UNITED STATES
Huffington Post
Angela Bonavoglia
Dear Pope Francis:
As this new year unfolds, I’ve decided that, with all due respect, it is time for me to share with you my suggested “To-Do list on Women.” I’ve been deeply moved by your passionate defense of the poor; your willingness to call unbridled capitalism what it is, a spirit-killing machine for those to whom its bounty fails to trickle down; your symbolically and not so symbolically throwing the money changers — in the form of remote, rich, recriminating hierarchs — out of the Church temple. But I have been far less moved by what you have been saying about women. So,without further ado:
1. Please stop talking about the role of women in the church. That conceptualization implicitly allocates the place of a subgroup of human beings to designated corners of the institution. We never talk about expanding the role of men in the church because they are expected to be players in the whole church. The subject is justice, and equality.
2. Recognize women’s God-given moral authority. You’ve argued that the confessional should be a place of mercy not a “torture chamber,” and talked about a woman who had a failed marriage, remarried, had five children, but whose abortion “weighs heavily on her conscience and she sincerely regrets it.” The moral of your story was that the confessor’s job was to show her mercy. But what if she didn’t regret that abortion? What if she said it was the right thing for her to do? What if she knew in her bones that she could not be a mother then? Would you apply to her those heartfelt words that you applied to homosexuals, those words heard round the world: “Who am I to judge?” Abortion can be a difficult decision, we agree, but God obviously trusted women to make that decision: look where She put the embryo. …
8. Hold your brethren accountable. There is no question that the Church is the world’s oldest and largest surviving boys club and that, if women are ever to be equal in this church, you must hold the men accountable. The most urgent area for accountability regards your brother bishops’ complicity in decades of child sexual abuse. You were roundly applauded for suspending a German Bishop for extravagant spending on his opulent residence, including installing a $20,500 bathtub. What about castigating the bishops who were complicit in the rape and sodomizing of children instead of keeping them safe and secure in the arms of holy mother church? And, I must ask: Do you really think that the bishops would have such an easy time turning away the mothers who came asking for justice for the brutal crimes against their offspring if women had been equal players in the church?
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