Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ora!daemon
From: phs265y@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Newspaper Article
Message-ID: <60497.271b504a@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au>
Date: 17 Oct 90 20:23:25 GMT
References: <4836@sarah> <1990Oct12.214229.23575@nntp-server.caltech.edu>
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In article <1990Oct12.214229.23575@nntp-server.caltech.edu>, morphy@truebalt.cco.caltech.EDU (Jones Maxime Murphy) writes:
> Being from a catholic background myself, I believe catholicism and
> feminism are fundamentally incompatible. In fact, the entire
> Judaeo-Christian-Islamic family of genetically related religions have
> several fatal flaws that render them useless for the development of
> spirituality in a manner unvitiated by gender bias.

Well, I am afraid that I totally disagree with this.  I find the teachings
of Jesus and the tenets of feminism (and socialism for that matter) 
absolutely compatible.
    
I am no feminist theorist but I believe feminism is about true equality
between men and women.  Jesus was about true equality among all people 
("love your neighbour (male or female) as yourself")

I believe that the trappings of Christianity (the church hierarchy etc..)
reflect the fact that our world has been a patriarchy for the last several
thousand years and it is a certainty that the church hierarchy has enforced
patriarchy, but I believe that it has nothing to do with the essence of 
Jesus' philosophy.

> First of all, god is consistently referred to as male, unlike the
> supreme deities of many other religions. When he does choose to sire a
> child, he does so with no advance warning to the person involved. We
> now call that rape.

> Most damning, however, is that god consistently prefers to talk to
> men. All prophets are male, as is Christ. Women are purely auxiliary,
> as far as god is concerned.

If God is real, I don't think It necessarily conforms to any 
human point of view (including my own I suppose).

> The results of this are obvious. While women are welcome to perform,
> say, fundraising duties or other auxiliary functions, they are almost
> universally excluded from the power structure of organized
> Judaeo-Christian-Islamic religions.

True, but I would like to think that this could change and that
Christianity will still survive.  Female priests now exist in the
Protestant churches, and the Catholic church will not survive unless it
follows suit.

T. Hartin