The female ordination faction is killing me. I wrote the last article to clarify the one before it but I think I made it worse. I was trying to say that Catholic women are free to make a plan for community reform without asking for ordination. When I said the bit about ‘resistance from the Church’ I was referring to the influence of fatherhood initiatives on family courts in the United States. I don’t know if this is the Knights of Columbus or Roland Warren’s National Fatherhood Initiative, but in any case, it’s a serious matter because custody is being awarded to abusers and this is resulting in the deaths of children. (The Knights of Columbus is a Catholic organization. Warren’s Initiative is not.)
On the other hand, I meant it when I said the Church speaks with a masculine voice. Maybe I’m thinking about this in the wrong way, but I don’t know why women in the Church can’t organize in their own way rather than fight for position in a male hierarchy. It seems to me their happiness might just be a matter of achieving a little distance. But then I’m not a member of the Church so maybe I’m being too theoretical about this.
I’ve offered solutions in the past but I don’t consider them to be as important as the questions that I’m trying to answer. If someone else has better solutions, that’s fine with me. When I suggested some time ago that people should be organized into smaller political units and that they should own property in common I was trying to answer questions about community cohesiveness and reliable representation. I assumed that real solutions would have to start in communities that solve their own problems. So when I discovered in The Joy of the Gospel that the Church has developed a whole theology around the discovery and encouragement of new cultural manifestations I knew right away that the Church depends on lay people, rather than religious leaders, to create culture. I don’t recognize a similar understanding behind female ordination.
I’d appreciate a discussion from Catholics about what they hope to accomplish by this strategy.