To think that one cannot be both a Catholic and a Feminist?

[applesauce1]

Inspired by another thread on here, my husband and I had a lively debate about this earlier. I think that a Catholic person cannot also be a Feminist for many reasons, but among these reasons, that an anti-abortion stance is an anti-woman stance.
My husband thinks that a Catholic could be pro-choice and therefore be a feminist, or that a feminist might also disagree with abortion.
He is a cultural Catholic (now atheist), and probably took this stance because he'd like to think that his mum is a feminist. In the end, we agreed to disagree. I think it is a black and white issue and he would like to think there are grey areas.
Do you think there's a way that someone can be a Catholic and also a feminist?

I do t really understand what the issue is with catholics thinking abortion is wrong. They think lying and theft are wrong too yet live in the real world where people are people.
Feminists often don’t practice what they preach either. Fallibility is human.

I do t really understand what the issue is with catholics thinking abortion is wrong
The majority of Catholics believe in pro choice. My DM and her 70 y.o friends all voted for the abortion referendum.
The world changed quickly they listened they learnt they helped make a change.
You have to emphasise with how terrifying the church was for them as DC they truly believed they'd go to hell.
Their family was terrified of the priest.
It was mostly fear based on superstition.

I'm a Catholic, and am campaigning for women priests to be instituted, and lots of people, male and female, in my church would agree with me on this. I know of more than one person at my own church who is also part of a group to campaign for this. I also don't believe abortion is a sin, and am a member of an abortion rights group, and certainly don't believe sex outside of marriage is a sin.

I feel that feminism has a place in the Catholic church, and I'm absolutely not alone in this. Many women at my church are feminists, and activists. We hope to change the way the church is eventually. I would like to see women priests, a woman pope, gay marriage, no condemnation of abortion or divorce and contraception use supported and the whole church structure shaken up. I think the church needs to examine and deal with it's past failures and the atrocities committed in it's name, especially those by the clergy and nuns.

But I love the liturgy, the spirituality, the community that my church gives me and others. I'll never stop being a feminist, and hopefully can keep being a Catholic.

There are many bits of many religions that don't mix well with the modern world.

Goady post. I'm a Catholic feminist.

YANBU. I am a feminist and therefore no longer consider myself a Catholic. (I still go to Mass sometimes, and one of my children goes to a Catholic school.) I am not without faith, in a relatively abstract way, but I refuse to associate myself with the earthly beliefs of the Church. Actually, the departure began because the parish where I was confirmed (with a large school attached) turned out to be a massive centre of child abuse. So the primary reason why I'm not a Catholic isn't my feminism, if that makes sense? It's my disgust about abuse. But even if I hadn't any personal experience of priests who have done very evil things (and been protected by the church in doing so), I still would have turned away because of the positions (not just abortion, many positions) held about women's lives.

I agree with the idea that you can't be Catholic and feminist.

The entire Catholic religion says that women are inferior to men.

This has caused huge, huge problems and terrible damage to women in many countries.

In Ireland, the Catholic church did unspeakable things to women and children, one of them was :

Locking unmarried pregnant women up for life, calling them sinners, and using them as slave labour to make money for the Catholic church.

How can any woman be feminist and Catholic? The Catholic church has abused women for centuries

My wife is Catholic and feminist lesbian pro choice

Dont forget catholic ireland just voted to allow abortion overwhelmingly

@LastFirstEverything How can you be a feminist, and yet go to a church that tells you that women are inferior to men?

The Catholic church ONLY has men in its leadership roles. If that was a place of work - how would you feel? If it was written in the advertisement that "only men will be appointed to leadership roles". How is that even legal?

I don't know how they are still being allowed to do this. Surely they have breached many human rights by now.

I know Muslims who smoke drink gamble
Jews who eat bacon
Christians who cheat
Sikhs who don't carry knives
Buddhist who eat meat

@nitsandwormsdodger it is not just to do with abortion. That is one thing.

The Catholic church in its entire foundations as a religion, sets out that women are inferior.

I don't know how they are still allowed to get away with it in 2020.

AS I said, if it was a job, and the company said that "only men will be appointed to management roles", would that be allowed in today's age?

I don't know why some women are stupid enough to go along with the Catholic church, a church that tells women that they are inferior to men.

And women go along with it! Mind boggling

I did 14years at Catholic school in the 70s and 80s. Not once was I ever told that women are inferior to men @Sarahpaula.

I don't think any feminist could belong to any type of organised religion, whether it be Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism etc.

@dionehtediabolist are you actually serious?

You do know that the Pope is never allowed to be a woman, all bishops are never allowed to be women, and priests are never allowed to be women.

Everyone that runs the church and has power in the church has to be male.

You do know that right? Could that be any clearer of an example of how they think that women are inferior?

Feminists today just moaning all the time. Don’t really like them tbh.

Yes. Not a hardcore fundamentalist Catholic, but if Jews and Muslims can be feminists, so can Catholics.

I had made an assumption that, to be a Catholic, one would have to subscribe to all of the teachings.

I think very few Priests subscribe to all of their teachings. To be a Catholic you broadly need to:

• Get some water poured over your head 3 times.
• Believe in the Abrahamic God and the doctrine of the trinity.
• Believe JC died, was resurrected and
• Accept the primacy of the Diocese of Rome.

The rest of it falls under varying levels of doctrine or discipline. You can argue about how necessary it is to accept all the doctrine (and indeed why you'd be in the church if you disagree with loads) but discipline (like Priests being celebate) is entirely a bureaucratic thing.

You can also lay a lot of shit at the door of the RC hierarchy over 2000 years but you can't reasonably argue the Catholic faith makes women second class any more than Islam insists people blow themselves up.

I would agree with you . Catholicism and feminism are ultimately incompatible ideologies / belief systems

I don't know why any woman is Catholic.

It is very strange.

Yes let me join an organisation that tells me I am inferior, and doesn't have women priests.

Yes I will go along with that!

What is wrong with some women?

Totally serious @Sarahpaula. We were taught about women's role in the early church and how and why they were written out. We were also taught about dissent and how the Catholic church belongs to Catholics, not clergy.

At no point were we ever told that women are inferior to men. The very thought of it.🤣🤣🤣

@Vagaries

You’re assuming most Catholics sign up to all elements of church doctrine. In practice — and I say this as a cradle Catholic from a deeply Catholic society — most, bar converts, are extremely à la carte. The vast majority of Irish people are nominally Catholic, yet in recent referenda voted for abortion and gay marriage. I don’t know a single Catholic of my generation who doesn’t use contraception. One of the most genuinely impressive women I know is a nun who works with trafficked women. Two of my married lesbian friends met at Mass, and both are devout.

I am so grateful to you for saying exactly how most Catholics think. I could never have put it so eloquently.

Monty get annoyed again. 🤭

@DioneTheDiabolist you are making no sense.

I was also made to attend a Catholic school. No one sat me down and said in a lesson "women are inferior to men in the Catholic church".

But it is known and implied everywhere that women are inferior in the Catholic church. The catholic church is well known everywhere as being a religion that considers women to be inferior.

You understand that, yes?

I'm a septuagenarian, TERF, Catholic feminist.
Sue me!