How does Catholicism fail girls/women?

[Spidermama]

I'm particularly interested in the views of Catholics and lapsed Catholics here.

I think the catholic church is totally outdated now.

It's not so bad in the UK, but the stance on birth control and abortion is very bad, IMHO.

I am a (non practicing) catholic.

I'm a catholic and think that they are right on abortion issues and wrong on contraception issues.

Nametaken - but in many extremely catholic countries, women are not allowed abortions even when the pregnancy is not viable and the mother's life is at risk (such as ectopic pregnancy).

IMO, that is wrong.

nametaken I agree with you I have to say. I think it's sad that people who consider the rights of the unborn child are considered to be religeous nuts.

Catholic and believe they're wrong about contraception. Not so certain about abortion--I think we probably do need safe, legal abortion but it is obscenely over-relied on.

Sorry, x post but I want to clarify:

The rights of the unborn child should, of course, be considered. But so should the rights of the mother.

There should be some leniancy when the pregnancy is not viable.

ditto nametaken
re contraception - that will change in time. The Catholic Church is notoriously slow. I get the impression the Vatican debates are like a meeting of Tolkien's Ents. Eventually they will change re contraception, or at least, they will be more flexible.

Yes I agree youcannot.

Most Catholics I know agree that contraception is OK. There are many, many other points where they disagree with the church and yet consider themselves to be good Catholics.

So how come the church has been allowed to continue without developing and does it know that a huge number of its family disagrees with basic tennets?

I'm trying to make sense of lots of things at the moment as you can tell.

I wonder what proportion of even practising families use no or only "natural" contraception.

I suspect it is very small.

Will there ever be women priests?

Lapsed Catholic

Where do I start really.

Poverty from having large numbers of children in regions where contraception is effectively illegal as against the Catholic church's teachings. Womens health suffering from the strain of repeated pregnancies not to mention place as main childcarer in the home therefore practically unavoidable.

Children suffering un-necessarily as parents are unable to provide for the number of children they have.

Dubious teachings on Aids and the effectiveness of condoms being rubbished as Catholic policy in less educated parts of the world leading to yet more orphans and children born with little chance of a happy and secure life.

I associate Catholicism with avoidable levels of deprivation and misery in some parts of the world. Women and children suffer worse where poverty and disease are concerned.

I personally would have more respect for Catholicism if the Catholic church revoked its teachings on contraception. I'm less bovvered about women priests, the anglicans can't sort that one out anyway !

Yes. I should have added in the UK.

Ah, now I actually am pretty bothered about the issue of women priests. But then I'm coming to it as a practising member of the church who, er, uses condoms...

I agree with SDPG....

COuldn't give two hoots about the female priest issue - but the church's teaching on contraception (ESP. use of condoms to stem the spread of aids / STIs) and women's rights is (IMO) outdated.

Most of their views are outdated, I think, and certainly not relevant to me, eg, contraception. Am also concerned re condoms in areas where high HIV / birthrate could certainly benefit from more use of condoms. I think the Church will have to update many of its ideas to survive.

I think the issue of women priests is probably more of an issue for practising rather than lapsed or non-practising catholics. Whichever line you take on it.

Attitudes to sex full stop. Why insist priests have to be celibate? look at all the misery this has caused.

Interesting point that the European countries with the lowest birth rates are Ireland and Italy. So it would appear that most catholics are acting in opposition to what the Pope tells them God wants. And of course they will all burn in hell for it.

The issue of women having NO say on ecumenical matters whatsoever. The issue of women priests. The issue of contraception. The issue of abortion.
I was Catholic. My dad studied to be a priest for 7 years and gave up at the last bit. He is very devout. I wasn't keen on mass as a child and he told me that I had to go until I was 16 and if I could give him sensible reasons why I didn't want to go then, he wouldn't make me. I told him I didn't respect a religion that didn't respect me as a female. He said he couldn't argue with that.

I'm a practicing Catholic and I think the problem is, as already stated, that the church is extremely slow to adapt to new ideas. They only forgave Gallileo for suggesting that the earth moved around the sun hundreds of years after his death. The contraception issue is a difficult one, mainly in developing countries. I don't think many uk Catholics stick with the rules. Most people I know have the standard 2.4 children making it hard to believe they don't use contraception. When it comes to women priests, I have more of a problem with the fact that they allowed married anglican priests to convert and become catholic priests because they didn't agree with women vicars.
I don't feel let down or failed by the church but I think it does have problems that it is very slow to try to resolve.

I don't think the Catholic church is alone in its aattitude towards women. For instance, my dh is an evangelical christian and it would be seen as very unusual for the church leaders to be female.

God yes. That gave me a crisis indeed. Married priests converting because they didn't like women priests. While there are wonderful priests leaving the priesthood because of celibacy. I had many issues with that!

i think it fails becuase the scriptures are seen in a literaral context rather than an historic one.

in fact i think the literal taking of the bible - to the letter fails us all.

However i am very glad that we as catholics are not 'watering down' our religeon to accomodate society.

and i do not think that the two things above are incompatible

i think we can retain our customs and rituals - ones that absolutley define catholacism - and still take the scriptures as guidence.

i dont think that the church hierarchy helps AT ALL.

the way that the cleaners in church are always women. and roles with more seniority are given to men - theres always a man helper guy - i guess in the anglican church like a verger - but i don't know what he's called.

the person who does flowers - a woman of course.

How do his co-religionists deal with your marriage fleximum? My DH is an anglican (not evangelical), and some evangelical friends of is told him he should not be "yoking himself to an unbeliever"

I agree with what you say about other Christian faiths BTW. In terms of equality within a relationhip too.

But isn't the helper guy a deacon custy? And don't they have to be men.

We have a pretty even mix of altar servers, readers, eucharistic ministers, children's liturgy leaders etc.

Women cleaners probably, but that's not the preserve of the church TBH.