Pope Francis puts his foot in it again, this time with retrograde views on women

December 12, 2014 • 6:51 am

Religion News Service, was, I thought, a news organization pretty sympathetic to faith, but you couldn’t prove it from its article on Wednesday, “Lost in translation? 7 reasons why women wince when Pope Francis starts talking.”

What it shows is what people on this website already know, but many faitheists and even atheists don’t realize: the Pope really does embody all the retrograde doctrine of the Catholic church, and his reputation for being a “new Pope” comes from his few offhand statements that made people think he’s leading the Vatican into a new age of tolerance and modernity.

Well, not when it comes to women. As author David Gibson reports:

But when he speaks about women, Francis can sound a lot like the (almost) 78-year-old Argentine churchman that he is, using analogies that sound alternately condescending and impolitic, even if well-intentioned.

Indeed, Francis has spoken repeatedly of the “feminine genius” and the need for a church to develop “a deeper theology of women,” and of his determination to promote women to senior positions in Rome. He also points out that some of his remarks are meant as jokes, the fruit of a sense of humor that is part of his appeal.

Still, not everyone is amused.

“I am at a loss to see how this could be other than insulting to women who’ve already given up having families of their own to serve God,” The Washington Post’s Melinda Henneberger wrote after a speech in which the pope warned nuns not to become spiritual “old maids.”

And in a Los Angeles Times column this week, New Testament scholar Candida Moss of Notre Dame and Yale Bible professor Joel Baden blasted Francis’ granny comments to the European Parliament as “nothing other than crass chauvinism.”

For all his positive comments and reforms, they said, the pope “reveals a highly patriarchal view” of the value and traditional role of women.

The Pope seems to have an obsession with fostering reproduction (of course, that’s traditional in the Church), but along with that goes his general criticism of what he calls “old maids” and “spinsters”. It’s simply insulting to childless women. Here are a few of the seven quotes that Gibson uses to instantiate Francis’s backwardness on women’s issues:

“Be a mother and not an old maid!”

“Please, let it be a fruitful chastity, a chastity that generates sons and daughters in the church. The consecrated woman is a mother, must be a mother and not an old maid (or “spinster”). … Forgive me for speaking this way, but the motherhood of consecrated life, its fertility, is important.”

— Address to nuns from around the world, May 8, 2013

and

“Europe is a ‘grandmother’, no longer fertile and vibrant.”

“In many quarters we encounter a general impression of weariness and aging, of a Europe which is now a ‘grandmother,’ no longer fertile and vibrant. As a result, the great ideas which once inspired Europe seem to have lost their attraction … “

— Address to the European Parliament, Nov. 25, 2014

and, finally (the article has four others):

“A church that seems more like a spinster than a mother.”

“When the church does not (evangelize), then the church stops herself, is closed in on herself, even if she is well-organized, has a perfect organizational chart, everything’s fine, everything’s tidy — but she lacks joy, she lacks peace, and so she becomes a disheartened church, anxious, sad, a church that seems more like a spinster than a mother, and this church doesn’t work, it is a church in a museum. The joy of the Church is to give birth … “

— Homily at morning Mass, Dec. 9, 2014

Even if two of these are metaphorical, it’s still insensitive. But of course what does the Pope know about women?

h/t: Bruce

61 thoughts on “Pope Francis puts his foot in it again, this time with retrograde views on women”

      1. Both foot and head are now ensconced in the Papal rectum. Forthcoming pronouncements are likely to be muffled.

  2. The Church is a bit bitter and twisted about Europe these days. It is increasingly secular, attendance in church (and therefore money in the collection plate) has dwindled even in their last bastions and access to modern healthcare has meant that families are smaller, planned and no-one has to rely on desperate prayers in the place of medical interventions.

    It exposes a rather nasty, spiteful and regressive mindset that he thinks that hurling around the words ‘barren’ and ‘old maid’ will be exactly the right psychological buzzwords to shame women into fulfilling his directive. I don’t think it occurs to him that women who have fewer than 3 children or indeed zero children by choice, do not cry themselves to sleep every night in the belief that their lives are incomplete and worthless and wrong.
    However I am all for him carrying on in this vein, for nothing manages to reinforce and convince people how irrelevant and unwanted this institution is as well as this sort of advocacy.

    I’m not wincing, it’s much more like a shrug.

    1. Besides which, hasn’t anybody told the Poop that it takes two to tango?

      If he’s going to tell nuns what failures they are for not getting pregnant, he’s being quite the hypocrite for not doing his fair share to get them pregnant. Think of Rome, if need be.

      Unless, of course, he’s got some kids of his own he’d rather the world not know about…?

      b&

      1. Oh Ben, if only you were a more Sophisticated Theologian, you would be able to spot the metaphor :p

        On the other hand, His Holiness is not the only one who thinks that the only thing that real women really want to have babies. JJ Abrams proudly explained it was his cunning plan too, to insert the gratuitous and idiotic childbirth-with-no-medicine-at-all scene into his first foray into the Star Trek universe. It was to bring the wimminz, because if the sight of a woman screaming for the lack of common painkillers in the 24th century doesn’t make you love science fiction, I don’t know what will.

      2. Gosh can’t a guy speak figuratively anymore?! There’s no shame in being a barren old woman, he’s just saying nuns should not be like a barren old woman.

        I second Grania’s emotion on this one. Keep digging, Frank!

      3. “Even if two of these are metaphorical, it’s still insensitive. But of course what does the Pope know about women?”

        Right. C’mon Holy Father, encourage those priests, friars and monks to get on with some metaphorical fathering!

  3. And boom, the quoted author says “the 78-year-old Argentine churchman that he is” … why does him being from Argentina matter in the least? Why bring out country-based stereotypes when you are allegedly complaining about sex-based stereotypes?

    1. And why the “(almost) 78-year-old” ? Is that somehow more geriatric and hopelessly out of touch than “77-year-old”?

      Isn’t the author himself being a little bit ageist?

      Enquiring minds want to know. (Well, they probably don’t, but it always sounds good).

      (signed) irate geriatric old creep

      1. I’m almost 35. That’s almost closer to 40 than it is 30. It’s almost closer to 50 than it is 20 and the day after I turn 50 makes me closer to 100 than 0. Does this matter? I don’t know, but enquiring minds might. No, not really, they don’t. I think the point is lost other than me now being depressed that I am nearly 100.

        1. If you want to become more depressed, think about your chances of reaching 100. That is where my mind inevitably goes when I miss my youth. 🙂

          2. On the other hand, you can also reduce depression by realizing you might not actually want to reach 100. Depends on your condition. It is uplifting to notice that your right to die is gradually becoming more widely recognized. Now that might really come in handy.

  6. It’s words like these that show that this pope is, in substance, no different from his predecessors. Women are no better off under his leadership than before. Those Catholics who hope and imagine, for example, that their Church might take a more reasonable stance on contraception, are dreaming. Pope Francis might reach out to Muslims, but the Muslims are growing faster because they’re having more babies, and that would never do, so women have to be exhorted to do their duty. The constant negative stereotypes feed that.

    The “nones” are you growing faster than any religious group, which perhaps shows they all have it wrong.

  7. When you see a woman of the catholic faith it makes you wonder. Kind of like a rabbit that speaks kindly of the coyote.

  8. The Pope is an idiot, for many of his positions.

    On the other hand, I’m kind of tired of the obsession with correctspeak, where if you don’t use the currently approved terms, you are living in the unenlightened past (as opposed to the enlightened present)

    1. Obsessiveness and being judgmental are a problem with relations among humans generally; race gender and ethnicity are sensitive issues with a painful past – and every insensitive remark is not equally bad as the next, whatever the Ministry of Correctspeak might assert.

      Insensitivity to the situations of others is also a real problem, which is why I don’t feel terribly burdened by being aware of so-called PC speech – a friend called me PC a while ago and I said I’m so PC I don’t use the term PC. I’m just trying not to be a sexist racist privileged white a-hole.

      I could see where keeping up with the “current” PC terms would be challenging if they were changing frequently, but I can only think of a couple of instances where there is a new ethnic label since the heyday in the 90’s, and even then I’m pretty sure the new label and the old-new-label are equally acceptable.

      But the part where Harris and Mahler are excoriated and threatened with dis-invitation to speak, that I don’t support. Being crappy to a fellow academic because they aren’t up on the latest framing of some hot-button issue, that’s wrong.

      I don’t sympathize at all with the pope in this case, though. I’m not surprised that an older man is out of touch, but he’s not that old and he also happens to be the one presenting himself as a new and modern pontiff. Women do the heavy lifting in his church, nuns and moms. There is no reason for him to around mansplaining the world to people who understand it better than he does, except that he’s just saying what he actually thinks. I hope everyone is listening, but not in the way the pope would hope … ,

        1. Gah! You’re right! And as an AARP member I should know better; thank you for pointing it out.

          The nugget of truth in my ignorant remark is that there is an expected and understandable disconnect in values and attitudes between generations. Each generation is just not going to “get” what the next is about. Since “PC” was started by the boomers (and GenX turned it into policy and the Milllenials are beating people over the head with it), I am not surprised there is a generational disconnect. It’s not a judgment on the character, intelligence or intellectual flexibility of people older than myself. Age is not the reason the pope is fine deaf to his female audience’s frequency, it’s a cultural gap.

          Thanks again for straightening me out!

    2. I don’t see this as a case of not using “correctspeak”, which can, as you say, be ridiculous. It is, to me, a case of applying inaccurate and insulting stereotypes to childless women, especially older ones.

    1. “Bill Cosby sightings”
      That´ s a good one.
      I do hope that it becomes a meme – until to behave like that lands each who does behind bars in each and every region!

  10. Please, let it be a fruitful chastity, a chastity that generates sons and daughters in the church. The consecrated woman is a mother, must be a mother and not an old maid.

    Please, let it be a faithful celibacy, a celebacy that generates nuns and fathers in the church. The consecrated man is a priest, must be a priest and not an old molester.

  11. Pope Francis is peddling the same old misogyny and intolerance as his forbears, its just that he has put a pretty face on it.

    2. Of course you are correct. Why anyone thinks there will ever be any substantive changes in the Catholic church’s attitudes or practices is puzzling to me. Women and married men still can’t become priests. Allowing both would go a long way toward solving their child abuse scandal, but that’s another example itself of a never changing church. How many centuries will go by while the church keeps saying they’re doing something about abusive priests while they still hide them from prosecution? Catholic friends of mine talk about abusive priests as if the scandal was something from the past that the church fixed years ago. No matter what words he uses it’s still ‘meet the new pope, same as the old pope’.

  12. A large part of this is the fact that the church is referred to as “Mother Church” – I’m guessing this is because the cult of Mary, mother of Jesus, was so big in its Medieval heyday; they used The Woman as a recruiting tool (everyone loves their mother, and their mothers love to be, figuratively, worshiped) at the same time keeping women out of the church hierarchy to preserve their purity. Couldn’t they see this was keeping them away from god? Oh, yeah, there is no god; the whole thing is just a scam to enrich themselves – and the whole “be fruitful” line is what any corporate type wants: more customers. Since nuns aren’t supposed to be fruitful in the usual way, Francis wants nuns to be motherly types who urge more recruits to join the church. (Why am I thinking of white feathers?)

  13. These quotes illustrate the true perversion and inhumanity of religion. Taking meaningful, real things like motherhood and fertility and grafting them to this cancerous, childish “philosophy”.

    Oh for a present day Nietzsche.

  14. The sad thing is that those stupid words didn’t even make me wince because I’m so used to hearing them uttered in society – not in media, because we all know their wrong – but certainly reinforced in attitudes throughout our culture. When the Pope says that it’s just amusing; whatever supposedly 78-year-old-virgin-who-knows-nothing-of-women!

    1. A contender for the secular version could be the stereotype about librarians.

      Not planning to have children is something I get questions about all the time and I’m not even 40 yet.

        1. Reminds me of a story about some accountants and their annual yule party.

          Due to their skills they spared no expenses. 🙂

      3. Next time you get asked that, if the circumstances allow, ask the questioner if you ought to give him/her a quitclaim deed to your life, or give them a general power of attorney.

  15. What better evidence of the schizophrenia of this belief system, where celibacy is seen as a saintly virtue, essential to attaining any “high” rank in the church hierarchy, while the “common” believer is exhorted to procreate as much as possible in order to swell the flock (and thus collection plates)- no wonder so many Catholic women are emotionally messed up!

    1. Then you’ve got these conferences where the faithful teachers of Natural Family Planning gather. I was subjected to several of these as a child right through my teenage years. A few memorable highlights: A priest telling me I’d severed my relationship with God and endangered my soul for having lustful thoughts, the leader of CCL telling the crowd that anyone there who isn’t Catholic will surely go to Hell in today’s broken world, and a group that bashed the movie Titanic saying that Leonardo DiCaprio’s character was sinking to eternal torture when he died in the ocean since he had premarital sex. A really “uplifting” atmosphere all around…

      1. “Natural” family planning is anything but, because a woman is lustiest (I guess I can’t say “horniest”) just when she’s most fertile* – which is just when NFP says not to have sex.

        *I generalise, but that’s why my mother – in a roundabout way – told me.

        2. Right just one more way of limiting the woman’s pleasure. The penalty for enjoyable sex is childbirth, whereas the “penalty” for the man is simply having to abstain for a few days.

  16. Very recently, being praised for calling attention to a need for more female theologians, Pope Francis remarked that those needed women were like strawberries on the cake.

    A retrograde view of women? I’m not a Moral Professional TM, but as I watched the video of him saying that I wondered if he was implying that male theologians made up the substance (cake) of the field while women could add decoration (strawberries).

    Mike

  17. “When the church does not (evangelize), then the church stops herself

    Well he’s kinda got a point there. Anyway if he wants to complain that the most boring church ever is boring then maybe he should get a new job as a Pentecostal pope or something.

  19. “Europe is a ‘grandmother’, no longer fertile and vibrant.” Says a man who is the CEO of an organization firmly rooted in The Dark Ages.

    I don’t know about fertile but if he wants to see some abuelas that are vibrant he should come to some fiestas here in Galicia.

Comments are closed.