Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: "He Found Time to Meet Kim But Not Meet with Any One of the Many Outstanding Female Theologians Living in the U.S."

Questions from a Ewe writes, 

Symbol Trumps Substance in Synod on the Family: Women As the Imagined Strawberries on the Cake

National Catholic Reporter editorializes:

Quote for Day: Mary Hunt on Most Important Takeaway of Vatican Attack on U.S. Nuns — "Women's Equality in the Church Is No Longer Negotiable"

Mary Hunt at Religion Dispatches in a post-mortem statement about the Vatican attack on American nuns:

News Catch-Up: Philadelphia Gay-Bashing Story, Bondage Illustration for Vatican Gathering on Women, and Band of Brothers Dominating Vatican News Coverage

This is one of those end-of-week posts in which I try to catch you up on stories about which I've blogged in the past, which have a sequel:

Gerald Slevin on 12 New Year's Resolutions for Pope Francis: Time to Act Is Now

In a new posting at his Christian Catholicism site, Jerry Slevin invites Catholics to dream about the impossible. As he notes, countering the idea that such dreams are "impractical," who dreamt that a "pope for life" would resign in the midst of the mess the Catholic church has made for itself at this point in history?

Theologians Pope Francis Would Do Well to Read: Ivone Gebara on Catholic Church's Insistence on Maternal Role of Women

In the theologians-Pope-Francis-would-do-well-to-read category today, here's Brazilian theologian Ivone Gebara on what the maternity-centered view of women in official texts of the Catholic church actually does to real-life women. "No room for women to be worthwhile in and of themselves" . . . as they ornmanent the cake (which is, after all, the important thing in the equation) like beautiful red strawberries . . . . 

Ivone Gebara on the Violence of the World's Main Religions Against Women, and Extension of This Violence to "All Kinds of People"

In my posting several days ago, I cited Ivone Gebara's Out of the Depths: Women’s Experience of Evil and Salvation, trans. and intro. Ann Patrick Ware (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), on the ways in which various male-dominated religious traditions reduce women to silence, make them voiceless, deprive them of any means of expressing their spiritual insights in language that makes sense to them as women. Gebara's analysis of this reduction of women to silence goes further: she emphatically depicts these effects of patriarchal culture and religion as a form of violence against women.

Meinrad Craighead: Divine Mother and Clouds of Invisible Witnesses

Jayden Cameron has a beautiful posting up at his Gay Mystics blog site right now, focusing on artist-mystic Meinrad Craighead. I recommend it for all kinds of reasons: it's a Lenten resource for those who keep Lent; and it flows together perfectly with some of the themes developed by feminist theologian Ivone Gebara to which I pointed in my last posting here--the need of women to articulate their experience of the divine in their own terms, the imperative need of a church whose governing structures are dominated by males to listen to and welcome that experience, the way in which women refashion male-dominated symbols of the divine handed to them by male religious leaders, the relegation of women's refashioned symbols of the divine to a feminine "little world," etc.

Placing Pope Francis's Remarks about a Theology of Women Against the Backdrop of Ivone Gebara's Real Theology of Women

Sister Ivone Gebara

One of the themes that emerged in Pope Francis's anniversary interview this week was the question of the place of women in the Catholic church. As readers will know, this has been a persistent theme of Francis as pope: we need a theology of women, he said last summer. But to a great extent, what he has said in this vein is echoed in what he suggested in his interview this week: namely, that women's place in the church is to represent the feminine, Marian nature of the church, and not to usurp positions of authority that the tradition has assigned to males.

Males active and dominant. Females passive and receptive--like the Virgin Mary, as the male-dominated tradition likes to imagine her.

Ash Wednesday Meditation: Ivone Gebara on the Communtarian Dimension of the Cross

Today's Ash Wednesday, a day in which some Christian liturgical traditions limn crosses of ash on the foreheads of the faithful, to challenge them to remember that they are dust and will return to dust. Ash Wednesday inaugurates a liturgical season of remembering the cross and resurrection of Jesus, the central symbols on which Christian faith turns.

Taking A Close Look at the "Church Teaching" That Vatican Media Apologists Claim U.N. Attacks: There's Their World, and Then There's the Real World

For Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), David Clohessy responds to Austen Ivereigh's claim that the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child "ambushed" the Vatican with its recent report: 

Angela Bonavoglia's To-Do-List on Women for Pope Francis, with Theological Reflections from Ivone Gebara

At Huffington Post, Angela Bonavoglia has published a very fine open letter to Pope Francis entitled "For Pope Francis: A To-Do List for Women." The letter calls on Francis to stop talking about the role of women in the church, when the subjects that should really be under discussion are justice and equality. As Bonavoglia notes, further talk about where women's "place" is only further underscores assumptions that the male experience and perspective are normative, and women's experiences and perspectives are somehow to be wedged into the normative paradigm established by males.

On Talking Girl with a Guy in My Head: Questions from a Ewe Gives Pope Francis Some Advice about the "Theology of Women"

The incisive and funny blogger who maintains the Questions from a Ewe blog notes that Pope Francis may be visiting the U.S. next year. If he does, she wouldn't mind having a heart-to-heart with him about that "theology of women" thing he keeps talking about. I offer the following excerpt in the hope that readers will read the posting in its entirety; it's eminently worth the read:

Richard Rodriguez's Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography: Depending on Women "to Protect the Church from Its impulse to Cleanse Itself of Me"

For the San Francisco Chronicle, Lesley Hazleton reviews Richard Rodriguez's new book, Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography. As she notes, as an openly gay Latino Catholic, Rodriguez has long struggled with the overweeningly macho heritage of Christianity, or, at least, of significant strands of the Christian tradition. 

Matthew Fox, Letters to Pope Francis: "It Is Essential to Talk of Women's Rights"

Throughout his book Letters to Pope Francis, theologian Matthew Fox points out that one of the major gifts to the church of the saint whose name Cardinal Bergoglio chose for his papal name--Francis--is the gift of gender balance. Fox notes (p. 12) that Francis of Assisi's actions "reveal a man who recognizes the necessary balance of masculine and feminine, yang and yin, in all beings and in all relationships if we are to be a sustainable species."

Association of Catholic Priests: Pope Francis Has "A Major Blind Spot When It Comes to the Place of Women in the Catholic Church"

Central Scotoma

The Association of Catholic Priests suggests that, as with his predecessors, Pope Francis has "a major blind spot when it comes to the place of women in the Catholic Church." ACP points to Francis's recent decision to excommunicate Australian priest Father Greg Reynolds, which is being spun as a decision based on the rumor that Reynolds gave communion to a dog. His real crime was advocating the ordination of women.

A Reader Responds: "Women Tend to Organize in Circles"--and I Think about the Shutdown of U.S. Government

Two days ago, I commented on Lisa Fullam's recent question, "If women are so darn valuable, why is the 'gang of 8' all male?" In the conversation thread following that question, I noted that Pope Francis's latest interview speaks of the need to reimagine church in less hierarchical and more horizontal ways.

Pope Francis and Theology of Women: Overcoming Us-Them Imagination in Catholic Clerical Structure's Understanding of Women

In a posting at the Commonweal blog site two days ago, theologian Lisa Fullam suggests that those who want to help Pope Francis better understand the "theology of women" that he has said the church needs might send Francis boxes of books to help with this educational process. Lisa asks for suggestions of books to be included in the box. She'd like to compile a master list of 10 books.