Females Need Never Apply

Well ladies, here's a pleasant little theological Fuck You. Fr. Longenecker's tortuous justification for treating women as inferiors is entertaining only in terms of the level of bullshit he is able to pile on in such a short blog post. His March 26, 2012 piece titled "Why Women Cannot Be Priests" doesn't really contain anything new. It is mostly warmed over theocratic rationalizations. I just find it mind boggling that anyone with enough intelligence to tie their own shoes or complete a sentence still can't see this crap for what it is.

He dresses it all up in a considerable amount of verbiage, of course, but in the end his premise is not that sophisticated. According to the good father women are "co-equal" they just should never expect to put that equality into practical use. See woman are equal mainly because men need them to procreate. See how that works? Women are the other half of the coupling needed to produce more people. Since God commanded us to be fruitful women are needed. After that, women lose their significance in terms of theology. Fr. Longenecker, as you might expect, tosses out a few Biblical verses to justify the demand that women be subservient and like it.

He even goes further in pointing out that failure to accept this second-class role amounts to an assault on the Catholic Church. It's interesting how often abusers fall back on the claim that they are the victim. There was one aspect of the piece that did surprise me. In the last chapter Longenecker actually states that,"The Church does not have the authority to ordain women as priests." Really? I had gotten the impression over the years that most priests had long ago given about the delusion that the Church was entirely created by divine revelation. Most seemed willing to admit that the modern Church was predominantly a human affair, though still seen as divinely inspired. How can the Church not have authority? I haven't come across that justification before.

In the end, these excuses don't amount to much. The Church is still basically treating women as inferiors. Just saying the Church respects them as equals doesn't mean squat. And when most of the doctrines and policies are geared to treat women as an afterthought I fail to see why women put up with this kind of shit. I say flip the Golden Rule. To Father Longenecker and his fellow mysogynists I say Fuck You and your lame-ass excuses.