Pope hopes for more 'widespread, incisive' feminine presence [CNA]

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RPRPsych said:
The language of “potent” and “impotent” sits oddly with discussion of the Catholic Church. It is the language of the pagan cult of the body. If we are looking for male reproductive organs in religion, Hinduism and totemism are still around. 😃
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God is a Father. Abraham likewise was very potent when it came down to that.
Fatherhood is the language of potency
And to attack Scholasticism for “emasculating” the Church - in the light of encyclicals like Aeterni Patris - is borderline heretical. St. Thomas Aquinas must be turning over in his grave.
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It was a little bit surprising to hear that is his argument. I don’t have enough information to have an informed opinion.
Augustinians might feel differently though. This is the kind of thing that might bring a big “I told you so” grin to their faces.
St Bernard and the women may add a little bit of the mystical,emotional, touchie-feelie kind of elements, but I honestly don’t have a clue where his argument against Scholasticism being a feminizing influence would come from.
I think he wants women to participate in the Church as women - not as “womenpriests” or as “women’s rights activists”. He wants them to be latter-day versions of Martha and Mary of Bethany. 👍
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And that is where the puzzlement comes in. As much as feminist leaders are filled with consternation about the patriarchal structure of the Church, and would like women to reject the church, it is women that are the ones keeping the Christian machine running. This is exactly the role that women are playing in the Church. It is widespread participation, incisive, and feminine role. What more could be hoped for? The women in the pews are more than willing to a take a back seat when it comes to the priesthood and allow the men to wear those black dresses up at the altar, and even the pink ones, depending on the season.
 
Darryl1958 said:
God is a Father. Abraham likewise was very potent when it came down to that.
Fatherhood is the language of potency
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I fully agree that God is masculine, and has been portrayed as such in both Scripture and Tradition. But fatherhood isn’t just about sex - ask a single mother. The Son was “begotten, not made”.

I just found “The Church Impotent” a rather unseemly metaphor, and indicative of the Viagra generation’s tendency to see everything in terms of a particular image. 😃
It was a little bit surprising to hear that is his argument. I don’t have enough information to have an informed opinion.
Augustinians might feel differently though. This is the kind of thing that might bring a big “I told you so” grin to their faces.
St Bernard and the women may add a little bit of the mystical,emotional, touchie-feelie kind of elements, but I honestly don’t have a clue where his argument against Scholasticism being a feminizing influence would come from.
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Well, Augustinians gave us macho Martin Luther, so St. Bernard isn’t that bad. 😉
And that is where the puzzlement comes in. As much as feminist leaders are filled with consternation about the patriarchal structure of the Church, and would like women to reject the church, it is women that are the ones keeping the Christian machine running. This is exactly the role that women are playing in the Church. It is widespread participation, incisive, and feminine role. What more could be hoped for? The women in the pews are more than willing to a take a back seat when it comes to the priesthood and allow the men to wear those black dresses up at the altar, and even the pink ones, depending on the season.
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I think he’s sending a message to the “feminist” leaders - that there’s a time and a place for them, but that this does not include priesthood. 🙂
 
Darryl1958 said:
What more could be hoped for? The women in the pews are more than willing to a take a back seat when it comes to the priesthood and allow the men to wear those black dresses up at the altar, and even the pink ones, depending on the season.
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Maybe we need some blue ones. 😉
 
Lets also not forget here that the pope was talking about a balance in family and public roles of women.
 
ProVobis said:
I really don’t see the big deal over this. Nuns have (or had) been effectively running parishes and parish schools for a long time. In a few circles mothers are home schooling their kids. (Is the loss of religious life and more mothers pursuing the workforce the real underlying issue here?)

OTOH, stats show that father’s influence over their kids’ long term commitment to the Church attendancewise far supercedes that of the mother. This data is readily available through search engines. So I don’t know where we’re going with these “axe to grind” arguments.
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In my humble opinion this has more to do with the rise of the absence of fathers in families today. Once they start disappearing in the domestic church, the family, they will start to disappear in the Church. They being fathers of course. I read somewhere that fathers are much more influential in whether children stay in the faith or not.
 
Sarcelle said:
They being fathers of course. I read somewhere that fathers are much more influential in whether children stay in the faith or not.
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There are other sources but here are a couple:
Here’s a summary:
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In short, if a father does not go to church, no matter how faithful his wife’s devotions, only one child in 50 will become a regular worshipper. If a father does go regularly, regardless of the practice of the mother, between two-thirds and three-quarters of their children will become churchgoers (regular and irregular). If a father goes but irregularly to church, regardless of his wife’s devotion, between a half and two-thirds of their offspring will find themselves coming to church regularly or occasionally.
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A non-practicing mother with a regular father will see a minimum of two-thirds of her children ending up at church. In contrast, a non-practicing father with a regular mother will see two-thirds of his children never darken the church door. If his wife is similarly negligent that figure rises to 80 percent!
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The results are shocking, but they should not be surprising. They are about as politically incorrect as it is possible to be; but they simply confirm what psychologists, criminologists, educationalists, and traditional Christians know. You cannot buck the biology of the created order. Father’s influence, from the determination of a child’s sex by the implantation of his seed to the funerary rites surrounding his passing, is out of all proportion to his allotted, and severely diminished role, in Western liberal society.
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more at thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/thabitianyabwile/2010/12/16/fathers-and-church-attendance/
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If both father and mother attend regularly, 33 percent of their children will end up as regular churchgoers, and 41 percent will end up attending irregularly. Only a quarter of their children will end up not practicing at all. If the father is irregular and mother regular, only 3 percent of the children will subsequently become regulars themselves, while a further 59 percent will become irregulars. Thirty-eight percent will be lost.
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If the father is non-practicing and mother regular, only 2 percent of children will become regular worshippers, and 37 percent will attend irregularly. Over 60 percent of their children will be lost completely to the church.
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Let us look at the figures the other way round. What happens if the father is regular but the mother irregular or non-practicing? Extraordinarily, the percentage of children becoming regular goes up from 33 percent to 38 percent with the irregular mother and to 44 percent with the non-practicing, as if loyalty to father’s commitment grows in proportion to mother’s laxity, indifference, or hostility.
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Read more: touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=16-05-024-v#ixzz2sC2IDUaU
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Darryl1958 said:
God is a Father. Abraham likewise was very potent when it came down to that.
Fatherhood is the language of potency

It was a little bit surprising to hear that is his argument. I don’t have enough information to have an informed opinion.
Augustinians might feel differently though. This is the kind of thing that might bring a big “I told you so” grin to their faces.
St Bernard and the women may add a little bit of the mystical,emotional, touchie-feelie kind of elements, but I honestly don’t have a clue where his argument against Scholasticism being a feminizing influence would come from.

And that is where the puzzlement comes in. As much as feminist leaders are filled with consternation about the patriarchal structure of the Church, and would like women to reject the church, it is women that are the ones keeping the Christian machine running. This is exactly the role that women are playing in the Church. It is widespread participation, incisive, and feminine role. What more could be hoped for? The women in the pews are more than willing to a take a back seat when it comes to the priesthood and allow the men to wear those black dresses up at the altar, and even the pink ones, depending on the season.
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:doh2:

The color is violet and it is a shade of purple (the rose ones are only optional and for only two Sundays).

Thank you for helping to remind me of why I am choosing lay celibacy over marriage.
 
Joie_de_Vivre said:
:doh2:

The color is violet and it is a shade of purple (the rose ones are only optional and for only two Sundays).

Thank you for helping to remind me of why I am choosing lay celibacy over marriage.
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My former priest had the sense of humor about that that didn’t leave his forehead as bruised as yours now is.

I am not sure why a joke about pink would turn you off of men altogether, but I fully respect your choice.
 
Darryl1958 said:
My former priest had the sense of humor about that that didn’t leave his forehead as bruised as yours now is.

I am not sure why a joke about pink would turn you off of men altogether, but I fully respect your choice.
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Try what appeared to be lack of basic theological knowledge and lack of basic color knowledge.

I’m not turned off of men, I’m still very much attracted to them, I’m just not going to get involved with them and it was a joke by the way.
 
Joie_de_Vivre said:
Try what appeared to be lack of basic theological knowledge and lack of basic color knowledge.

I’m not turned off of men, I’m still very much attracted to them, I’m just not going to get involved with them and it was a joke by the way.
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It doesn’t sound like you are joking.
It sounds like you do not want to have anything to do with men, no sacrifice is too big.

 
Darryl1958 said:
It doesn’t sound like you are joking.
It sounds like you do not want to have anything to do with men, no sacrifice is too big.
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That perfectly explains why my friends are overwhelmingly male.

Rose is such a lovely color.
 
:slapfight:To argue which came first, pink or rose, is akin to arguing which came first, red or rouge.

Anyway, the reason that I thought it was kind of funny was because one of my former priests came into church one advent, or whatever the appropriate Sunday it is to where that hue, and started chiding the other priest in the parish for being too chicken to wear the same shocking hue that he chose for himself. It was all rather light-hearted and fun.
Shocking pink is not the usual hue for priests to wear, to be sure, but it comes as no surprise that Pope Benedict would. He did make other fashion statements as well with his pointy red shoes that even Dorothy of Oz would die for.

Pink is getting to be a more macho color of late with all the football players sporting a shock of pink during breast cancer awareness month. There is also a ‘wear pink’ day in Canada now in which lots of people included all the tough guys wear a pink t-shirt to school in solidarity with some young guy who was bullied for doing the same thing.

Anyway, my apologies to anyone who took it too seriously. Waving a shock of pink in a thread about the feminization of the church is akin to waving a red flag in front of a bull, I guess.

Who knew that “seeing red” would be less dangerous than “seeing pink”?:kiss4you:
 
Darryl1958 said:
Honestly, I don’t think women’s participation is nearly as much of a problem as men’s lack of participation is. In many parishes, and especially among young people, I wouldn’t doubt that among regular church goers, women outnumber men by a ratio approaching two to one. In every area of participation, from altar girl to organization of church events, women are the ones stepping in to fill those roles.
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Actually, the latest CARA stats I’ve seen show that among older Catholic congregants, the gender ration skews but Generation X (now approaching middle aged!) started a shift where women pulled even with men and the Millennials now show Catholic women practicing slightly less than Catholic men.
 
a_cermak said:
Actually, the latest CARA stats I’ve seen show that among older Catholic congregants, the gender ration skews but Generation X (now approaching middle aged!) started a shift where women pulled even with men and the Millennials now show Catholic women practicing slightly less than Catholic men.
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Could be.
It is not my experience though.
 
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