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?

Back to the op’s question, there are two tale of catholic in the U.S. politic

One is Biden who is running for Democrats president. This means he is pro choice and believe in women rights. The other is a woman who is being nominated as U.S. Judge (Barrett) she is conservative Catholic and she is not pro choice

Most Irish people still identify as Catholic. Numbers have fallen over time but in 2016, the latest census indicated that Ireland remains a strongly Roman Catholic country, with 78.3% of the population identifying as such. This represents a fall of 5.9% since the last census in 2011 and a fall of 13.3% over a 25 year period since the 1991 Census.

There are paedophiles aplenty in most organisations and certainly in the Anglican Church. It doesn’t mean that most Catholics support child abuse. Unsurprisingly, most Catholics find abuse abhorrent. The difference between Anglican child abuse and Catholic is that more incidents are reported about Catholics because the Catholic Church is so much bigger. It’s about scale not Catholics being more abusive. The Newcastle case is testament to this.

Being Irish does not make you an expert on Catholicism anymore than being black makes you an expert on the a Equality Act. It offers your personal experience and perspective. Being Catholic does not make you an expert; it simply gives you have a personal experience and perspective.

I'm Catholic and a feminist. I don't take the Bible as absolute truth- I'm not a fundamentalist Christian at all.

I’d love to know, OP, what gives you any authority to tell anyone what they can or cannot be

Sarah Paula I'm in Ireland too. A feminist and a catholic.
Why are you assuming women like me are stupid? It's not a very nuanced argument, is it. Of course Imappaled by the gross abuses of the CC in the past.

I also received an excellent enjoyable and radical education, free in a convent school. Our local towns hospital only exists because nuns established it. My mentally I'll brother has been looked after by the CC when mental health services couldn't

I marched for justices for the victims of catholic sex abuse during the Popes last visit. I was a campaigner for the Yes sude.

Do you really think I'm stupid? Can you accept that very I telligent people can and do acknowledge abuses in the past AND be religious.

Excuse typos.

I can see where Sarahpaulas anger is coming from. The abuses of the Catholic church in Ireland were horrendous. It seeped right down through society in Ireland causing so much hurt and pain. I doubt there are many families in Ireland that weren't negatively affected by the Catholic church. Women who couldn't leave their abusive husbands, the lack of contraception meaning so many children grew up in poverty and poor living conditions, the women forced to remain pregnant or travel or worse to access abortions.
It is hard to see why people would choose to be in support of the organisation that caused so much suffering and a lot of that suffering was borne by women. If it was any other type of organisation other than a religious one there wouldn't be so many people loudly and proudly declaring their support and affiliation.

On the subject of the evil things the Church has done and permitted to be done:

I'm still British, despite the horrendous things the British government has done. I am not making efforts to move elsewhere and renounce my citizenship. I wouldn't go around shouting at MPs and civil servants, "how can you be PART of this don't you CARE?"

I'm still a socialist, despite the horrendous things done in the name of socialism and communism by socialist/communist governments over the years. I wouldn't switch over to laissez-faire capitalism because of what the USSR did.

My children go to UK state schools, although children have been abused and mistreated and bullied and generally treated badly in UK state schools for as long as we've had a state education system. It used to be official policy that teachers could hit them FFS! But I still don't say "well I can't be part of this, I won't send my children to school."

I give money to international aid charities, even though I know that some international aid charities have abused their position horrendously with the people they're supposed to serve, especially women and girls. I don't say "well look what Oxfam did in Haiti, I'll just keep my money."

But if something didn't have value to me otherwise, if I could just swap it for something else, I'd be able to drop it easily. I wouldn't go and work for Nestle or Shell unless I was desperate to feed my family. If Tesco started beating its staff I would buy my food from Sainsburys instead.

So if you're not Catholic and you're not religious, the Catholic church might seem more like a Shell or Nestle or hypothetical-evil-Tesco type of thing to you. "Well I'd just switch and get my churchy stuff elsewhere if I wanted churchy stuff, why would you stick to that provider of churchy stuff? Don't the CofE do hymns as well?"

But if you are actually Catholic, then it's much more like a political school of thought or state education sort of thing, something which has value to you such that you can't just say "people have misused this therefore I no longer value this". I'm just not going to campaign to scrap state education, because I consider it massively, immensely valuable. It doesn't mean that I don't care that individual schools and teachers and indeed the whole system have done horrendous things to children in the past.

@Fast90 Um, nothing does? Have you read the FT? Here's a summary:
I said that I didn't understand how feminism and Catholicism could be compatible.
Far more knowledgeable people than I explained how Catholicism isn't black and white and that one can identify as a Catholic and not subscribe to every teaching that might have been traditionally associated with Catholicism.
I thanked those people for their wisdom and revised my views.

Hang on... is AIBU usually a platform for OPs to ask for opinions, not accept any input and stand firm to their original post???

That's not me. I find no shame in being told that I'm wrong in an opinion and learning from others. Sorry for the lack of drama.

Priests in Ireland do not live in mansions. Ha ha. The parish priest will have a three or four bed roomed house. The curate a cottage.

Mind you most convents are mansions. But they're female so don't fit your agenda ( Sarahpaula)

I consider myself both - I personally would never consider abortion as it goes against all my beliefs, however I fully accept that other women have a perfect right to their own personal beliefs and would never dream of imposing mine on them. I therefore totally support a woman’s right to choose and want women everywhere to have autonomy over their own bodies.

My grandmother was in a laundry, my auntie was actually born in one. She wasn't there because a nun came and dragged her there kicking and screaming. She was there because her father did. Despite being fully aware of what happened to girls who were left there, he was happy to do that.
Protection of children starts at home. There was little of that in Irish society in the early 1900s.
Why was there little of that in Irish society? Were Irish people inherently less caring or empathetic? No of course not. The answer is because they were indoctrinated by and influenced by the Catholic church. You can say it wasn't the Catholic church who dragged people away to these laundries but that is being far too simplistic about the situation.

Very few humans hold fixed ideological positions on anything and we excel in cognitive dissonance. The humans that hold very intractable positions and will go all out to get others to agree/comply are quite dangerous

There is no denying the Catholic leaders done awful things to vunerable DC in Ireland they'll never be in a position to do so again in Ireland anyway.
As awful as it is to say child sexual abuse was rampant in Ireland not just throughout the church but within the family the common denominator is men uncles father brother there has been tons of historic cases in the court.
DC were taught not to question or speak to an adult, the adult was always right.
Ireland abused DC in the past.
I'm sure DC in care homes suffered at the hands of their guardian all over the world.

The newly founded Irish state gave the catholic church free reign on education as they wanted to focus on building up the new Republic of Ireland.

And this total power led to a lot of the abuse. So yes the state, the politics did make a difference. But you could argue colonialism also contributed if you could be arsed, I'm not.

Sarahpaula you sound slightly unhinged if you think Catholics don't condone or believe in the abuses of the past.

And in modern society today something like 98% of child abuse happens within the family circle.

An AS shows pp is coming at this argument from a personal angle, and as such, may be forgiven (though she'd undoubtedly not like the idea) for the reductivism. Though, it's all rather smacking of the kind of "my friend was attacked by a black man" bile we see all too often perpetuated.

This is an interesting thread, with many intelligent and thoughtful posts on both sides of the argument.

Our three parish priests live above the half way house they run for ex prisoners. It's big, sure, but that's because there are a lot of men whose families have disowned them. The youth groups involved in the parish go up there to play football with them and they put theatre shows on together.

As long as you’re not against pro-choice then I see no issue with identifying as a feminist and being religious. Catholic, Protestant, whatevs.

I think you're confusing anti-abortion and anti-choice very different things. Very possible to be anti-abortion and feminist.

^This. I'm an evangelical Christian and do consider myself to be a feminist. I would describe myself as anti abortion (I can't imagine having one myself), but I can see that the option has to be available to women.

We already have 60,000 children in care and not enough foster carers or prospective adoptive parents. It would be unthinkable to go back to the time when unwanted children ended up in orphanages, which still happens in other parts of the world.

It is true that devout Christians from all denominations are more likely to be anti-choice, because they see it in black and white terms, so I do understand why you asked the question, OP. The attitude is probably more common in conservative evangelical circles than among Catholics curiously, because they're so black and white in their interpretation of the Bible.

Absolutely, you only have to look at some of the "minor" protestant churches- especially in the US. (Mittens last point)

Well tbh you couldn't be a catholic/Christian in general and not be in prison in the UK. Fotunagoey most Christian's arent real Christian's and ignore all the rules in thier insane book.

If the law was applied equally the bible would have been long banned for hate speech.

@TorchesTorches - Excellent insightful post on why a feminist might struggle with Catholicism

@Readandwalk, @GoldenOmber - More interesting posts on why feminists might stick with the church anyway.

Mumsnet at it's most interesting. Thanks OP.

@GoldenOmber I think it is difficult to have a measured view on an institution that has actually harmed your father, and probably fairly easy to intellectualise the harms done by other institutions that are distant and remote from you.

@TheSeedsOfADream I actually think your comment comparing people rejecting and railing against institutional abuse to racism is pretty disgusting.

@Readandwalk the church certainly does not condone abuse but it sure as shit does cover it up. They are quick enough to sell the land with babies in so people can't find them. This is happening now.

The reason that the Catholic Church became so attractive to paedophiles and predators was because they were so good at covering up sexual abuse. It wasn't just a coincidence that so many paedophiles happened to be priests, people who want to carry out these sorts of crimes will always seek out places where they can hide in plain sight, won't be questioned and will be covered for if they do get caught. As an institution, the Catholic Church provided a masterclass in this. And they did it whilst also treating women horrifically for daring to become pregnant, whilst each Sunday preaching to the congregation about what 'sinners' they were, and how sinful it is to marry another consenting adult that you love who happens to be the same sex as you.

I said on the other thread, I am a lapsed 'cultural catholic'. I was brought up in an Irish Catholic family, all the schooling, Mass every Sunday, all the sacraments etc. It pervaded my whole childhood, and not in a bad way. I even got married myself in a Catholic Church and my children are baptised Catholic too. Because I couldn't let go, I wanted my kids raised the same way. But over the last few years, I just decided that I couldn't carrying on being part of something that is so hypocritical, that covered up the rape of children the highest institutional international level for so long, an institution that hates women so much. I couldn't bring my kids up in that, not even a little bit.

My husband wasn't raised religious at all and cannot understand why I still have any connection to the church at all, why I don't just completely hate it. But he doesn't get it, there will always be a part of me attached to it, it was such a big part of my upbringing, it leaves me really torn! I know some of my friends feel the same from talking to them.

It's indoctrination. It's one of the most chilling aspects of it. My father, whose life was ruined by the church and whose ruination went on to echo through my childhood and probably echoes through my children's childhoods, has only stopped going to mass now because of covid. It's pernicious. Even now that I have intellectually rejected it and know the great harms it has done, there is a part of me that is tied to it because I spent so many years being told the same things, repeating the same things, performing the same actions as instructed. Like any all encompassing abuser, the church knows exactly how to get inside a person's head.