesting fact in the Times yesterday. Did you know that there are now more parish administrators than parish priests in the United States? Interesting. Do you know who these parish administrators tend to be? That’s right: women. Kind of makes you wonder who’s really holding the Church together, doesn’t it? And with numbers dwindling in the clergy, it’s not like those parish administrators are going to become less important in the coming years. My parents’ home parish in Anchorage, for example, functions pretty much entirely through the efforts of a female parish administrator, female director of religious education, female youth minister and scores of volunteers, most of whom are (say it with me) female. Anyone sensing a pattern?
This is a major moment in Catholicism. It would be nice to think that the next pope might be a little more progressive, a little more pragmatic. Of course, the College of Cardinals is packed with a bunch of old conservative guys who generally share the most recent pope’s reactionary approach to gender politics, so it would also be a foolish thing to think. But for the next three weeks or so, I can at least live with the hope, small though it may be, that change is afoot. After all, Karol Wojtyla came out of left field. Who’s to say the next Holy Father won’t, too?
posted by Myster at 4:05 PM
