To be honest, I had no intention of commenting upon this train wreck of a piece. When one comes into the game with the pretense that persuading the bishops is a fool’s errand, one has already removed oneself from the debate. What follows in such a piece is self aggrandizement. One particular section needs commentary though, if only to be an example to others of what not to argue.
Ms. Kennedy Townsend writes:
While the pope preaches love, listening to the other has been a particular stumbling block for the Catholic hierarchy (as it is for many in power). The hierarchy ignores women’s equality and gays’ cry for justice because to heed them would require that it admit error and acknowledge that the self-satisfied edifice constructed around sex and gender has been grievously wrong.
Women’s equality is defined in a two-pronged way. The first way it is defined is for women to be able to have sex and not have to worry about supporting a baby because of it, like men. Of course she doesn’t phrase it like that. She suggests among other things that birth control “should be a question for morality and for science.” Obviously her conception of morality is a personal conception and certainly not something to be confused with religion. Despite several reading of Humana Vitae, I’m not finding any debates about science within it. The scientific community was pretty comfortable at the time with the finding that babies are formed by combining a sperm and an egg, a myth scientists still find suitable for the masses today.
The second prong of the argument is the argument over women priests. Of course the only reason we don’t have women priests is because the Vatican suppresses dissent and then Cardinal Ratzinger never had the opportunity to hear the good arguments for women priests because he was holed up in the Vatican. Whatever one’s opinion of women priests, the absence of them in the Roman Catholic Church isn’t due to an absence of debate. That ordination for women did not prevail did not mean there was an absence of debate. There is condescension in declaring there hasn’t been a debate, because she is in essence declaring the Vatican’s stated position unworthy of debate.
In regards to the justice demands of gays, again the Vatican does not ignore them. It has addressed them in various forms several times. Of course what Ms. Kennedy Townsend is really arguing is that the Church hasn’t acceded to the demands of justice of homosexuals. Rather than rehash this debate, let’s address the reason she gives for the Vatican’s reluctance: the Vatican would have to “admit error and acknowledge that the self-satisfied edifice constructed around sex and gender has been grievously wrong.” I feel like I’m reading out of one of the books where I’m supposed to insert an adjective or a noun, and it will be funny in the end. As best I can tell, the edifice is the hierarchy’s power or authority, but I’m fairly certain that wasn’t constructed around sex or gender. Perhaps the edifice is patriarchy since it is generally opposed to the individualism often at the front of feminism (particularly American) and homosexuality. But the Catholic hierarchy is not patriarchal in nature and in fact rejects generation from within (bringing forth of children by the ordained.) How either edifice is self-serving again defies rational explanation. In form, the argument is the equivalent of a tantrum.
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