Push to give women greater role in Catholic Church to improve Church’s culture - Sensationalist Headlines

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/226043/c2c68a92-39f1-4be6-8951-217caac65f60/image.jpeg For committed Catholic Kate Englebrecht, most days at her home in Mudgee in the central west of New South Wales start with a simple routine — quiet reflection and prayer. It is in stark contrast to the recent turbulent times for the church, including a royal commission which exposed widespread sexual abuse, and the conviction of Cardinal George Pell. Those events have not made her question her faith, but they have made her question the future of the Catholic Church and changes it must make to embrace the role of women. "If not after this catastrophe, then when?" Ms Englebrecht said. "Frankly if change doesn't come, and major change doesn't come, then the church really is a goner. It's irrelevant." Ms Englebrecht does not say these things easily. Until a few months ago she worked for a nearby Catholic diocese, visiting parishioners and assisting the Bishop. Now she has moved on and is free to speak about what she believes must happen in the wake of the Pell verdict. "I think it was a moment of absolute clarity," she said. "The culture of secrecy … those days have gone. They have to go." She and others believe a greater role for women in the Catholic Church would have changed the culture that allowed sexual abuse to flourish. "I think much of the behaviour would have been caught up and a light shone in dark corners if there'd been women around," she said. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse reached a similar conclusion. It recommended women be given decision-making roles at all levels of the church after evidence suggested dioceses where women played a larger role had lower levels of sexual abuse. But Ms Englebrecht goes further. She wants women to have a place in the highest role in the church. As long as she has been a Catholic, she has felt the calling to become a priest. She knows due to Vatican law, that is unlikely to happen in her lifetime. "It's very painful," she said. "I love the Catholic Church. It's my home, my spiritual home. "I live with the longing to serve in a way that I'm not going to be allowed to." 'It's about feeling equal with the priests' The Catholic Church in Australia is preparing for one of the most important gatherings in its history next year, when it holds its first Plenary Council meeting since 1937. The ordination of women priests will be on the agenda, but most agree there is no likelihood they will be sanctioned here. That would directly contradict more than 1,500 years of canon law — the rules that govern the Catholic Church. "It's based on the view that Jesus ordained the 12 apostles at the last supper … and therefore only men can represent Christ," Professor Dorothy Lee of the University of Divinity in Melbourne said. ... (read more in the linked article) 'We're called to be equal in dignity, but different' Among Australia's 6 million Catholics, there are many women who choose to seek reform from within. Sally Hood is a member of the committee planning next year's Plenary Council. She believes re-examining the role of women in the Church is vital, especially in the wake of Cardinal Pell's conviction. "I don't know many, if any, committed Catholics who at the time of the Pell conviction heard that news and didn't feel deeply saddened, betrayed, hurt — and really have a sense of kind of righteous anger," she said. "This is the time for us as a church to take stock, to look at what are we doing. What have we been doing and is it working?" Ms Hood would like to see more women in leadership and governance positions in the church, but like other traditional Catholics, the desire for change does not extend to the ordination of women priests. "For me as a young woman, I don't look at that and feel excluded from something," she said. "I can understand how young women in the church, or all women in the church, could look at that and say, 'you're saying to me I can't be in what is the pinnacle of the Catholic faith'." A church spokesperson told the ABC: "It is expected that the role of women in society generally and in the life of the church will emerge as a significant issue for the Plenary Council to be held in 2020." The spokesperson said discussions will take a lead from Pope Francis, who has spoken of "the legitimate claims of those women who seek greater justice and equality". Ms Hood believes Catholic priests "stand in the person of Christ" and so therefore must be male. Men and women have equally important roles to play, but they are not the same. "We're called to be equal in dignity, but different," Ms Hood said. "God has created men and created women very differently and for good reasons." Back in Mudgee, Ms Englebrecht accepts that view with sadness. If the royal commission and the Pell verdict has taught the church anything, she believes, it is that the qualifications to become a Catholic priest should be determined by character, not gender. "I think there's a huge question around how we discern the priesthood of another," she said. ... (read more in the linked article) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-09/catholic-women-pushing-for-change-post-george-pell-convict/11173526

I doubt this will do much.

It would demonstrate that the Church can compromise on some of its core traditions, in order to maintain its moral authority in this 21st century. It is insane to think that the Church could somehow hold onto its licence to police morality whilst being a haven for depraved kiddy fiddlers, and while also refusing to let women be ordained as Priests simply because of what’s between their legs. There’s also evidence and findings from commissions, which suggest that culture in the Church is improved when women play a larger role in the leadership.

IMO females should be allowed to become Priests and Priests should be able to marry (catholic priests are not allowed to be married for those who dont know)

As soon as priests stop raping kids and nuns then maybe we can call this "progress".

As long as the more conservatives in Church ( Opus Dei being the biggest one ) have enough power to influence decisions, is not going to happen. Is already with the current Pope which for their eyes "is too liberal", decisions like this, supporting sex protection or stop condemning gays aren't going to happen.

👏 MORE 👏FEMALE 👏CHILD 👏MOLESTERS 👏

Also as soon as the nuns stop stealing minority children and organizing to cover it up.

This is possible in some contexts Protestantism, where there are many female bishops and priestesses. However, Catholicism follows the Bible more directly, and it is pretty cut-and-dry in 1 Timothy 2:12 and 1 Corinthians 14:34 that women should not have such a role. There's a catch, though: Both are contentious for different reasons. 1 Timothy is allegedly written by Paul the Apostle, but is a disputed text because it doesn't match the mannerisms of his other works and is likely a forgery. On the flipside, it was also believed to be tactical and local in nature, rather than attempting to be directly misogynist, as a disproportionately-large amount of women within Ephesus (which is where 1 Timothy is supposed to be talking about in terms of spreading religion there), and the women there were pagan-to-agnostic and prone to mixing multiple religions together due to low levels of education in the region. Thus, a more liberal interpretation of " I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet." would be that "Ephesian women can not be allowed to teach men the word of God because the vast majority are pagan." This is made more complicated because it should be obvious that these texts were not written in a Latin script, and thus could mutate overtime, as can be seen on how 1 Timothy is attributed to Paul, but contended to not be written by him or even in his lifetime. Other speculations include that "woman" is a mistranslation of "wife" in this context, and married people are not supposed to be priests or speak in the church, regardless of gender. 1 Corinthians 14:34 is instead controversial because it is not believed to be translated properly, especially since it has moved multiple times in position relative to the rest of 1 Corinthians and has been translated multiple times, and that women in this context could have meant anything from women (plural, as in there should only be a single person speaking in the church), women and men (likewise, gender-neutral, but being given demands, separately) or people that should be making peace (and that women in this case would be a written homonym that was mistakenly chosen when translating), and is more likely to be an example of a lost context since if taken literally, it means that choirs shouldn't exist. Overall, these two verses are extremely important examples of how valuable context is within the societal and regional norms of text authorship and how they can sway meaning, and that many things in the Bible are not meant to be literally interpreted as a strict guideline eternally into the future at a global scale, much like how it advocates against eating pork or seafood (due to improper cooking being commonplace at the time. It's important to note that undercooked pork can result in painful, lifelong parasitic cysts being embedded in your muscles and that raw bivalves and crustaceans contain brain damage-causing neurotoxins sequestered from algae that are broken down when cooked. It was a lot easier to just tell people not to eat them than to instruct them on some latent ability to determine good cooking.). Likewise, human error can manipulate translations negatively with time. (i.e. A lot of people disparage 1 Leviticus 11 for claiming that bats are birds, but this is an example of a bad translation, since the Hebrew word 'owph' that was originally there just means "winged animal", and has also been associated with insects for a similar reason. People of the time were still intelligent enough to understand many biological concepts when knowledge was presented. They were anatomically-modern, after all.) On the flipside, Catholicism is also more adoptive of scientific methods than many Protestant sects, with the Catholic church considering the biblical flood and story of genesis to be figurative instead of literal and that evolution is factual. Ergo, it's possible that the church will adjust their stance on this should they resolve these verses more concisely.

Hurrrrrrr child molesters! Me make funny! Theres a possibility that these issues will be looked over thanks to Francis, who has been a supporter for equality while still able to be a good man of the faith. I trust that if nothing else something will change in the coming years.