UNITED STATES
Patriot-News
By Patriot-News Op-Ed
BY JAMES F. DRANE
Every major industry, firm or organization has a particular culture at the leadership level, and most are male cultures. The same is true of political parties, churches and social groups.
So, an all-male Vatican culture is not unique.
Women, however, have begun to rise to the top of secular institutions. This is especially true of institutions in economically advanced nations. In most cases, the ground-breaking women themselves have been formed by female societies, groups and clubs with their own strong feminine cultures.
Across the broad biological spectrum, females form friendships and bond with one another. These female bonds and friendships strengthen a female way of being that is different from how men interact and how they are formed by the cultures in their clubs and associations.
Strong sister bonds and friendships create strengths that males and their groups cannot match.
There is a lesson here that seems to be missed in the Catholic Church’s male culture and by the bishops formed in it. Some of the least insightful bishops reprimanded Sister Carol Keehan for standing with and protecting pregnant women whose lives were threatened by a developing fetus.
These bishops were theologically unsophisticated, but even worse was their naivete in thinking that they could push around Catholic sisters and child-bearing women with their reprimands and threats to withdraw Catholic status from hospitals if abortion is permitted when a fetus puts the mother’s life in danger.
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