The Guardian, 19 January 2018
On a day when I've been perhaps too chatty here (posting too much at one time, I fear, when Brittie Janson Perez's essay richly deserves top billing), I do want to direct your attention to the very valuable discussion of the pope's shocking (and reprehensible) remarks about abuse survivors in Chile, which developed here today in a thread following my posting of Brittie's essay. I am far behind in acknowledging comments here, and apologize for this. I'm busy with several projects, and finding too little time to contribute to discussions — though I read your comments and value them very much.
My own brief take on the pope's comments, which I shared with Facebook friends earlier today:
Pope Francis' approach to the abuse crisis in the Catholic church is of a piece with his refusal to consider the possibility of ordaining women, and his constant attacks on (and total misrepresentation of) what he calls "gender ideology." It's of a piece with his persistent, doltish, condescending misogyny, and with all the prejudices that underlie his continuing attacks on "gender ideology."
Elderly men who have spent their lives in a privileged all-male clerical club do not intend to get it, when "it" is the question of gender, sexual orientation, unmerited male privilege. The LDS church has just illustrated that point abundantly by electing a 93-year-old white heterosexual American male as the head of its diverse global church.
I have long since stopped paying any attention to intra-Catholic conversations because even when they propose solutions to these problems and come from viewpoints I can support, they are stifling, parochial, highly exclusive, clubby — and unable to see what all this translates to in the world around us, which has become a horror show due to the refusal of empowered, privileged, heterosexual men (or, in the case of many Catholic clerics and hierarchs, pretend-heterosexual men) to get things.
