Abuse cases show need for greater women's role

Meanwhile at the United Nations, we heard the OFFICIAL party line of the Vatican vis a vis women:
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/vatican_representative_to_un_warn...
http://www.vatican.va/news_services/or/or_quo/text.html#7
In other words,
Keep 'em dumb, keep 'em down!
Keep 'em barefoot, keep 'em pregnant!
Keep 'em veiled, keep 'em cloistered!

I hope the article signals some significant change in Church in the near future. Experience and science concur that male/female mutuality is essential in every social aspect of human healthfulness. Refusal of Church to acquiesce to this fundamental relationship in human nature assures inevitable and tragic exposures of consequences of the defect. Church leadership could save the people and itself a lot of grief by making an affirmative move, sooner rather than later, to correct this catastrophic defect in the Church's structure and function.

I agree implicity.
But I have to equally acknowledge that in my experience, it would take a select few to have the impartially required to do the job.
Many Religious women come under the duristriction of the local Bishops or maybe a better way of saying it, is they are indpendent.
In Australia, we had a Brigidine and the spirit of her Order was a definate presence.
She is committed to her religious life and community, prudent logical and has an abundance of commonsense as I would understand it and well respected.
She has made it publicly and privately known how sickening the whole abuse situation is and a lot of the foot work has been taken doggedly with lack of co-peration at times and more importantly, she rings true.
She never gives up and the Catholic Bishops Conference have been fortunate indeed that she was chosen take on the task.
I'm sure there would be many others, we have been fortunate to have her here. The Lords timing is always perfect.

If women are still blocked from ordination, from full service to God and community, women will still not be able to "rip the masculine veil of secrecy" or the Vaticratocrasy code of silence. As stated, women being always relegated to inferior positions do not have any governance ability at all and the abuses will sadly continue unabated. No women as priests or bishops or archbishops or cardinals or popes leads to continuation of male code of silence and the church of the male clergy pedophiles hierarchy, which is what the RC church is right now, the Church of the Male Clergy Pedophiles Hierarchy.

Scaraffia is undoubtedly right about the church not including women in ledership roles. The abuse scandal may not have snowballed the way it did. That said, 'institutionalized' people ofte have their own culture so, perhaps it may not have done much at all. Say what you will about the entire scandal, in the end, it may work out well in that it will force the higher ups to do something about management. GM had to go bankrupt and still did not want to change its corporate culture.

Lucetta Scaraffa's remarks are right on, but they don't go far enough. The Roman Catholic Church is paying a high price for excluding women from the priesthood. We have the mafia-like clerical culture where secrecy is prized ahead of veracity, and personal loyalty is prized ahead of ability or virtue.

As long as we have the all-male, supposedly celibate clerical culture we have now, I see little that will change.

Steve

This does not logically hold. The largest institutional group of child abusers by far are public school teachers unions. School officials and union officials are often female and yet their teachers abuse at a rate that makes the rate of all clergy of all religious groups microscopic in comparison. This is just as bad as the "celibacy made them do it" argument. That is not true because the largest single overall group of child abusers are married men. They obviously are not celibate--and they have the female influence of their wives.

My experience with a female diocesean chancellor and female religious superiors major suggests that women who rise to certain positions of power do so by playing the same games and being "good soldiers" just as men who find themselves in the same position have done.

This is no different than in the outside world. A female corporate CEO rises to her position by dint of the same ambitious tactics as her male counterpart.

It is human nature, not human genitalia, that govern, in the end.

Sister Catherine Mulkerrin

Abuse cases show need for greater women's role

Letter to the Editor of the New York Times:

May 27, 2008

If ever a U.S. woman religious of the 21st century deserves to be honored in a very visable and public way by the Roman Catholic Church it is Boston Sister of Saint Joseph, Catherine Mulkerrin, “Catherine Mulkerrin, Activist Boston Nun, Dies at 72,” (05/22/08).

She attempted to revive the long dead moral consciences of bishops to the plight of probably thousands of victims of clergy sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Boston alone.

She was in the forefront of doing the right thing and thinking first and foremost of protecting children and doing right by the adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse by clerics in the Archdiocese of Boston.

In her short tenure as assistant director of the Boston Archdiocesan Office for Victims of Abuse from 1992 to 1994, she did not prevaricate or equivocate and she certainly did not present to victim/survivors a female version of the clericalism and abuse of position and power that so many bishops and upper level clerics exhibited that has pulled our church down into this black hole of sexual abuse, molestation, rape and sodomy that we euphemistically refer to as the exploitation of children.

Her immediate superior in that office was Bishop John McCormack who later received his own diocese.

To think that in later years she articulated the belief that she though she was a failure!

Far from it.

She gave strength and resolve to those of us who came after her.

May she rest in the peace of God’s love she so richly deserves.

Sister Maureen Paul Turlish
Victims’ Advocate
New Castle, Delaware
maturlishmdsnd@yahoo.com

Oh, yes!!

Regardless of other issues/concerns, to assume that a greater influence of women in the Church would prevent the physical and sexual abuse of children and teen-agers is naive in the extreme. Women are just as capable as men of beating and/or molesting minors. I've known plenty of women over the years to whom I would not have entrusted one of my children. This is an issue of sanity, not gender.

This is another reason for ordaining women as priests and bishops. This really must happen. The Church as it is now is in such a final state of decay that perhaps the full implosion must take place before we can make the radical changes that are needed.

"Women, in fact, both religious and lay, BY NATURE would have been more likely to defend young people in cases of sexual abuse, allowing the church to avoid the grave damage brought by these sinful acts."

I guess sexism and double standards are alive and well at O.R. If someone had written in an op. ed., "The frequent inability of women BY NATURE to be decisive renders them unable to hold positions of authority in the highest offices of the Church," there would have been a hue and cry. Why is it permissible to stereotype men as less inclined to protect youth in such cases than women would be?

Dear Editor,
Please rewrite the heading of this article.

Please---everyone knows that Bene 16 and his troops (all male clergy) are scared to death of women, but they quickly forget that without women none of them would be alive! Women---stop having babies until these men get their act and their respect for women correct! We simply do not want any more clerics like the ones we have currently starting with Bene 16!!!!