Is a patriarchal clergy the elephant in the room with the poem's death?

[mids2019]

Watching coverage the pope's passing and it is immediately obvious all the clergy of the Catholic church are male and although we there may be question a over who is next poor one thing is certain it's not going to be woman.

In the 21st century are the major religions going to the be the only large human institutions where the dominance of men and the exclusion of women is going to pass without serious challenge due to the inherent conservative nature of religions and the reference in which they are held?

It was amazing how many educated women presenters and pundits have made comment on the death of the pontiff without raising in the slightest way the fact we are seeing swathes of men entering the Vatican with possibly a few nuns in support.

Is this a real problem or one where women will always feel that history and articles of faith makes this a reasonable postion?

Sorry popes death.

How do you get the title changed?

The church has been criticised for a long time for discrimination and exploitation of women. I believe nuns serve clergy for free in some cases.

They've been dismissing women for thousands of years, don't see it changing soon. All the major religions are patriarchal.

Report your post and explain

Patriarchy in the CofE and more obviously in the Catholic Church isn’t really an elephant. It’s well discussed and commented on by those actually involved.

It’s probably isn’t relevant to those who are not, so you won’t have noticed.

There are a number of groups campaigning for the ordination of women in the Catholic church, and have been for decades. Women have been excommunicated for taking part in ordination ceremonies. It's very much not "passing without serious challenge", it's just that if you're not Catholic it's unlikely to be on your register.

I don’t think the patriarchy is the elephant in the room, in terms of the Catholic Church. The patriarchy is the room. It’s the reason it exists. It’s all there is. Without the patriarchy, it would vanish.

Thanks for the messages and as a non Catholic they are quite educational.
I just noted from the reporting of an event which is obviously a major event for Catholics that gender wasn't mentioned. Maybe at a such a sensitive time this was unrealistic but I think it did strike me and brought about conversation with my daughter (very good at RE at school) where I realised this obvious sex bias isn't highlighted even at GCSE level.

This is the Catholic Church. Hell will freeze over before women will be anything other than handmaids to the men Lord. It is written in the Gospels.

It was depressing watching all those men processing away - SO many men acres of them all in surplices beautifully ironed by some woman, then just a handful of nuns at the end, and women in the congregation looking on. How can this be considered right. That's a rhetorical question. How can it FEEL right to all these religious people. So one-sided.

This is one of the reasons I’m not a Catholic any more. I don’t understand how it’s acceptable to anyone to have an organisation where women are second best. When I was a teenager I asked my (Catholic) family about this and got shushed or treated like a rebel 😁 DM moved countries in her early 20s back when that wasn’t so easy to do and I’m sure part of it was to get away from the religion!

I can’t remember if it was on Mumsnet or somewhere else but someone compared the speed of change in the Catholic Church with the Ents in Lord of the Rings. The Ents were faster! One pope will never be able to revolutionise things, it will take one progressive pope (which I believe Francis was) to make a start, then another, then another. Then a few more after that. I don’t think there’ll be a woman pope in any of our lifetimes, priests maybe.

I doubt there will be women priests in our lifetime sadly.

So at times like these are women biting their lip out of respect? Modern media is desperate to have an equal number of women and men commenting on this but obviously we see a purely make clergy.

I agree female clergy in the Catholic church won't occur within our life times but it does intrigue me why not.

But women’s existence isn’t considered as high as men’s in the CC. It’s like saying ‘why does the CC have so much’. It’s the CC. It won’t change. Having been raised in Rome your post made me lol.

You could say the same for other religions.

You could say the same for other religions exactly.

If religions were to be created today there certainly wouldn't be the gender imbalance or priority of males. I do think the patriarchal nature of major religions is a deterrent to going women and girls exploring faith actually.

As far as I am aware QE2 was the only major head of a major religion within my living memory and it does seem like religion in general will be a part of human life that for the foreseeable future will be make domimated.

Men fronting mainstream religion; it's why women are attracted to wicca, witchcraft and neopaganism. Jung pointed out that christianity had no active female goddess to its detriment.
The 19th century did see new religious movements led by women; Spiritualism and Christian Science were the big ones.
I see a lot of women active and leading in indigenous pagan movements now like Romuva in Lithuania and Ridnovery in Ukraine.

But thats the thing. All religion is patriarchal, it’s always led by men. Yes, you have a few Christian denominations, where you have women vicars or ministers, but it’s still men who run the show. Also, within these religions, a woman’s role is as that of being subservient to men, in what ever context - whether it be within marriage, or those nuns serving the all male clergy. Women will never be considered as equal to men.

It makes me wince when religious women insist that the religion is completely egalitarian - it’s not, and never has and it will never be. Jesus’s 12 apostles were all men. He didn’t invite one single woman to join, and so it has remained since.

How can any such religion give a woman peace, knowing that their religion/s are steeped in this patriarchy, and prevalent misogyny? So many religious women, successful in their own right, wouldn’t tolerate such discrimination from their employers- and rightly so, yet will accept that their male spiritual leaders will not see them as equal. You need a massive dose of cognitive dissonance for that.

It depends on whether you believe your faith is from God, or made up by men. If it is from God, then you need to understand what was communicated and when ...and that will be used to determine beliefs.

If you don't believe in God, then it's a theoretical conversation you are having, since the outcome is likely going to be irrelevant to you..

If you genuinely want to understand the Catholic position on women or women priests, there is a lot documented that will give you a lot more information than I can...
www.catholic.com/qa/what-is-the-catholic-view-of-women
or
www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/why-cant-women-be-priests

Both my daughter's are doing reasonably well in religion and world views at school where they have to take a GCSE. The patriarchal nature of major religions is simply not talked about explicitly and it is difficult to field questions like why did Jesus not select a woman disciple and indeed why God is a man (or referred to as male).

I certainly don't have an answer or an answer of any import when religions are followed devoutly by billions of people.I have know n C of E women clergy and I think it is a subject even they struggle with.

That’s not really true. The records we have were written by men, and big up the men’s roles. It was a patriarchal society and by about 400 AD had written women out.
If you look carefully, the New Testament is full of women. Women leading churches that Paul writes to, women at the tomb and at the resurrection, there in among the disciples. Mary, Martha, Mary Magdalene and more.

Apparently the name Mary/Miriam was so common at that time 1 in 4 women were called Mary!

In Orthodoxy there is the title "Equal to the Apostles", a list which includes Mary Magdalene and the Samaritan woman at the well. I believe that some of the women around Christ were actually apostles in all but name. His behaviour towards them was very very unusually respectful, inclusive and on a level with men (Mary of Bethany sat at His feet in the way the students of great Rabbis traditionally did) My New Testament professor said it was difficult to overstate how novel this was and the fact it made it into the Gospels indicates a strong basis of fact, as the authors would have not made this up on their own. It would have been outside their ken.

It would however have been pretty much impossible for them to be officially named as such at the time of the early Church and that has stuck, because misogyny.

@myplace is quite right about the women who populate the New Testament and even in the Hebrew Bible, there are some very, very interesting and important examples, eg Judge Deborah, Queen Esther and Ruth.

Yes, plenty of women disciples, plenty of women followers, as is the case in the present day, but only men were Christs apostles.

It is not written in the Gospels, actually.

But we don’t know that. We just know they weren’t named as apostles in the gospels.
Even if they weren’t sent out with the apostles, it could be more for cultural reasons. Women may not have been able to travel without men, may have been ostracised by their communities if they did.

You can’t make assumptions based on today’s understanding. We see women named and with roles, in the early church and among the disciples. It’s patriarchal to assume they weren’t important and recognised.

There’s a Greek/Roman/Jewish influence on how the gospels were written, and a patriarchal selection of which writings were preserved. We see through the eyes of the patriarchy but close observation suggests there’s much more there.