A crime, I tell you
Good good. The Vatican is still alert, it’s on the job, making sure nobody sneaks anything past..
The Vatican insisted Friday that it is properly following Christian tradition by excluding females from the priesthood as it issued a new warning that women taking part in ordinations will be excommunicated…”The church does not feel authorized to change the will of its founder Jesus Christ,” Amato said…The reference is to Christ’s having chosen only men as his Apostles.
Yes, but as I’ve murmured before, JC did a lot of things, and the Vatican doesn’t feel compelled to imitate all of them. (Poverty springs to mind, and then settles down there and makes itself at home.) It is not as self-evident as the Vatican would apparently like to think that JC’s choice of apostles was intended as a sex rule for all time.
The decree was published Thursday by Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, which in a headline called the ordination of women a “crime.”
Yeah, and an exceptionally vicious crime at that.
Pope Benedict…has consistently rebuffed calls to change traditional church teachings on divorce, abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage and the requirement that priests be male and celibate.
No kidding. That’s presumably what they chose him for – the ability to rebuff calls to change ‘traditional church teachings’; the narrowness and malice to call the ordination of women a crime; the blindness and authoritarianism to insist on continuing an all-male clerisy that presumes to tell women what to do and what to be.
Over at Talking Philosophy we’ve been arguing about the nice old ladies who have such a gentle faith. Nothing to get worked up about. But that gentle faith, nine times out of ten, gives what people like Benedict need to leverage positions things like the Vatican’s opposition to divorce, euthanasia, gay marriage and a celibate male priesthood. Everyone who espouses Roman Catholicism, whether they agree with the pope or not are giving him the clout to make these antediluvian claims, which are so primitive they keep hiding them behind claims of human dignity, sanctity of life, the essential second-rate moral quality of married life, and the bondage that it imposes no matter what horrific disaster is hiding under the rubric. So, you get warm and fuzzy thinking about God’s son dying on a cross for you. Go get a muffler or a quilt. The ordination of women is a crime! Give me strength. Saying that it’s a crime really is a crime, and someone should be held responsible.
Years ago I was travelling on a desert road in Iran, near the border of Afghanistan, when my hosts proudly showed a radio program they could get on their car radio – the BBC World Service. The bulletin reported that a group of women had been ordained to the Anglican ministry in my home city, the first in my country.
And two of them were people I knew!
Aren’t these clowns of the same ilk as the committees that decided centuries ago which writings were to be included in their holy book in the first place? They pick the rules and then apologise for interpreting them and enforcing them. Nice work if you can get it.
SO anyone who ordains a women gets excommunicated as does any woman seeking ordination. Nice. thats a quick way of getting rid of the trouble makers and scaring the stuffing out of the believers. Theres no misogny like religous misogny
It’s not only a question of this pope Marie-Therese. Isn’t there a question how the church in the future could possibly repudiate what this pope has determined?
A bit like Paul VI. Despite the objections of his advisors, he issued Humani Generis, and thereby bound all his successors to the idiotic position that the church takes on contraception.
The dead hand of the past and its grasp is a real thing when you raise your leaders to the equal of gods. Indeed, say no more.
It’s authoritarian to insist all organizations be ordered on liberal principles.
And which principles would those be, Carter??
Just a thought – but how do we know this or any other pope is/was a bloke?
We know freemasons have silly roll one trouser leg up, expose a nipple initiation tests to prove they’re not one of the dreaded ladies, but isn’t there a Catholic ceremony where candidates to be priest/cardinal/pope have to wander about semi-dressed to prove their manhood?
Seems an obvious oversight when women are such a worry to them. After all, they have pointless rituals for everything else!
Ooh, I love Carter’s paradox, very postmodern.
So because the pope does not insist that all organizations be ordered on liberal principles, the pope is a good anti-authoritarian? Lovely!
DFG: Liberal principles of non-discrimination and equality.
OB: The idea a liberal moral order must be imposed on all of society without exceptions is authoritarian, isn’t it?
“Imposed”? How? Is Ophelia suggesting that we march into the Vatican with guns and MAKE the pope concede his position as pontiff to a woman?
Advocating for universal principles is not “imposition” and it’s not authoritarian. Authoritarianism requires the presence of an authority with the power to force everyone to do what he wants.
Carter, so you take the UDHR to be authoritarian? So you’re a fan of the Cairo Declaration are you?
OB: The short answer is I reject the UDHR because I’m not a liberal universalist. I reject the Cairo Declaration because I’m not a muslim.
You don’t think liberalism is authoritarian? Why then are there free speech restrictions in so many ‘progressive’ countries, and how do you explain the EU?
“liberalism is fundamentally opposed to authoritarianism”
Liberals pretend they are being neutral when they coerce and enforce liberal morality. That’s how they justify restrictions on speech liberals find immoral, for example. It’s no less authoritarian than laws against blasphemy, it’s merely less honest.
“If you’re not a a liberal universalist, you really don’t have much business rejecting the Cairo Declaration, do you”
That’s a bizare statement. Were the Crusaders universalist liberals?
We seem to have gotten off track, so I’ll ask again: why must a liberal moral order must be imposed on all of society without exceptions? Why shouldn’t a private institution be free to order itself as it sees fit on its own principles?
You’re using the word ‘liberal’ sloppily. You must be from the US, yes? In the rest of the world ‘liberal’ doesn’t mean just everyone to the left of Bill O’Reilly. Genuine liberals don’t ‘justify restrictions on speech liberals find immoral’; some people on the left do, but they’re not genuine liberals.
You’re not asking again, because you didn’t ask that questiion before. It of course depends how you define ‘liberal moral order.’ Take Yearning for Zion Ranch, for instance. I don’t think adult men there should be allowed to marry young girls to older men. Is that a liberal moral order? Yes, in my case, but on the other hand laws against statutory rape are quite widely accepted in the US, not necessarily on liberal grounds. There’s some overlapping consensus, in short.
It also depends how you define ‘to order itself as it sees fit’ – because that could mean murder, rape, assault, imprisonment, torture, all sorts of things, and again, there’s an overlapping consensus that people shouldn’t be free to do things like that.
I think private institutions should be free to order itself, up to a point, and I would guess that so do you; we perhaps differ on where the point is.
But as for the Catholic church – it’s not a private institution. It’s one of the most public institutions there is; it has huge power and even huger influence; that’s why I don’t think it should be free to order itself as it sees fit in every possible way. It shouldn’t be free to run industrial schools the way it ran Goldenbridge, for example.
Duh – a private institution should be free to order itself.
One more thing – I never pretend I’m being neutral. I don’t consider the UDHR neutral. I know perfectly well that I’m advocating something in particular.
I do however think an insistence on rights leaves room for other people to have the right to choose to think and act differently – up to a point, the point being where they affect other people. Insistence on removal of rights leaves less room for other people to choose to think and act differently. I wouldn’t call that neutral, but I would say that it leaves people with more rights and choices than coercive anti-rights regimes do. Yes, I put the Catholic church in the latter category. It has limited power to enforce its coercion, but it does its best.
“Genuine liberals don’t ‘justify restrictions on speech liberals find immoral’; some people on the left do, but they’re not genuine liberals.”
So what are the people that imposed these restrictions then? I’m not sure how else to describe them. You, I believe, favor speech restrictions. Are you not a liberal?
I am American. Europeans view the US as reactionary, and both Europeans and Americans on the left and right percieve Europe as more progressively liberal than the US. The justifications used for the authoritarian speech restrictions that have been enacted all across Europe are always liberal ones. You might say what you see are liberal premises being taken to logical conclusions.
“as for the Catholic church – it’s not a private institution. It’s one of the most public institutions there is; it has huge power and even huger influence; that’s why I don’t think it should be free to order itself as it sees fit in every possible way.”
It does have influence (which doesn’t mean it’s not a private institution). Hence the hostility toward it. The liberal state, correctly, percieves it as a threat to its authority. As a non-liberal who appreciates liberty, I happen to think counterbalances to the state are a good thing. Not allowing women priests isn’t an infringement upon anyones freedom, but being threatened or even arrested by the police for expressing opinions is.
No, you’re still using liberal incorrectly – you’re using it to mean just generic left. Liberal means insisting on the importance of basic rights and freedoms; the justifications used for the authoritarian speech restrictions in Europe have not been liberal ones, they’ve been multicultural ones (largely). Holocaust denial is a complicated issue which is somewhat separate for historical reasons, but it’s still not liberal-specific.
No I fucking don’t favor speech restrictions – I pitched a huge fit over the religious hatred law in the UK a year or so ago. Yes I am a liberal. This is my point – you’re using the word incorrectly. Liberals in the UK opposed the religious hatred law; it was multiculturalists and communitarians who wanted it, not liberals.
I know Europeans view the US as reactionary; I didn’t just wake up this morning you know.
I think some counterbalances to the state are a good thing, but, as before, it depends.
“Not allowing women priests isn’t an infringement upon anyones freedom”
Of course it is!
DFG: Liberal principles of non-discrimination and equality.
Oh. Those.
Given what I have read in your correspondence with OB above, I can only guess that you will have some definition of those principles that transcends normal usage – for example: how some Seppos view and use “democracy” and objectivists the word “altruism”.
By maintaining those definitions, broadening and narrowing them to suit your purposes, you will be able to circumvent any logical fallacies.
Excellent work.
But boring as batshit to debate.
“the justifications used for the authoritarian speech restrictions in Europe have not been liberal ones, they’ve been multicultural ones”
Multiculturalism is a consequence of, or we might say evolved, liberalism. Central to multiculturalism is the belief that not respecting other cultures is a form of discrimination, as is allowing speech because it supposedly undermines the equality of certain groups or persons. Such arguments are similiar to the claim not allowing women priests discriminates against women; it’s the same basis. So you can have free speech, as long as you say acceptably liberal things, and you can have free association, as long as the association is ordered on liberal terms.
“No I fucking don’t favor speech restrictions”
My mistake, I must have confused you with someone else.
Lack of a first amendment has led to speech laws Carter.
Wrong, Carter. For the tenth time: you’re using the word ‘liberalism’ sloppily and inaccurately. The word is widely and sloppily used to mean ‘left’ in the US but it’s not used that way in the rest of the world, and it’s not the original or core or most useful meaning of the word. I know what multiculturalism is, and I also know that it’s not a consequence of liberalism (genuine liberalism, not the baggy US version of the word) but in strong tension with it.
Yes, you do have me confused with someone else.
“Why shouldn’t a private institution be free to order itself as it sees fit on its own principles?”
Because when a private institution orders itself – it also has the propensity to order those within it. It can simply ride roughshod over them, take advantage of the fact that it is to no one beholden and whatever principlesit may have had to begin with just goes out the window. Because it runs, the institution as it sees fit – it can control those within it – as it is not answerable to anyone. If the wrongs are to it pointed out – it does not have to adhere to the concerns, as it is autonomous and owes no allegiance to sinner.
Secrecy/sexualphysical/psychological/mental/emotional/child labour abuses of the highest order permeates and attaches themselves to institutional settings that are of it – allowed run free. There has to be checks and balances in place. Goldenbridge Industrial School, Dublin was one example of just one institution in the past that was almost by the government allowed autonomy. Today, other similar institutions and it will be costing the Irish government over 1.3 billion Euro. The government of Ireland is now paying a heavy price for not holding itself accountable in the past.
So ‘private institution’ how are you at all? Not very fit to run the show.
Private Institution continuation.
BTW, there were also a myriad of holy Mary’s/Joe’s who looked on at the picturesque settings and the Goldenbridge swans in the nearby canal, and gazed at the holy statues, and the light coming from the glass pane windows of the chapel. Everything was exquisite to the eyes of these beholders and life seemed to them to be ever so idyllic. They were practically in love with the Religious Sisters of Mercy’s way of life. Nevertheless, down yonder in the backdrop against all this dreamy beautiful setting stood a big grey building – and within it was a secret maze-like hidden prison yard with even higher grey walls. There was a sinister silence all round as the 150/200 inhabitant children or so by the religious were kept busy in the Secret Goldenbridge Rosary Bead Factory. They were making rosary beads for Mother Ireland. Nobody in authority knew about this illegal activity this was industrial school training – and punishment for having been born. The institution was private. It could do what it liked. Some other children/toddlers who were not busy at the child slave labour had to sit on potties for hours on end. They were by the staff even fed their supper on them. This abominable system prevailed behind closed doors in a private institution that the outside world never saw. The moral of the story is – do not be taken in with the outside beauty of all religious places you may visit as you may never know what goes on behind its closed private doors.
Reall crucial point is what would Pope John XII have said about this.
Octavius, the Charlemagne character that he was by birth would have pondered in his Palace of the Popes and have bitterly wept over the whole scenario.