I missed the discussion and didn’t read the posts…but I think I know why.
First, let me say that I like being a woman and the whole idea is silly. We are made with beauty and dignity. It is sadly misguided for a woman to want to be anything other than who she was made to be. In other words, why reject your unique beauty and try to unsucessfully become someone else? We are a sadly misguided culture.
I think it all starts with the idea of self worth. Our culture values materialistic things. It says that we are not born with dignity, but earn it. It says that women are valuable because of what they achieve outside of the family.
Women see sucess differently than men. We intuitively gage it by relationship. We want to be loved. In order to achieve dignity and feel worthy of love (in the eyes of our culture), we try to live up to that expectation.
Women in the 70s bought the lie but never had to live with the consequences. They stupidly passed it on to their daughters. Women of the eighties and 90s were mostly neutral on it but outwardly professed the femminist line in order to gain acceptance from the culture. Very few of this era were brave enough to reject it and risk scorn. It didn’t help that the men of this era bought it too and wanted someone that they could be proud of…all the more motive for women not to reject it. Today, the lie is getting old. Women at my college don’t feel too intimidated to question the femminist dogma. Everyone laughs at professors who feel the need to apologise for “offending” women in some way.
Those who bought the lie in their hearts, one that was handed them at an early age, slowly chose to become millitant about it rather than question it. It’s a twisted way of trying to gain love and acceptance. If the lie is never questioned, they become militant about wanting others to agree to it because they want to achieve what our culture says we should and what men do in order to feel loveable. I know it sounds simple, but if one is caught up in this, then telling them that they are not “good” enough to be a priest is like telling them they are not good enough in general.
Its one of those lies that is so outrageous that people actually believe it.
Tell your daughters that their dignity and loveability has nothing to do with becoming sucessful. We are all different parts of one body, all complimentary, all needing one another. Tell your boys too because it starts as women trying to live up to expectations.
