The Pope and The Woman: The Bad and The Good

From Thomas Reese, who details five problems and five opportunities — go to the link for the full article:

The Bad.

When it comes to women, Pope Francis has five strikes against him, but he also has some good points.

First strike: He is male.

Second, he is celibate.

Pardon the stereotyping, but the third strike against Francis is that he is Latin American. Latin American culture is patriarchal and paternalistic.

The fourth strike against Francis is that he has no experience of first-world feminism.

The fifth strike against him is his opposition to women’s ordination.

Five strikes would normally more than put you out of the game, but Francis is no ordinary player. Most women still love Francis and can forgive him these failings because they love so many other things about him: his simplicity, his concern for the poor, his authenticity, his stress on compassion, etc.

The Good.

So the first point is: He is used to seeing women in powerful political roles.

Second, although he may not have experience with first-world feminism, he did learn about women’s issues by listening to the concerns of women in the slums of Buenos Aires.

And this is the third point: Bergoglio is not afraid of smart women.

Perhaps the most hopeful thing Pope Francis has said about women is that the church needs a new theology of women in the church….

By saying that we need a better theology of women, Pope Francis threw John Paul’s theology of women under the bus.

By saying that the church does not have an adequate theology of women, the pope is inviting all the church (women and men, theologians and bishops), into a conversation about women….

[Jesuit Fr. Thomas Reese is a senior analyst for NCR and author of Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church. His email address is treesesj@ncronline.org. Follow him on Twitter: @ThomasReeseSJ.]