Man of Woman

By Ed Raymond
Staff Writer

“No Man Born of Woman”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many members of the U.S. Conference of Roman Catholic Bishops have their chasubles and knickers in such a twist. The recent decision by the Obama administration to require religious organizations to carry health insurance coverage for contraceptives for employees of businesses, schools, hospitals, and other entities churches operate has really jacked up the rhetoric about what happens naturally with the other half of the human race. Gads! They have intercourse and get pregnant!  Bishop after bishop, many who are looking for promotions to archbishop, cardinal, or becoming the first American pope (Pope Benedict is about to name 22 new cardinals!), have come up with red hot soundbites:

*** “The Administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States!”
*** “Unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics will be compelled to choose between violating our consciences or dropping health care coverage for our employees (thus suffering cash penalties for refusing)!”
*** “We cannot – and will not – comply with this unjust law!”
*** “A literally unconscionable decision!”
*** “We have been told ‘to Hell with you!’”

So here we have a group of middle-aged and doddering old men insisting that Roman Catholic teaching prohibits abortion, contraception, and such surgeries as vasectomies and tubal ligations – without a single suggestion from the other half of the human race who are armed with vaginas, ovaries, and mobile eggs! Remarkable! What would the First Apostle Mary think? One would think that men did something more worthwhile besides “Bang-Bang,” but that is our lot in life. I guess we can help with the breathing exercises.

The Elizabethan Chain Of Being, Shakespeare, And George Bernard Shaw

I was completely mystified by Roman Catholic bishops and priests marching into church sanctuaries a couple of weeks ago and reading political statements condemning certain portions of Obamacare regarding contraceptives. There are 77.7 million Catholics in the U.S. with 68.5 million registered in churches, so we have about 39 million Catholic females, give or take a million or two. About 80 percent are fertile—or have been some time in their lives. According to reliable surveys, 98 percent, or over 31 million Catholic women, have used contraceptives of one kind or another. If it is reasonable to assume that 31 million men had carnal knowledge that their wives and partners were using contraceptives, then we have 62 million adult Catholics listening to bishops and priests in 195 dioceses in the U.S. who have violated one of the principal teachings of the church. Those audiences must have been terribly uncomfortable. Reasonable men would have recognized defeat long ago. The letter-reading must have been like having the great TV drunk, Foster Brooks, lecture the Women’s Christian Temperance Union Convention on sobriety.
Many Catholics no longer go to church like we used to. When I was a Catholic for my first 27 years, if we missed mass it was a confessional sin. According to church attendance surveys, only 33 percent, or 25.9 million Catholics, attended mass last Sunday. In the archdioceses where sexual abuse of children was rampant, church attendance is way down. There are 1.8 million registered Catholics in Cardinal Bernard Law’s former diocese of Boston, the bastion of priestly sexual abuse. The cardinal was snatched to safety by Pope John Paul II and provided a deluxe Roman apartment to live in and a basilica to preach in next to the Vatican. Only 287,000 Bostonians, or 16 percent, now attend weekly services. Across the country in Sacramento only 137,000 attend mass out of a registration of over a million.

George Bernard Shaw And Pygmalion: A Story Of An “Inferior” Woman

“My Fair Lady” is a marvelous musical based on Shaw’s play “Pygmalion” which is based on Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.” (All writers steal from each other.)  In Ovid’s original story Pygmalion is a man with very high morals who is revolted by the “loose and shameful” lives of the women around him. He decides to live alone and never marry.  He is a great artist-sculptor so he creates a beautiful statue more perfect than any living woman. Better than a Victoria’s Secret hottie. This is when the fun begins. The more he looks at her naked attributes, the more he falls in love with her. If this interests your hormones, the text is available.
When I see these pronouncements about sex, procreation, and sexual contact from the U.S. Conference of Bishops my mind slips to Eliza, the unwashed, unschooled but cute daughter of a “dustman” (a garbage man), a flower girl in “My Fair Lady.” The learned Professor Henry Higgins and his sidekick Colonel Pickering take on the difficult challenge of turning her into a lady equal to Pygmalion’s statue. A few lines from the song “Why Can’t A Woman Be More Like A Man?” outlines their problem:

  “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?  Their heads are full of cotton, hay, and rags!
  They’re nothing but exasperating, irritating, vacillating, calculating, agitating,
  Maddening and infuriating hags! Pickering, why can’t a woman be more like a man?
  Men are so honest, so thoroughly square; eternally noble, historic’ly fair,
  Can’t a woman learn to use her head? Why do they do ev’rything their mothers do?
  Why can’t a woman take after a man? I cannot understand the wretch at all!”
   
Shaw, a sometimes misogynist and occasional lover of women, nailed all Catholic popes with his stiletto wit: “What ever the Pope knows about sex, he shouldn’t!”

Was The Thirteenth Apostle A Prostitute?

The Vatican and the Roman Catholic hierarchy have never known how to handle women. Witness the case of Mary Magdalene. At one time she was called the Apostle to the Apostles. She was also the Thirteenth Apostle early on. Jesus’s tomb was in her garden. She was the first to see him after the Resurrection. Jesus told her, the only eyewitness, to tell his guys what happened. Her name appears 14 times in the New Testament, more than any other woman.

But some popes thought she was too important a symbol to women. In 591 A.D. Pope Gregory the Great called her a prostitute, a sinful “fallen” woman. With no evidence to back up this scurrilous charge, the Vatican let this misconception (no pun intended for this column) ride around spreading sexy dirt until they corrected it in 1969, “only” 1,378 years after the big lie was started.  Let’s remember it only took the Vatican 400 years to admit that Galileo was right: By God, the earth did orbit around the sun, contrary to what all those popes said.

A philosophy called the “Great Chain of Being” was an early Christian concept developed by males to keep women and their mothers subject to men for many centuries. The “stairway of nature,” as it was also called, detailed a rigid, strict hierarchical structure for all living and dead things on earth. Everything goes down in this order: God, angels, demons (like Lucifer, Satan), kings, princes, nobles, men, wild animals, domesticated animals, plants, precious stones and metals, and lastly, ordinary minerals.  Women weren’t even mentioned in the “Chain,” except that they were below the head of household. Writers from the 12th century on, including Chaucer and Shakespeare, often used the Great Chain in their plots. If a man attempted to move to a higher level and wasn’t qualified (noble to prince, barmaid to lady, as an example), he was bound to come to a disaster. This was probably the first mention of the Peter Principle.

In Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” the lead character and his wife killed a king and took his place. But Macbeth was led to disaster by a witch’s prophecy that “No man born of woman shall harm Macbeth.” Sounds good, doesn’t it? But MacDuff, who killed Macbeth in the end, was not born of woman. He had been “untimely ripped” from his mother’s womb, thus was not born in the usual sense. Oh, the world is filled with female trickery.

If Infallible, Why Not Excommunicate?

All of this centuries-long concentration on sex, contraception, abortion, and sexual conduct by the Vatican and the U.S. Conference of Bishops has been overwhelmingly negative for the Catholic Church in Europe and the U.S. Ireland, at one time the most Catholic of countries, has closed its embassy at the Vatican because of church sexual abuse committed on Irish boys and girls. In Germany more than 1,200 Catholics of the city of Wurzburg quit the church in the month of March, 2011 because of reports of sexual abuse and sadistic punishment in the Catholic schools. Even in Italy only about 15 percent of Catholics go to weekly mass. Illicit sex, child abuse by priests, and pro-life positions have done it. A very conservative Vatican emphasizing a “No Bishop Left Behind” program while forgetting the peasants in the pews has had about the same success as NCLB in this country.
 
More than 1,000 U.S. parishes have closed since 1995. Since the 1960’s four American-born Catholics have left the church for every one converted. Almost 10,000 priests have been lost in the last half century. In the year 2008, at the top of the sex abuse scandals, over 400,000 members left the church. Presently more than 3,400 parishes in the U.S. have no resident priest.

A Solution Of Sorts For All Parties

I have a solution to slow the decline of the Catholic Church. For the first 1,000 years of the church women were kept in their “place” by tribal traditions, torture, ignorance, a fiery death at the stake, and chauvinistic selection of male-dominated gospels. Gospels praising women were often hidden in jars and buried in the desert. For the next 1,000 years Joan of Arc and “witches” and “heretics” were burned at the stake as examples to show that women were not very high on the “Chain of Being.” Joan at age 17 led the French Army to victory over the English in the Hundred Years War, but ended up being burned at the stake for heresy at 19. She was too dangerous, too powerful to let live. Joan died in flames on 30 May 1431, but was finally made a saint by the Catholic Church in 1920, only 489 years after her ultimate sacrifice.
According to Catholic Church teachings, the Pope is infallible (incapable of doing wrong) in the areas of faith and morals. Certainly the Vatican has been bewitched by sex and its derivatives for centuries. Even a priest who served Pope Gregory in the 13th century and who later became pope himself wrote a very carefully researched recipe book on the preparation and use of contraceptives which are still effective today.

If the Catholic Church is so adamant about sexual practices, why doesn’t Pope Benedict use his infallibility in faith and morals to excommunicate all women and men who have used any form of contraception? Let’s cut to the quick.  It’s a simple process. Automatic excommunication (latae sententiae) occurs at the moment of committing the offense. Only a general announcement would have to be made–-like the bishops’ letters on contraceptives which were read in church. Excommunicated persons are barred from receiving the Eucharist or other Sacraments, and banned from any church office, but may still attend church.
Besides the moralistic fact that 98 percent of Catholic women have used contraceptives sometime in their “fertile life,” there are practical facts to consider. Not even counting Catholic universities and colleges whose doors are open to all faiths, we have 629 Catholic hospitals employing 765,000 people of many faiths who serve one out of six patients – of many faiths. Of the ten top revenue-producing hospital systems in 2010, four were Catholic.

Healthcare West based in San Francisco, the fifth largest health system in the country, brought in $11 billion while treating 6.2 million patients. Yes, it provides a splendid service while making all kinds of money.

The Great Deniers

The Vatican and the bishops have denied Mary Magdalene, Saint Joan of Arc, and the fact that the position of the church on all things sexual has slithered, slathered, and snaked through the ages, not making much sense at all. The Bible does not condemn abortion. At one time the early Christians determined a fetus did not reach “babyhood” until three months and did not have a soul until five months. In the 15th Century Archbishop Antoninus of Florence, Italy approved of abortions when the mother’s life was in danger. His idea became the norm in 15th Century medicine. This Dominican was later made a saint by the Vatican. Another sainted man, Saint Thomas Acquinas, decided that females were produced from male embryos that were somehow damaged in the womb. That’s science at its worst. In 1954 Pope Pius XII blessed the rhythm method as an excellent contraceptive event. Ah, Vatican Roulette. We know it well. At one time Catholic women had to confess the use of anesthetics in childbirth as a sin because a Biblical curse of pain was pronounced against Eve!
It makes no sense that a government must approve all religious practices or beliefs. Tennessee Snake Handlers are violating the law if they force their children to handle poisonous snakes. Any rational person would listen when 98 percent of a group approving a practice sends such a clear message of denial. Even after all the “outrage” expressed by bishops about the Obama contraceptive decision, almost 60 percent of all Catholics approved President Obama’s plan in several surveys.

I have a few suggested readings for Catholic bishops. The wife of Bath in Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” knows something about sex, relationships, and the functioning of body parts because of her five marriages to both interesting and dull guys in the 14th Century. Her stories would prepare bishops for “The Vagina Monologues,” another necessary philosophical read. I particularly recommend “Dilemma” by Father Albert Cutie. He left the Catholic Church after serving as a priest for millions through Catholic radio in Florida and Latin America for over 15 years. He fell in love, married, and switched to the Episcopal Church. His book may be too controversial for some, but it is a serious discussion of love, celibacy, sexual practices, and the use of contraceptives within the Catholic Church.

The Train Has Left the Station–And There Are No Passengers

After Vatican Roulette was approved by Pope Pius XII, H.L. Mencken, a favorite cynic of mine, wrote: “It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics (the counting of days along with an accurate thermometer), though she is still forbidden to resort to physics and chemistry.”

I look at it this way: The Vatican’s anti-contraceptive, anti-abortion, anti-gay passenger train has left Washington, D.C. headquarters with 195 conductor-bishops but few of the 62 million Catholics they have called immoral for committing an “intrinsically evil sin” have boarded any passenger cars for the trip.

We don’t need people in this modern age who have never had their feet in the stirrups telling us how to vote, whether we should marry the person of his or her choosing, or how to avoid pregnancy. We can seek advice elsewhere. The Catholic Church runs institutions that employ hundreds of thousands of people of all faiths caring for people of all faiths – and accepts untold millions of our tax dollars. That’s wonderful, but they owe participation in the community. Obama has not declared war on religion. He has declared war on disease, bigotry, and discrimination, not their churches.

We live in a modern world that is slowly removing ignorance and substituting science and reason to make lives better. I learned last night that the average share of stock sold on Wall Street is on the shelf only 22 seconds because of computer nano-purchasing. There are well over a million robots at work in factories and institutions around the world replacing millions of hardworking people.
We are not a Christian nation. Check the Constitution. No government is going to force me to follow Catholic karma and dogma. Been there, done that. I don’t want my grandchildren to grow up under new or old inquisitions. I want them to be able to cope with the 21st Century. I don’t want to follow hate-filled laws for people who happen to love a member of the same sex. The Pope said in 1968 that every act of intercourse should be open to procreation. Corky and I have friends who married at 90 and 85 after they had lost their spouses. They must have had a good laugh over that.
A female legislator in right-wing, wacko Oklahoma is so angry about men trying to run women she has sponsored a “Personhood” bill which would require every individual little sperm to be treated as sacred by churches! You go, sister!
The Roman Catholic Church, as well as Islam and Mormonism, is dominated by men who insist on telling women what they can and can’t do with their bodies. They are much too ignorant to be qualified to foist 14th Century ideas on any society. Yes, this whole kerfuffle is about religious freedom, the freedom for a woman to choose whether to use contraceptives or have an abortion – or to marry another woman.

P.S. There is a Viagra-like herbal with the fascinating name of Horny Goat Weed which has been used to “inspire men” for centuries. One of its nicknames is “Bishop’s Hat.” I wonder how that came about…
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