Friday, May 18, 2012

The Roman Catholic church's war on women, II: an adolescent view of sex

Why are the Men in Rome getting their cottas in a twist over women? Because they are afraid of women. And, because they have a teenaged boy's view of sex and sexuality which makes independent women dangerous. Here's an article that discusses how the contraception battles reflect a stunted, non-adult view of women's sexuality.
…it is unsettling when men who may never have experienced sex feel qualified not just to speak about it but to pronounce on it with certainty.

[using] contraception [does not make] “pleasure the point of the act.” This is how adolescents think. Teenagers dream of constantly available sex, uninhibited by any possibility of pregnancy. That priests would talk the same way about sex between a husband and wife who have chosen to use contraception reflects inexperience and adolescent projection.

Adults understand that good sex, with or without contraception, goes deeper than pleasure. It is complex and demanding…

[E]very human activity has the potential to become unbalanced. Having children mindlessly, year after year, as former generations of Catholics did, is just as harmful to the social good as the refusal to connect sex with pregnancy. ....

To defend contraception within marriage is not to defend sexual license. Married couples who have pledged a lifetime of commitment to each other and their families have the right and the duty to make their own decisions about contraception. The church’s role is to help them arrive at the decision that is right for their lives. It is not to dictate one-size-fits-all rules that have no foundation in practical experience.
Given that the vast, vast majority of Roman Catholic women use some form of contraception, and given that Roman Catholics are THE most supportive religious group towards gay inclusion and marriage equality, and given that large numbers favor women's ordination, and given the universal dismay that has come from their investigation of the American nuns, and the universal disdain over their investigation of the girl scouts, it is way past time for the Old Men of Rome to go back into their palace and have some meaningful reflection about the role of women in modern lives. We're no longer limited to "madonna" and "whore".

Meanwhile, another blogger writes that the issue is the Vatican's effort to treat everyone like children, and a failure to recognize that the congregation has matured.  It's no longer "pray pay and obey".
The crux of the matter, as it were, is that most of the nuns, like many Catholics, have matured beyond the Vatican’s imaginings. The notion that postmodern Catholics assent to “the doctrine of the faith that has been revealed by God in Jesus Christ, presented in written form in the divinely inspired Scriptures, and handed on in the Apostolic Tradition under the guidance of the Church’s Magisterium,” (or, simply, the fathers know best) is simply ludicrous. As one observer asked me, “What Bible do they read? 
The truth is, most Catholics no longer look to Rome for guidance on our personal lives, or anyone else’s. Nor do we live within the narrow confines of a cultic Christianity, or, as women, accept male leadership and priestly ministry as if theirs were God-given and ours were not. We appreciate the complexity of these matters and strive to create forums in which to listen, discuss, discern, and pray. 
In short, our ways of being are as different from the Vatican’s as are our views....
The effort to rein in [the nuns] is meant as much to scare the rest of us into line as to corral the nuns. I can say with confidence that it won’t work.

1 comment:

Counterlight said...

Gary Wills has been publicly making this very point for years.