My Facebook friend Mary DuMont Brower responding in my Facebook feed this morning to an article I had linked, by Sarah Posner writing in Al-Jazeera America about the observation of many feminist theologians and advocates for women's rights that Pope Francis has done little to challenge the status quo on matters of gender, and that the conclusion of the LCWR investigation demonstrates this:
I'm starting to think that this whole LCWR crackdown was planned in advance---so that people would think of the LCWR orders as somehow 'suspect', e.g. the whole 'beyond Jesus' incident--that these orders are somehow subversive in the eyes of the church. Also to get the neotrad orders into the spotlight as somehow being more faithful to the church. This makes even more sense now that the vatican has called off the dogs, but without any real fanfare. At first I thought the vatican made a huge mistake in calling out the LCWR orders, but now I think it was just a big smear campaign and a successful one at that.
And my Facebook friend Diane Dougherty responding to Mary in the same thread:
There are a multitude of issues at play in a globalized society of male hierarchs vying for power. Did you ever see two male animals fighting for dominance? In a sense, we have had the opportunity of watching two strong Popes reconstructing the church for dominant control and a curia fighting for their share of the spoils which meant control of women — those nasty religious that have shown us up for centuries (check out City of Ladies-Beguines) Had Ratzinger remained in office-this end would NOT be the card that was played. We all have to ask ourselves why .0003% of the Catholic Church claims malehood as a divine right to governance of the Holy Spirit's movement within the Roman Catholic churches..... If you want to see the movement of God's life within the church — read the gospels and find folks living it. you probably won't go to church again....but you may find many alternative ways of living out the gospel....