What does God make of feminism?

[adrift]

ABC does in fact contribute to the decrease in abortions and that is one of the reasons it is supported.

Since some abc is an abortifacient, it does not reduce but increased the amount of abortions. The harm it does to the souls who do this is never addressed.

It has been my contention that NFP is a direct result of the overwhelming refusal of Catholic men and women to use no method of avoiding pregnancy other than avoidance.

 

[Salonika]

It is a given that God is ungendered.

Therefore, why would God object to gender neutral language when we talk about or talk to God?

I think a number of us who were brought up in 1950’s tended, as children, to imagine God as an old bearded man in the sky from the language that was used about God.

However, as we got into our teens it became clear to some of us that this image demeaned God.

I also felt very stupid for ever having developed this image. Some of us adopted other images, others feeling duped, did not and dropped out. Some came back, some didn’t.

 

[PrayforMallory]

I can’t conceive of God asking for worship or obedience. .

Well, it’s the Catholic faith, which unfortunately, you seem to have placed yourself outside of. Please, rethink your position.

Read some of G.K. Chesterton’s writings and others.

God does demand that we worship him. It’s the main reason why we’re here in the first place, if I’m not mistaken.

When we aren’t obedient to God, we sin against him, and forfeit our souls in the process. This is the centuries-old teaching of the Catholic faith.

 

[Chaldean_Rite]

I guess I just look at it differently. I can’t conceive of God asking for worship or obedience.

Wow, that sounds appalling. He wants more than that, he wants your love. Offer yourself as a slave, and be like the Blessed Mother.

 

[PrayforMallory]

We as Catholics do not read the bible literalistically. I need admit no such thing nor show you anything. It is a given that God is ungendered. That is the teaching of the Church. We are interpreting the Bible all the time. Your use of Holy Ghost suggests you were not Catholic from the start. ?

The life and words of Jesus Christ, his death and resurrection, are historic truths.

God is gendered. You should stop thinking like an anthropologist and more like a Catholic. I know it’s tempting to do otherwise. Believe it or not, I used to be a liberal who adhered to every aspect of the Postmodernist critique. The truth is, though, that God became a man. That man referred to him as father. So did all of the Saints and all of the Popes.

We also refer to God as father. “Our father,” etc. We are not above Christ, who is God. If we don’t baptize a baby in the name of the "Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost (or Spirit), then that baptism is invalid. It’s clear that God at least wants us to think of him as male. Otherwise, the divine revelations our faith is based on are rendered null and void, in which case we might as well follow a different religion. Our religion cannot contradict the past, however. Our faith is timeless, and it leads to salvation, not to the progressive betterment of the material world (though it can often have that side effect).

If you want to pray to someone feminine, pray to Our Lady. She will lead you to her Divine Son.

I use Holy Ghost because I’m a traditional Catholic. I can understand your confusion though.

 

[PrayforMallory]

Therefore, why would God object to gender neutral language when we talk about or talk to God?

I think a number of us who were brought up in 1950’s tended, as children, to imagine God as an old bearded man in the sky from the language that was used about God.

However, as we got into our teens it became clear to some of us that this image demeaned God.

I also felt very stupid for ever having developed this image. Some of us adopted other images, others feeling duped, did not and dropped out. Some came back, some didn’t.

Please see my post. God the Son is definitely not ungendered, and God the Father wishes for us to think of him as a father, whether we like it or not.

Next time you are at Mass, look at the Crucifix. You can get a concrete idea of an image of God.

Unfortunately, a number of people brought up in the 50’s (and every other decade of the modern era) have placed themselves outside of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.

 

[PrayforMallory]

Ed every time this subject comes up, you talk about bra burning and men hating. When are you going to get unstuck from the 60’s? I’ve never seen anyone with such powerful anger at the 60’s as you. The world did not stop there, it’s moved on.

Your right about that. The traditional sacraments, liturgy, devotions, and theology are returning at long last.

 

[Salonika]

God the Son is definitely not ungendered, and God the Father wishes for us to think of him as a father, whether we like it or not.

This post is say why I think God is ungendered. It is not intended to lead to a debate/argument on this thread. I did think of starting a new thread but I think that would only led to discussion/debate which could become tedious and repetitious as much of it can be found on other threads and forums.

My starting point is that God is spirit and those who worship God must worship God in spirit and in truth (John 4: 24). I think spirit is genderless or above gender and is of a form that we can’t comprehend.

Language, while imprecise, is the only mechanism we have to communicate our ideas and beliefs and we do so using the language we have at the time and over time language changes.

So it doesn’t take much for “God is like a father” to become “God is our father” and then “God the father”.

 

[Chaldean_Rite]

The life and words of Jesus Christ, his death and resurrection, are historic truths.

God is gendered. You should stop thinking like an anthropologist and more like a Catholic. I know it’s tempting to do otherwise. Believe it or not, I used to be a liberal who adhered to every aspect of the Postmodernist critique. The truth is, though, that God became a man. That man referred to him as father. So did all of the Saints and all of the Popes.

We also refer to God as father. “Our father,” etc. We are not above Christ, who is God. If we don’t baptize a baby in the name of the "Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost (or Spirit), then that baptism is invalid. It’s clear that God at least wants us to think of him as male. Otherwise, the divine revelations our faith is based on are rendered null and void, in which case we might as well follow a different religion. Our religion cannot contradict the past, however. Our faith is timeless, and it leads to salvation, not to the progressive betterment of the material world (though it can often have that side effect).

If you want to pray to someone feminine, pray to Our Lady. She will lead you to her Divine Son.

I use Holy Ghost because I’m a traditional Catholic. I can understand your confusion though.

God, in his essence, is not gendered. “The Father” and “The Son” are the roles expressed in human terms. God is a spirit and spirits do not have sexes. Only the 2nd Person has a gender in the Flesh, which now, is forever.

 

[adrift]

So it doesn’t take much for “God is like a father” to become “God is our father” and then “God the father”.

Our Father came from Jesus not a progression of God is like to God is.

 

[SpiritMeadow]

Catholic do not teach that nothing in the bible is literal

From the Catechism:

The Church does not teach nor has it ever taught that nothing in the bible is “not literal”. The bible contains many different types of literature not just myth. No where in the Catechism is this idea put forth.

Up until the 60’s the Catholic Church used Holy Ghost. It was changed so as not to confuse people with the current understanding of ghost.

There is little point in getting into an old argument about literalism vs literalistic. We are not literalistic and haven’t been. That is fundamentalism plain and simple. The Church is not fundamentalist in orientation to defining scripture. Genesis is not taken to be literally true in most contexts, that is why there are more than one story about the same event. Furthermore i certainly didn’t say that nothing in the bible was to be taken as literally true. YOu are correct and make my point by stating that some parts are allegorical, and other literary forms. So try to be careful in reading. I said we were not literalistic and that is true.

 

[SpiritMeadow]

Since some abc is an abortifacient, it does not reduce but increased the amount of abortions. The harm it does to the souls who do this is never addressed.

What method do you consider abortifacient?

 

[SpiritMeadow]

Therefore, why would God object to gender neutral language when we talk about or talk to God?

I think a number of us who were brought up in 1950’s tended, as children, to imagine God as an old bearded man in the sky from the language that was used about God.

However, as we got into our teens it became clear to some of us that this image demeaned God.

I also felt very stupid for ever having developed this image. Some of us adopted other images, others feeling duped, did not and dropped out. Some came back, some didn’t.

I can’t imagine why God would be offended at all. I presume he is may find it quite amusing that we continue to speculate about issues we actually know nothing about. I could conclude he might wish we spent our time on something of importance such as doing as his Son taught us to others instead of arguing about his “gender” LOL.

 

[SpiritMeadow]

Well, it’s the Catholic faith, which unfortunately, you seem to have placed yourself outside of. Please, rethink your position.

You are getting way out of line and totally confused. Please read more carefully. Please rethink before speaking. God is undoubtedly entitled to my worship and my obedience. That he seeks it from me is clearly beyond our knowing. God needs absolutely nothing!

 

[SpiritMeadow]

Wow, that sounds appalling. He wants more than that, he wants your love. Offer yourself as a slave, and be like the Blessed Mother.

There is nothing appalling whatsoever. God needs nothing. He is everything. How demeaning to God to claim that he demands anything from us. He loves us unconditionally and following that example, we love him unconditionally one would hope. We worship and obey as best we know how because of that love. Some of you are reading in anger and reacting viscerally without making any attempt to read in context. God is so much larger than you make him. Please don’t allow your dislike of me to intervene in allowing you to read.

 

[SpiritMeadow]

The life and words of Jesus Christ, his death and resurrection, are historic truths.

Jesus life is historic, his resurrection is a matter of faith. His words are historic to the degree that they have been faithfully recorded. Don’t confuse what you believe (and incidently what I believe as well) as historically true.

God is gendered. You should stop thinking like an anthropologist and more like a Catholic. I know it’s tempting to do otherwise. Believe it or not, I used to be a liberal who adhered to every aspect of the Postmodernist critique. The truth is, though, that God became a man. That man referred to him as father. So did all of the Saints and all of the Popes.

Please refrain from giving me advice. The considered opinion of Catholic ans well as protestant theologians and church leaders is that God is spirit and ungendered. Your “traditionalism” blinds you to the truth of that. Reject it if you wish, but please do not state it as Catholic teaching. It is not so.

 

[TOME]

Whenever I see a question like the one that has introduced this thread a couple of thoughts seem to come almost immediately and simultaneously. One thought is that there is a presumption that somewhere in the Bible God spoke and gave us a definitive answer to this question. Another thought is God would probably answer if he was going to give a definitive answer by saying were are off the topic, and missed the mark once again. A third thought that comes to mind is it seems to me that everytime Jesus was asked a question such as this he usually didn’t give a specific reply and usually ended up frustrating those who were listening and waiting for an answer in which they could immediately use on their nieghbor with the introduction, “You see, I told you I was right…”

Christ’s reply, “Render to caesar…” is the prime example of my third point and I think if we were to ever get God’s thought on his opinion of feminism it would be along this same line. Perhaps God’s reply would be along this line we are to judge feminism in each of its aspects by asking the questions:

1. Does the particular aspect of feminism recognize the dignity and sacredness of the individual in particular and humanity in general?
2. Does the feminism that is being discussed enable an individual to live a life of love, that type of love revealed to us through Christ’s paschal sacrifice?
3. Does the feminism that is being discussed enable an individual to live a live of responsibility as demanded by each one of us as a Christian?

I think reflecting on all the aspects, components, varieties (needless to say I a’m looking for the right term without much success) of feminism from the three perspectives above would give us a pretty good idea of God’s opinion and not ours.

 

[edwest2]

Therefore, why would God object to gender neutral language when we talk about or talk to God?

I think a number of us who were brought up in 1950’s tended, as children, to imagine God as an old bearded man in the sky from the language that was used about God.

However, as we got into our teens it became clear to some of us that this image demeaned God.

I also felt very stupid for ever having developed this image. Some of us adopted other images, others feeling duped, did not and dropped out. Some came back, some didn’t.

God, not man, appeared in the form of a man and told us about our Father.

Only radicals insist on turning everything neutral. Gender exists. It’s real. It on’t go away. God chose the form of a man and Catholics revere His mother.

God bless,
Ed

 

[Chaldean_Rite]

There is nothing appalling whatsoever. God needs nothing. He is everything. How demeaning to God to claim that he demands anything from us. He loves us unconditionally and following that example, we love him unconditionally one would hope. We worship and obey as best we know how because of that love. Some of you are reading in anger and reacting viscerally without making any attempt to read in context. God is so much larger than you make him. Please don’t allow your dislike of me to intervene in allowing you to read.

Buddy, you need a reality check. God wants your obedience and love. And if you don’t give it to him, He promises all kinds of wonderful things:

14] "But if you will not hearken to me, and will not do all these commandments,
15] if you spurn my statutes, and if your soul abhors my ordinances, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant,
16] I will do this to you: I will appoint over you sudden terror, consumption, and fever that waste the eyes and cause life to pine away. And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it;
17] I will set my face against you, and you shall be smitten before your enemies; those who hate you shall rule over you, and you shall flee when none pursues you.
18] And if in spite of this you will not hearken to me, then I will chastise you again sevenfold for your sins,
19] and I will break the pride of your power, and** I will make** your heavens like iron and your earth like brass;
20] and your strength shall be spent in vain, for your land shall not yield its increase, and the trees of the land shall not yield their fruit.
21] "Then if you walk contrary to me, and will not hearken to me, I will bring more plagues upon you, sevenfold as many as your sins.
22] And I will let loose the wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number, so that your ways shall become desolate.
23] "And if by this discipline you are not turned to me, but walk contrary to me,
24] then I also will walk contrary to you, and I myself will smite you sevenfold for your sins.
25] And I will bring a sword upon you, that shall execute vengeance for the covenant; and if you gather within your cities I will send pestilence among you, and you shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy.
26] When I break your staff of bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and shall deliver your bread again by weight; and you shall eat, and not be satisfied.
27] "And if in spite of this you will not hearken to me, but walk contrary to me,
28] then I will walk contrary to you in fury, and chastise you myself sevenfold for your sins.
29] You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters.NOTE: IN THE WRITING OF JOSEPHUS, WHEN JERSALEM WAS DESTROYED IN 70 AD, THERE WERE ACCOUNTS OF WOMEN EATING THEIR CHILDEN
30] And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your incense altars, and cast your dead bodies upon the dead bodies of your idols; and my soul will abhor you.
31] And I will lay your cities waste, and will make your sanctuaries desolate, and I will not smell your pleasing odors.
32] And I will devastate the land, so that your enemies who settle in it shall be astonished at it.
33] And I will scatter you among the nations, and I will unsheathe the sword after you; and your land shall be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste.
34] "Then the land shall enjoy its sabbaths as long as it lies desolate, while you are in your enemies’ land; then the land shall rest, and enjoy its sabbaths.
35] As long as it lies desolate it shall have rest, the rest which it had not in your sabbaths when you dwelt upon it.
36] And as for those of you that are left, I will send faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; the sound of a driven leaf shall put them to flight, and they shall flee as one flees from the sword, and they shall fall when none pursues.
37] They shall stumble over one another, as if to escape a sword, though none pursues; and you shall have no power to stand before your enemies.
38] And you shall perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up.
39] And those of you that are left shall pine away in your enemies’ lands because of their iniquity; and also because of the iniquities of their fathers they shall pine away like them.
40] "But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers in their treachery which they committed against me, and also in walking contrary to me,
41] so that I walked contrary to them and brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled and they make amends for their iniquity;
42]*** then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, and I will remem*ber my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land. **
43] But the land shall be left by them, and enjoy its sabbaths while it lies desolate without them; and they shall make amends for their iniquity, because they spurned my ordinances, and their soul abhorred my statutes.
44] Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not spurn them, neither will I abhor them so as to destroy them utterly and break my covenant with them; for I am the LORD their God;
45] but I will for their sake remember the covenant with their forefathers, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God: I am the LORD.

 

[TOME]

Chaldean Rite,
While I disagree to several things our friend SpiritMeadow has written in this thread and I hope to discuss them with her but in other threads (topics that will deal more specifically with the nature of the Sacraments and the Church) I believe she has made several points that are deeply rooted and have a strong foundation in scripture and reflects many things our Holy Father has written.

(Before I continue I want to state that I will do my best to tie in all that I will write with the topic at hand although it may seem a little forced - I do admit).

Chaldean, you have presented us with an interesting list of sayings from the Old Testament concerning man’s relationship to God and man’s duty to worship God as demanded by God and what will happen to man and women who fail to live up to these demands.

However, I think the list you provided has an inheritant weakness and fails to reflect our Holy Father’s teachings on scripture. The first and most import aspect is what we find in the Gospel of Luke with the story of Christ meeting the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. The point here, as Christ himself taught, was all of the Old Testament points towards Christ, likewise, the whole New Testament points, in its own way back to Christ. The OT and NT cannot be fully understaood (if it ever really can be fully understood) with out a proper understanding of Christ. (Here I would suggest you read our Holy Father’s work, “Daughter Zion”.)

Now in light of Christ and through the best of scripture scholarship, acknowledged by Pope Benedict XVI, points to the relationship God calls we humans to have with him, both as individuals and in communion with one another, is best described as a marriaged covenant - a covenant based on Love, such as the marital love between a wife and husband. The First Letter of John re-enforces this concept in his whole explanation of how our relationship with God is based not on fear but on Love, that is our response to the God who loved us first and showed us the extend of his love through the “Christ-event” (my words). In the anthropology found in both the Old and New Testaments (here I suggest to google and find all the writings of Pope John Paul II on human anthropology) it becomes very clear that what is often expressed in human terms of “demands” and “threats” when seen in the whole of the context of all scripture these are actually expressions of love. They are expressions of love because it is God who is telling as, both as our creator and lover, that we need to do the things he commands not because we are his slaves (Christ did say something about not being slaves or servants) rather because he knows in fulfilling his “commants” we are actually bring into perfection our human nature.

In his work, “Introduction to Christianity” Pope Benedict, I think, has a wonderful reflection on the true meaning of death and hell which are one in the same. I would find it interesting to read your understanding of the passages you provided us here in light of what Pope Benedict wrote in his “Introduction”.

As I wrote above, I do not agree with all SpiritMeadow has written but I know she is right when she states that God loves us unconditionally we should love him unconditionally, however, unfortunatelly some of us seemed to have missed that part of her thoughts.

How does all this relate to God’s view of feminism? As expressed, I think what underlies the whole discussion is the question of what are those thing which we do or thoughts we hold or principles that form the foundation of our moral decisions that will bring us true perfection for us Christians mean in full communion with the God who loves us unconditionally. Does feminism, in all its aspects help acheive this union? Does our biblical concept of God help us to acheive this communion with God who is simply Love?