Maureen Dowd: the Catholic Church is JUST like oppression in Saudi Arabia
Catholic-bashing is all the rage in liberal circles and in the mainstream media. As a Catholic, that’s infuriating. I love the church, and I hate seeing it slandered over and over again. The old “all priests abuse children” meme is back in the press again, and Catholicism is taking a beating again. The biased media likes to act as if this is a crisis within the church. The reality is that the Catholic church does not abuse children any more than Protestant churches or even the general population. But you won’t see the mainstream media pointing that out anytime soon. They’re too busy painting priests as evil child rapists who are trying to abuse their positions of authority. And while those evil men do exist within the Catholic church, they also exist everywhere else — teachers, preachers, Boy Scout leaders — because anytime a position of authority exists, there will be the rare person who will come along and abuse it. The overwhelming majority of priests uphold their vows and the mainstream media doesn’t care. It’s because “the church covers it up!!!!!”, they’ll say. But why does it for some reason not matter if Protestants are abusing children at the same rates, and are not reporting it?
Attacking the Catholic church is nothing new. And that’s all they’re trying to do.
I don’t know that I’ve seen something so ridiculous and slanderous, though, as Maureen Dowd’s latest column, where she asserts that Catholic women are just as oppressed as Islamic women in Saudi Arabia.
When I was in Saudi Arabia, I had tea and sweets with a group of educated and sophisticated young professional women.
I asked why they were not more upset about living in a country where women’s rights were strangled, an inbred and autocratic state more like an archaic men’s club than a modern nation. They told me, somewhat defensively, that the kingdom was moving at its own pace, glacial as that seemed to outsiders.
How could such spirited women, smart and successful on every other level, acquiesce in their own subordination?
I was puzzling over that one when it hit me: As a Catholic woman, I was doing the same thing.
I, too, belonged to an inbred and wealthy men’s club cloistered behind walls and disdaining modernity.
I, too, remained part of an autocratic society that repressed women and ignored their progress in the secular world.
I, too, rationalized as men in dresses allowed our religious kingdom to decay and to cling to outdated misogynistic rituals, blind to the benefits of welcoming women’s brains, talents and hearts into their ancient fraternity.
To circumscribe women, Saudi Arabia took Islam’s moral codes and orthodoxy to extremes not outlined by Muhammad; the Catholic Church took its moral codes and orthodoxy to extremes not outlined by Jesus. In the New Testament, Jesus is surrounded by strong women and never advocates that any woman — whether she’s his mother or a prostitute — be treated as a second-class citizen.
Negating women is at the heart of the church’s hideous — and criminal — indifference to the welfare of boys and girls in its priests’ care.
She then goes on to agree with a Newsweek writer who criticizes the “senior executives” — aka priests — for being celibate, refusing to marry, and not having children. Apparently, priests should bring need to “familiarize themselves with the earthy, primal messiness of families and children”.
What does having a family have to do with being a priest? If a man chooses to become a priest, he does so voluntarily, and voluntarily takes the vow of celibacy. A priest is the head of his church, and as such it is his responsibility to administer to his parish. It is his responsibility to administer sacraments, see to the poor, the sick, the old… and it is literally a 24 hour a day job. If someone in his parish, for example, gets in a car accident at 3:15 in the morning and is in critical condition, then the priest must get up, go to the hospital, and administer the Last Rites. When my brother was in his motorcycle accident, our priest was there within an hour of being notified. This is the job of a priest. He does not marry because he is married to the church. He is celibate because he is not married, and the church requires sex to only take place within a marriage.
But of course, it’s typical liberal nature to wonder why anyone should even bother restraining themselves. Liberals think that we should just do whatever we feel like doing, as if we were animals incapable of thinking through our primal urges. The idea that any person would willingly dedicate their life to the church as a priest or a nun, and be forever celibate, is astonishing to them.
But all of this is nothing compared to Maureen Dowd’s assertion that the Catholic church is just as oppressive as Saudi Arabia. It is so far out there that I can’t help but believe that she must be living in some kind of alternate reality. Women are not repressed in the Catholic church. To the contrary, as The Anchoress points out, women are celebrated in the church. There number of women in leadership positions in the Catholic church is comparable to the number of women in leadership positions in the workforce on the whole. There is nothing to stop women from serving in the Catholic church if they feel called to it. Look at Mother Theresa, Catherine of Sienna, Teresa of Avila. When it goes against the liberal meme of “the Catholic church is sexist”, women like these — and the thousands and thousands of nuns around the world — are ignored. There are far more nuns than there are priests currently serving the church, but what does that matter to Maureen Dowd? The church is still somehow oppressive.
But oppressive to the level of oppression that women face in Saudi Arabia? A statement like that shows just how out of touch modern feminists are with reality. Saudi women are segregated and oppressed. Women there have to live under sharia law, where if a woman is raped she can be stoned for it — unless, of course, she can find four men willing to speak for her. Women can be educated in Saudi Arabia, but very few of them are able to work. Most of them end up doing nothing but taking care of their husbands and children, whether it is their will or not. Women are not free in Saudi Arabia, they face actual persecution, oppression, and segregation.
Yet in Maureen Dowd’s twisted, warped reality, this is the same thing as the “oppression” in the Catholic church? Stonings are still reported in Saudi Arabia, yet somehow this is equal to… what? What is there in the Catholic church that can possibly compare to the hell that women endure in Saudi Arabia?
The answer is there is nothing. And like every other unimaginative liberal in the mainstream media, Maureen Dowd is grasping at straws to try to find another pitiful, pathetic argument to wage against the Catholic church.
Cross-posted from Cassy’s blog. Stop by for more original commentary, or follow her on Twitter.
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Posted by Cassy Fiano on April 11, 2010 11:40 am
» Filed Under 1st Amendment, Child molestation, Islam, Journalistic Malpractice, Journalistic Prostitution, Liberal Media/Bias, Moral Relativism, News, Religious Humanism, feminism, liberalism, religion
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8 Responses to “Maureen Dowd: the Catholic Church is JUST like oppression in Saudi Arabia”
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Maureen Dowd is a powerhungry feminist toolbag who thinks that the real victim of the Church abuse scandals is Maureen Dowd. She literally says in that article that the real tragedy here isn’t that the kids were abused (or that innocent priests have been slandered along with the guilty) but that Maureen Dowd can never become Pope.
She hates men, and that’s all there is to her. What a loser!
Maureen, I continue to applaud your courage in speaking out on the sex abuse and rape of children by catholic priests. Richard Dawkins is also on the right track to bring justice on this matter.
That silly scrunt Dowd writes for the New York Times, a paper currently in its death spiral. That should tell you a lot about her writing. Forget about her. She and her Lib paper will be gone soon enough.
if you throw a bucket of h20 on Maureen she will melt, just like the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz…….
An old, alone, bitter, wrinkled, liberal, is no way to be…….
Get over yourself, Maureen! The only thing you said that was correct is that you are part of the inbred club…not the good-old-boy club but the liberal hack’s inbred club. You are a disgrace to women everywhere, so don’t you dare speak for Catholic women…you are not one of us. You and all the other members of the CINO (catholic in name only) club can go straight to the Episcopalians! Maybe on the way you can stop at the McChurch drive through and get a clue! If you don’t like the Church, then LEAVE.
About Cassy’s comment on the blog. I couldn’t have said it better myself. Catholic bashing has been around for many years, and it is blatantly clear of the hatred and downright lies of some for anything Catholic.
I think the Catholic Church is, and should be, held to the highest standards, especially since it is the Church founded by Our Lord Jesus. It is so sickening, and very disturbing that some priests betray the trust, and cripple the minds and souls of these innocent victims by abuse.
The authorities of the church have been criticized, and rightly so, in dealing with this terrible crime
In trying to protect the many, many innocent and faithful men who dedicate themselves to God,and to protect our church, serious mistakes were made.
I pray for the victims of these abuses. Justice will be served.
I also will pray that faithful Christians
will not let these ‘haters of truth’, who look for any excuse to spread their diseased words and actions, influence them.
I will like to know the full details of the Catiolic Church in Saudi Arabia
I would love to not care what the Catholic church does, but what they do affects me. They lobby insurance companies to get them to deny coverage for birth control for all women, not just the many Catholic women who ignore their mandate against it. The rape of thousands of children over the years throughout the world is not a ‘meme’. It is a fact. And it is also a fact that there is a reason why you do not hear about cover ups or moving child rapists to a new church in the Protestant faith…because protestants consider it a crime that should be handled by the criminal justice system, not swept under the rug by a male hierarchy who cares more about their reputation than their members.