Saturday, July 16, 2011

Mary Valle on the Men-Only Power Club of Catholicism (and the Men in Dresses Inside the Club)


Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Papal Secretary of State


I've just discovered a new website where I can already see I'll be spending quite a bit of time in days to come.  It's The Revealer.  I can't quite retrace my steps to the referring site that brought me here, but I do know that the series I'd bookmarked at the site several days ago is a set of essays by "journalists, activists, academics and theologians" commenting on the John Jay study.




And here's a fascinating tidbit from Mary Valle's piece in that collection, entitled "Whole Lotta Testosterone," which dovetails nicely with my point yesterday about the ironic way in which the symbols of religious traditions often subvert themselves: Valle writes, 

Now, the testosterone-laden Abrahamic lordly sky-gods who rule quite a bit of our planet tend to favor their own. The Catholic Church, which we’re all quite familiar with at this point, voted for men and men only in their little power club. But, in an interesting twist, said men are frequently clad in dresses or at least wear a little notched collar, which, unlike the long tie of laymen, announces: I don’t use my penis.

And she's right.

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