An archbishop speaks out on women and Catholicism

[cbayer]

http://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/2014/01/women-and-religion

Jan 24th 2014, 16:53 by A. McE

DIARMUID Martin, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Dublin, has a diverting reply to a recurrent question. How can he presume to wield influence on the lives of women when he is celibate, has spent most of his life in a male-dominated church and opposes artificial contraception?

“My grandmother rode a motorcycle in Ireland back in 1922,” he told a panel hosted by your reporter at the World Economic Forum. “She and my mother didn’t get along because they were such strong women with very different views. You could not grow up in a family like that without due respect for women’s empowerment.”

How the world’s faiths relate to a quest for greater equality for was the topic. For one of the participants, Orzala Ashraf Nemat, who organized girls’ education in Afghanistan, encouraging Muslim women and activists prepared to challenge backward and brutal practices, while avoiding fruitless theological clashes with imams was the preferred strategy. Senior Taliban members, she noted, were getting keener on at least some education for girls in their own families. Building on that, she suggested, might begin to change things for the better.

The archbishop does not have such alarming opponents to contend with. But he was outspoken about the state of the church in Ireland and beyond when it comes to engaging and retaining the enthusiasm of women. The faith he observed had long ago retreated into a “male pathology” which resulted from a lack of familiarity with women’s lives. He saw many firmly Catholic women, who confided that they did not feel the religion had much to offer their daughters.

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