I wrote yesterday about boys who like to play with other boys in the governing structures of both church and society. I noted that the boys' club has produced in both church and society an early adolescent fixation on power over others, on phallic strutting, and on game playing that’s all about being on the winning side and turning others into losers—and not about healing the world or building a humane society for all.
My posting argues that the Catholic church would not be in the fix it is in now, with the abuse crisis, if it had opened the boys' club up and let the voices of women count for something in the structures of the church.
And now I read that on Thursday little Bartie Stupak, who has chosen to try to hold up health care reform with a gang of other thugs calling themselves advocates for life declared on MSNBC's "Hardball" program Thursday,
When I deal, we don't call the nuns. Setting aside the bizarre shift in syntax from first person singular to first person plural (a telling shift, since Bartie is acting as a front man for the U.S. Catholic bishops in his attempt to block health care reform), I find this defiantly proud little declaration of misogyny bizarre, due to its frank, and obviously unashamed, admission that it's "dealing" that Bartie and his club are interested in above all.
Not addressing the needs of millions of American citizens living on the margins, with no health care--those to whom the nuns try to listen and give a voice. Dealing.
I/we deal. And when we do so, we don't call the nuns. With all due respect.
No, I call the men who have enabled the rape of children for generations within the Catholic church, and who have engaged in massive cover-up of that abuse.
They know about dealing.
Perhaps Bartie knows that if he called the nuns instead, he might get an earful about the fatuity of dealing, when human lives hang in the balance. About the profound stupidity of assuming that being a real man and wielding real power is all about wheeling and dealing.
Not about reaching out to those on the margins. And certainly not about protecting children from rape.
Dealing. Bartie and the men in black, the men who rule us . . . .
As I said yesterday, it's enough to make you weep.
