2000 years

'I will put enmity between you and the woman...' 3:15

No, that's not a quote from Joseph Ratzinger at 3.15 this morning.

It's a quote from the Bible, a compilation of hearsay, rumour, innuendo, misogyny, fairytale, legend, biography, social history and advice written by various men over a period of a few hundred years.

The Bible has largely been the same since it was agreed upon as a fundamental part of the Christian Church, over 2000 years ago.

The world, however, has not.

None of this is news; none of it is even that outrageous. The quote above, put into the context of a 2000-year-old society, could even be considered enlightened, in that it doesn't place the blame on women for the enmity.

What is outrageous is the reliance of the Catholic Church under Ratzinger on the ancient tradition of misogyny within its teachings.

Ratzinger - I know he's the Pope, but part of my problem with the Church is the edification of its officers through mystical titles, robes and glittery accessories - has, during his tenure, taken the Church back many years. And it was already quite a bit behind.

The latest release from the Church, including the 'sin' of ordaining women priests in a list which mostly focussed on the 'grave' sin of child abuse, is almost mind bogglingly stupid, ignorant, and short-sighted.

I've been putting off writing this post since I first read of this last week, as I was afraid I'd merely spew expletives.

Contrary to some reports, the news from the Vatican did not precisely equate women priests and those who ordain them, with paedophiles.

They made the unfortunate mistake of including the new rules on ordaining women priests in the same document as the new rules on paedophilia. At least, that's their line on it.

It shows just how clueless the Church is when it comes to the gravity of paedophilia. It's like including late payment of your TV licence in the same legal provision as murder. Even if you believe they didn't mean it that way, it shows an astonishing lack of political nous, something that would be surprising, given its proud history as an Italian city state and how it got there.

But that's optics. It's well documented that the Church has no clue how to tackle paedophilia, and for a long time, didn't really care. I will give Archbishop Diarmuid Martin and some of his colleagues the benefit of assuming that now, they do care.

The part of this that really and truly astonishes and angers me is how the Church, after 2000 years of progress in almost every other sphere of society, can still believe that women have no place in its structure.

My relationship with the Church was a big part of my childhood and it was exemplified almost 100% by nuns, teachers (all female), priests' housekeepers, my granny and all the other old ladies who went to mass and kept the place going.
Women who cooked and cleaned for the Church and its many tentacles, who grew and arranged flowers for the Church, who sang at Church, who did readings at Mass, who visited the poor and the sick for the Church's charities and who arranged fundraisers and trips to Lourdes and the 'tea and sandwiches' part of the funeral. In the midst of this a priest wandered in, had his dress put on him by some overawed kids who spent an hour handing him things, ate and drank what he was given by the women, and went for a pint.

I am not saying all priests are lazy or that all priests or bad; I am not even saying all priests are like this. But every support service that I can remember ever seeing in the Church was carried out by women.

When I visited the Vatican a number of years ago on a trip to Rome, I became incandescent with rage and had to leave St Peter's Basilica. I've written about this before, and I won't go into it in detail again.

But as we wandered around between statues of 'holy' men, crypts (of men) with nuns beating their heads off the ground and wailing in front of them, pictures of men and astonishing wealth, held by men, we walked past nuns cleaning, and of course ended up in the gift shop. Where, if we'd bought anything, we'd have been served by nuns.

It was the biggest and wealthiest clubhouse I had ever seen and they did not want me in the club.

I have been raised to expect that I am equal to anybody. I know that I am equal to anybody. And yet, there is no chance that I or any other woman, can ever be in a position to change the Church. Because change has to happen on the inside, and we are not on the inside.

We are tolerated as tea makers and cleaners and mothers (to a point - only in marriage and only if we eschew contraception and impure thoughts and enjoying any sexual contact not designed for procreation). We are tolerated as 'handmaidens'.

Now, when the Church is in the throes of the biggest crisis since the Reformation, when it is desperately seeking vocations and forgiveness from the thousands, possibly millions, it has wronged, in one foul publication, it shuts out the 50 per cent of the population that has not been proven, over 2000 years of administration, to be completely misguided and wrong about how we do things.

I am not religious. But I feel some of the disappointment and shame that the Church's female adherents must be feeling now. There is a movement for women priests, and it is quietly supported by quite a few male priests.

It's time for them to raise their voices. Schism is an old-fashioned word, but it looks to me like the concept has never been more inviting.

Progress

 Image (c) Tony O'Connell Photography














Cork City Manager Joe Gavin this week said goodbye to the city he’s taken charge of for the past ten years.
Mr Gavin leaves with a considerable list of achievements under his belt, for which he was widely applauded at Monday night’s City Council meeting.
A vox-pop of our readers carried out on Facebook and on the streets suggests that the majority of Corkonians recognise these achievements.
The regeneration of St Patrick’s Street and the Grand Parade; the inception of the (some day, hopefully realised) Docklands Development Plan; the Lapps Quay and Opera Lane developments were all mentioned at Monday’s meeting. Councillors spoke at length about the infrastructural developments I’ve mentioned above, as well as others.
Mr Gavin praised developers, including Cork’s own ‘fugitive’ Greg Coughlan, of Howard Holdings, whose vision produced the Lapps Quay and Boardwalk development.
And then he said something else that proved just how little we have learned in the two years – so far - of this recession.
There were five cranes visible on the Cork skyline when he arrived, in 2000. At the ‘peak’ of his tenure, there were 28. This is how he measured his achievements, watching the skyline from his upper-floor office in Cork City Hall.
This statement – from a man who has done so much work for the people of Cork – just proved that we have learned absolutely nothing from the past two years of crashes, revelations and toppling of pedestals.
When will we learn that progress is not about buildings, but about people?
While all of the developments mentioned above are important and welcome, creating jobs and improving the city’s appearance, they are still just buildings.
At Monday night’s City Council meeting, it was also revealed that the number of homeless shelter beds in Cork currently meet demand, for the first time.
That is a wonderful achievement, and hats off to Cork Simon and the other services that continue to fight against homelessness. No matter how badly off we are as a country, one thing we are not short of is houses, so homelessness is a particularly ironic, and unnecessary side effect of this recession.
That, to me, is a major achievement, and I’m sure it is not the only human progress made in Cork since 2000.
Cork City Council has had its share of ups and downs under Mr Gavin; the St Mary’s Road Library move, which has been the cause of some confusion among councillors as to who voted for it, and when, is one negative that will be remembered from this year; the extensive flooding another.
While it will be a long time before Mr Gavin’s legacy can be assessed accurately, and from an objective distance, the legacy of the economic crash should already be teaching us that progress is about people.
Perhaps the next City Manager, Tim Lucey, when he takes over in August, will measure progress differently, while carrying on the good work of his predecessor.

Radiohead

I've been on the radio a couple of times lately - on Newstalk's Lunchtime Show on Friday, for example. Listen here (from about 40 minutes):