March, 1998

It is irreverant to allude to Pope John Paul II's address marking International Women's Day as a Jack-In-The-Box response. But why not? Irreverance helps the medicine go down. It seems he spoke without the merit of serious thought and Popes aren't supposed to do that, yet what are we to think? The anomaly leaps off the page and an anomaly can't just be returned like a backhand down the line.

In his weekly address to the pilgrims in St. Peter's Square His Holiness said women in many parts of the world were still hindered from playing a full part in social, political and economic life. Gee whiz and gosh, what a breakthrough thought! The fact that this Pope has several times reaffirmed the Church's unwillingness to allow women the priesthood seems not to embarrass him in the slightest.

It may be that he sees a difference between 'politics' and 'religion,' deeming the female half of the human race well suited to prime ministries and presidencies, okay as mayors and astronauts, pretty cool as surgeons and downhill ski-racers, yet lacking whatever essential ingredient necessary to achieve priesthood.

I wouldn't jump all over this if it wasn't such a two-faced position and Jack-In-The-Boxes are traditionally double-imaged. Separation of church and state is an okay thing, but separation of church and the reality of half the planet's population is a no-no.

Directly quoting, "How many women have been and still are more valued for their physical appearance than for their personal qualities, their professional competence, the fruits of their intelligence, the richness of their sensibility and the very dignity of their being," he said. Well that's a mouthful and covers almost all the bases. One wonders how those lines were delivered without a serious flush and blush suffusing the Papal countenance, given the Papal position.

As for hindrance from a 'full part in social life,' that might be seen as an unfortunate remark directed toward the Muslim portions of the planet, at least if one were Muslim. 'Political life' is a laugher if it was meant to carefully sidestep the obvious inclusion of 'religious life.' Doesn't work for me as I try to find anything on this toiling and troubled globe that is possibly more political than the Catholic Church? 'Economic life' it seems is where women are doing the best these days and could be because this is the area of women's lives least fettered by religion.

Any religion, I'm not singling out the Catholic Church, the Pope has done a far better job of that than I, by his incredibly insensitive statement. There is not a religion in the world today that isn't male dominated, with the possible exception of Christian Science and men have generally made a botch of it. God love us though, we men always do our injury with such seriously flawed rhetoric and all the banners flying. Religious persecution has cost more lives and wars than any other act of man. What was the Holocaust but a religious war? Serbia, now Kosovo and the list goes on and on, but of course that's an entirely different subject.

Or is it? Whose sons and daughters and husbands are clubbed and stoned and shot and gassed into submission? It's the women of the world who suffer the indignity of their second-classness and until men such as Pope John Paul II have the courage and justice to stand up and welcome them truly as equals, they would be better advised to speak with the single face of their prejudice.

C'mon John, let's try this one again.

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