Give her a copy of Ruether's Sexism and God-talk for her next birthday.
Her teenage rebellion can be Mary Daly.
Mary is a horrible role model for women. She's venerated solely for submitting to male authority (God) and for giving birth. Mary Magdalene is a much more progressive figure, at least in the Gnostic gospels, where she's presented as a bona fide disciple and confidant of Christ, which is probably why mainstream Christian tradition has marginalized her by identifying her with prostitution.
2: That depends on the extent to which you want to concede that God's authority is "male."
2: will we ever be enlightened enough that prostitution isn't marginalized?
Because, damn, I need a job.
In any case, it's clear that the Virgin Mary was not among the Twelve. (All the petty hair-splitting on "apostle" vs. "disciple," etc., is pretty dumb, given that Paul was obviously never part of the circle of twelve apostles, but is most often named "The Apostle" -- that's what Aquinas calls him, for instance. One might say that he received his authority from the original apostles, but that would make him a bishop, not an apostle.)
I will never, ever forget an episode from my childhood, in which my ordained (United Church of Christ) mother came home from a weekend retreat (which I always suspected were largely 'How to keep the congregation happy while also preaching something that matters' mutual bitch sessions), gathered her three children around her, and told us all with scarcely restrained fury that Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute.
It was only with more age and self-taught theology that the significance of this incident became clearer to me.
1: A decade or so from now:
"Whaddya rebellin' against, Sally?"
"The fact that we live in a profoundly anti-female society, a misogynistic "civilization" in which men collectively victimize women, attacking us as personifications of their own paranoid fears, as The Enemy."
I'm with 4, at least the first half. Even if Mary Magdalene's identification as a prostitute comes about through identifying her with other characters in the gospels, it remains the case that Jesus did hang out with prostitutes all the time, and that the gospels never once portray him telling a prostitute to take up a different profession.
Sermon on the Mount -- worthwhile ethical teachings. Everything else, Sally can work out for herself.
"That doesn't make any sense: what about Mary?"
"Oh honey, you're not supposed to think too hard about it, or else you'll realize that very little of it makes any sense."
That's excellent, LB. Also supposed to be very good feminist theology, although I haven't managed to finish it, is She Who Is.
2: Mary isn't that bad, really. Hell, the Catholic church's Marianism is the one remaining hint in any of the big three religions of a concept of the feminine god. Having a religion in which birth is, you know, kind of important? Is kinda cool.
I could even make a case that the perpetual virginity thing is part of the way the church has folded a feminine god into the Mary figure--after all, if she's perpetually a virgin *and* a mother, then in a sense she is whole and complete unto herself, even when it comes to creating life. That isn't half bad, conceptually.
LB, make sure and tell Sally that there are quite a few Catholics who think that women should be ordained. In fact, there are women who *have* been ordained, and they point out exactly the same thing about the importance of Mary. Also that the question of whether the vatican, or the people, represent "the" church is an open one.
God Sr. bores everyone to tears with his virgin fixation. Jesus on the other hand is out living it up getting a myrrh rubdown from Magdalene.
In fact, there are women who *have* been ordained
In a sense, yes. In another sense, no.
Good for Sally. That's exactly the line of questioning that provoked our priest to call me a heretic when I was in high school, which I've always considered a badge of honor. Of course, if you don't have a priest, he can't call her a heretic, so you'd better get her baptized and churched up pronto.
13: And then Jesus sneaks in after curfew, red-eyed and smelling of sex, thinking "I am so going to get nailed..."
I could even make a case that the perpetual virginity thing is part of the way the church has folded a feminine god into the Mary figure--after all, if she's perpetually a virgin *and* a mother, then in a sense she is whole and complete unto herself, even when it comes to creating life.
So you're saying Mary was a lesbian and Jesus came from her bone marrow? Seeing as he's unfailingly depicteded as male (despite the long hair), then I guess it really was a miracle!
Don't be a stupid tin-eared bastard, M/tch. It's well-established that the Nazarenes could only reproduce sexually in the feline gut. Otherwise, it would have been all penis fencing, all the time.
Something was funky on the server; I killed the process that seemed to be causing it, and I think we're good now.
I'm going to restart the web service. Should just take a minute.
I am now wondering why we don't refer to people who have the gift of perfect pitch as "copper-eared".
Hey Millsy, where's Kraab been? We all liked her better.
M/tch's blasphemy killed the server.
M/tch's blasphemy:the Jews::the server:Jesus
Or so Mel Gibson would have you believe.
Hey Millsy, where's Kraab been? We all liked her better.
Yeah. I know.
I think you were trying too hard, ogged, and scared her away.
(actually she's just been super busy directing a national campaign against one of the phone companies; and she's in NYC and DC this weekend for meetings; which is why I'm hanging out with you losersguys)
LB, Episcopalians call their ordained ministers priests too, and we do ordain women.
12: B, I think you're reaching here. Mary is a patriarchal fantasy figure of "pure" femininity: a woman who can serve as a vessel for a male child without being tainted by sex. Yes, she enjoys an elevated status, especially within Catholicism, but this doesn't say much for Mary, for Christianity, or for Catholicism. Mary is a figure revered for her passivity - for being born without "sin," for not having sex, for accepting impregnation by a male authority, for things she either doesn't do or things that happen to her. To elevate a figure like this to something like the ideal of femininity strikes me as problematic at best.
As an aside: what are "the big three religions"? A quick glance at Wikipedia suggests Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism as the three largest. I'm not an expert on Hinduism, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't lack for concepts of femininity in god.
"the big three [monotheistic] religions"
32: Well let's see, the three with the most adherents are Christianity, Islam, and Apostropharianism. You forgot Judaism.
Anti-semite.
I'm with 31. The notion that part of being "whole and complete" is being a virgin is just no good, yo. And it's not like she's auto-reproducing. God impregnated her, he was just cool enough to be able to do it without touching her dirty parts.
Immaculate conception. think about that. No muss, not fuss.
(Ja, ja, I know. It doesn't really mean that.)
No muss, not fuss S/B No muss, no fuss, no throbbing gristle.
Kids are often quite reasonable when not given incentive by adults to be otherwise. I remember getting un-Baptisted over the question of animals having souls. It just didn't make sense that my cat wouldn't get to go to heaven.
33: I'm intrigued by this "Apostropharianism". What are its tenets?
11: One could also take a look at Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza's "In Memory of Her" -- a historical reconstruction of how women were sidelined in the early Christian movement, in the grand old German style. (It's one of the few scholarly books I've ever read -- in any discipline -- that actually delivers everything it promises in the introduction.)
re: 31
The Hindu goddesses are often totally bad-ass. In marked contrast to Mary ..
It just didn't make sense that my cat wouldn't get to go to heaven.
But your cat was constantly having impure thoughts!
I'm intrigued by this "Apostropharianism". What are its tenets?
Sorry, zadfrack, Apostropharians don't accept converts, and we're not here to satisfy your insulting anthropological urges. Go study the Zoroastrians or something.
When I was in HS I met an orthodox Baptist who was absolutely convinced that his dog and his horse would meet him in Heaven.
But only if they were a good dog and a good horse. Some dogs and horse went to Hell.
Sally's adorable. I think B has it mostly right. Catholicism isn't progressive, but it might have been for its day. Problem is the day was a couple thousand years ago, but there you are.
Episcopalians have women priests and that is sooooo cool.
Did his dog and horse accept Jesus into their hearts?
"Seeing as he's unfailingly depicteded as male (despite the long hair), then I guess it really was a miracle!"
Well they never did get around to explaining how he got his Y chromosome in the Gospels.
One of the key arguments that led to the various branches of the Anglican Church (including the Episcopal Church in the US) allowing the ordination of women was the witness of the women who were close to Jesus (in particular, the women who are present at the crucifixion, but even more so the women who find the empty tomb and tell the disciples). Or so I am told, having not been a part of the discussion myself.
38: The first commandment is eat or be eaten.
Apostropharians don't accept converts
s/b
"We're just in it for the legal bud -- freedom of religion and stuff man, yeah."
Our minister at high school* was a woman. The Church of Scotland has been ordaining women since the late 60s and has had officially sanctioned female preachers for longer.
* our school, like most state schools in Scotland, was officially non-denominational, but in practice that meant Church of Scotland with the whole school attending church services two or three times a year.
This is the first time I ever heard of the Church of Scotland -- for some reason the only church that would have come to mind for Scottish ethnicity would be one of those Calvinist sects, but I can't remember even what Scottish Calvinists call themselves. What is its relationship to the Church of England?
Church of Scotland::Presbyterian Church, USA as Church of England::Episcopal Church.
Oh yeah, Presbyterians is what the Scottish Calvinists call themselves. Google's top hit for "Scottish calvinists" is interesting.
It's something like the Scottish equivalent of the Church of England. It's the national church -- but it's Presbyterian rather than Anglican -- it is the descendent of the 16th century Calvinist churches although the particular sect you are thinking of is probably the Free Church.
The Church of Scotland is pretty left-wing these days (as churches go) and is a democratic body. Also, their recent history on things like apartheid is pretty admirable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_scotland
[Note: My family are of Catholic origin rather than Church of Scotland.]
Yeah I learned a lot about Calvinism as a teenager when I was trying to buttress my arguments for rejecting my parents' church, UCC, which is descended from the Puritans. "Church of Scotland" threw me because I didn't realize Presbyterianism was nationalized. This commentary is more strongly worded than most of the Burns I can remember reading in high school.
(And yes, modern UCC Congregationalism is pretty admirable too. It was mostly just a "not wanting to go to church with my parents" thing.)
Church of Scotland::Presbyterian Church, USA as Church of England::Episcopal Church.
Which leads to the odd paradox that the tiresome old woman with her mugshot on all the money is Episcopalian in London, but Presbyterian in Edinburgh.
the tiresome old woman with her mugshot on all the money is Episcopalian in London, but Presbyterian in Edinburgh
Sure helped her when her daughter wanted to get married a second time.
58: True. But I believe the Church of Scotland, which, as ttaM points out, has been dragged kicking and screaming into the first half of the 20th century (let's not overstate the case) in recent years, has a more liberal view on remarriage anyway.
It'll be interesting to see whether an independent Scotland continues to bother with an established religion.
You're talking done deal, as we say over here. Really?
60: Not really, I was being provocative. But seriously more likely than at any other time I can remember - I'd say 50/50.
I'm not sure if 'first half of the 20th century' is entirely fair.
Afaik, the Church of Scotland still has a fairly illiberal position on homosexual unions -- at least for clergy -- but on almost everything else is as liberal or progressive as most.
Also, it's worth noting that the Church of Scotland ISN"T established in the same sense that the Church of England is. It's officially seperate from the state, it's the national church but not the state church. There's some sophistry around what that means, but it does mean the state has no say (at all) in the running of the church.
Re: scots independence.
Even if the SNP gets a majority in the parliament there's a lot that needs to happen after that before independence. It's by no means certain they'd win any putative referendum and they aren't in any immediate hurry to hold that.
Although, as you say, it's the most likely it's ever been.
62: That'll be a nomeclature problem, won't it? Under the assumption that Wales and N. Ireland don't also go off on their own, you wouldn't be able to call the non-Scotland half of the split England, but continuing to call it the UK wouldn't work either. (Unfogged, focusing relentlessly on trivialities since 2003.)
re: 65
You could, "The United Kingdom of England, Wales and Northern Ireland (plus Man, those odd Channel Island thingies and some protectorates and stuff)"
ttaM: If I hadn't seen that poll last year I doubt I'd even have thought it worth a wisecrack, but now I don't know. Scots no longer seem to have a major Unionist party they're prepared to vote for.
Also the IoM and Channel Islands aren't part of the UK - don't make it even worse.
LB: It'd be more complex than you can imagine. Most of the support for continued union with N. Ireland comes from Scotland - the English tend to see it as nothing but a financial black hole, and hate the N.I. Unionists as mush as they hate the Republicans. Welsh nationalists tend to favour a "Catalan solution", which seems reasonable, but don't get me started on the practicalities.
Welsh nationalists tend to favour a "Catalan solution",
If they're thinking of breaking away from the UK and becoming part of Spain, I have to say that I think that's geographically ill advised, let alone the necessary language classes.
Sorry, "Catalan solution" = Eurospeak for extreme federalism which respects the dignity of the central state by not actually claiming independence.
(Though the weather's a lot better in Barcelona than Cardiff.)
Drat. And there I had pictures of Welsh nationalists with little saws, trying to cut Wales free of England in preparation for rowing it down south.
As a long-time observer of Quebec nationalism/separatism, which has seemed inevitable several times in my lifetime but never consumated, I'm convinced that Scottish, or other British Isles independence is mostly useful for securing more cultural and economic autonomy, ala Catalonia. The promise of EU supra-nationalism, with its emphasis on regionalism as opposed to subdivisions based on the nation states of 1945 makes this likely. It's amazing how these are all linked together. Americans have trouble visualizing this because our own nationalism is mystic and because we tend to think of European nations as fixed entities from time immemorial.
Ah, but thanks to the EU, they can just go straight there and get a job (provided they speak a useful language) for $15 airfare.
Which is why a lot of the discussion about partitioning the early modern kingdoms is a bit academic, really.
73 to 71. 72 is about right, but never underestimate the power of sentiment.
re: 72
Yeah, tbh, I suspect a lot of Scots would favour some version of the Catalan model too. I think full nation status is probably less important than de facto administrative independence.
Saying that, I've not lived in Scotland for 7 or 8 years so my feeling for how things are on the ground is a bit off, probably.
Oy. We're getting our daughter baptized. For our firstborn we were lucky to have a seasoned priest who didn't want to give us the run around or rub my nose in the imperfections of my Catholicism.
This time, no such luck. In fact there was grumping from the current priest about poor record keeping, like he had half a mind to make us do two more hours of instruction. This is an opportunity for the Church to exert leverage and I'm starting to think there is a real effort at doing so.
Painful, painful meetings with eager priest ensue. Given the context, you could expect original sin. But we managed to cover them all. Transubstantiation? Check. Virgin birth? Check. Do we pray at home? check. Suggestion that we introduce the concept of hell to our older child in order to really cement the faith? check. Natural Family planning? Check.
At some point I just went into a stupor. Of course, at this rate it will be my beloved (who is still hoping to change the Church from the inside)who will be leading me down the rosy path of Episcopalianism, Unitarianism or whatever else.
Benton, you have my sympathy.
I have to admit, the "tell your kid about hell" thing is a new one to me. Like, wow.
Suggestion that we introduce the concept of hell to our older child in order to really cement the faith
Oh jeez... I would toss the charlatan out at this point. Well who knows what I'd do, I'm not Catholic after all. But I think such a suggestion would have me getting pretty angry.
76: What choice do you have to go priest shopping? One encounters similar divergences in Reform Judaism and protestantism too. It isn't the form/doctrine, it's the people.
Well, if you join a church that believes in that stuff ... what do you expect?
"We expect you to raise your child in line with the tenets of our faith, except for the icky ones, natch"
Oh, don't be a pill, ttaM. One doesn't "join" the Catholic church; it's just part of one's history and therefore identity, like it or not.
You don't have to choose to have your child baptised and confirmed in the religion, though, if it's just part of your history and identity.
One doesn't "join" the Catholic church; it's just part of one's history and therefore identity, like it or not.
?!?!?! So it's unacceptable for a "church" to actually have "beliefs" because people who belong to the ethnic groups associated with the church now have different beliefs?
I joined the Catholic church. So do lots of people.
I did have him baptized, and largely for those reasons. Then again, at the time I'd found a parish that totally didn't suck and I was actually attending mass occasionally, too.
Confirmation is something kids do (or don't do) themselves.
83: Did I say that?
84: You're nuts, man.
I just totally fail to comprehend people continuing to practice a religion -- including inducting their children into it -- in which they don't fully believe.
I know people do, all the time, of course. But I still don't understand it.
It's kind of like continuing to be a member of a nation even when you don't fully support everything it does. If there are things you value about it--and there are things I value about the Catholic church--and/or if you feel that it is part of who you are, you continue to be part of it, whether that means "practicing" or not. To an extent, I can't help finding arguments that one should become an Episcopalian because they have women priests, or just stop calling oneself a Catholic altogether, kind of deeply unserious, as if these things were no more important than deciding which pair of shoes to wear in the morning.
"To an extent, I can't help finding arguments that one should ... just stop calling oneself a Catholic altogether, kind of deeply unserious"
See, I feel pretty much the opposite way. That it's pretty hard to take someone's commitment to $foo-doctrine seriously if they aren't at least committed to the majority of the tenets of $foo-doctrine.
One doesn't have to be an absolutist, obviously, and think that one has to accept absolutely every nut and bolt, but the core stuff, surely?
ttaM, I know it's weird, but I do understand it in a way. If you don't think the religion in question is actively pernicious, and if it represents the ethical environment you're most familiar with, then placing your children in its orbit gives them a moral framework to take or leave later on.
I don't have kids, but I was so raised. Neither of my parents actually believed in God, let alone the finer points of the Athanasian creed. But my family was suffused with the CoE; several ancestors were ordained, and a cousin by marriage was Dean of Canterbury. The social ideals of the liberal wing of the church were congenial to my parents, and they were ideals they wanted me to take on, so it was an easy decision to raise me in that environment, and it isn't for me to say it was a wrong one.
That said, they were totally unphased when I dumped the whole package in my late teens.
I suppose if you think that religious identity is exclusively about doctrine, rather than being at least equally about practice and psychology. To me, that would be silly, given that the major Christian religions, anyway, change their doctrines periodically. The Catholic church most assuredly has changed things over the years: I don't think any of the stuff in 76 has been a constant throughout the history of the church.
Yeah, I just can't get past the whole 'believing in God' part.
I can understand that i) you believe in God, and ii) there's a church which has a set of doctrines with which one is largely in agreement, and iii) where one is specifically in agreement with those bits of doctrine that that church sees as key, then raising one's children in that church makes sense even if one isn't in complete agreement with everything the church says or does.
90: Kinda yeah, and it also gives him a cultural/intellectual framework. PK's pretty much an athiest, which is cool with me; he probably won't end up a Catholic because I'm certainly not going to drag him to mass. But mass is the only religious service he's attended to date, so fwiw his concept of religion is based on that, the answers I give him when he asks questions, and what the little fundies at his school tell him.
re: 91
They've been pretty constant in the past 1000+ years or so.
94: The natural family planning shit hasn't, nope. And like I said, the whole concept of hell thing is entirely new to me as something we're required to drone on about.
86: trust me when I say it's significantly less screwy than the church with which I was formerly affiliated.
The last sentence of 95 evidences a stunning ignorance of church history, I think. Hell much, much less emphasized now than probably ever before.
re: 95
There haven't really *been* any non-natural planning methods prior to the fairly recent past, so I suppose that's a fair point.
But the whole transubstantiation, heaven/hell, virgin birth, original sin, etc. stuff has been.
The Raelians just let you go, Brock?
97: I know hell's been a big deal. Bah on your ignorance of church history nonsense.
98: In fact, the church was until quite recently pretty okay with induced abortions and had about zero opinion on the use of condoms for disease prevention, aside from the obvious fact that fornication was in and of itself wrong.
Are you kidding, Apo? I'd have never left the Raelians; they seem like fun. What I left was __________
Well, see, I agree, the ignorance of church history thing seemed like nonsense. But I don't know what else you meant by 95.
2, The rejection of the Gnostic gospels as heresy had way more to do with er, gnosticism, than it did with the status of Mary Magdalene. Conflicts arose over the the whole "special knowledge" thing, the nature of the Trinity, etc. Mary Magdalene's status (and I could very much be wrong, I'm just speaking off the top of my head) didn't have much to do with the Council of Nicea or other anti-gnostic proclamations. For another view, though, I hear Dan Brown wrote a lovely book about it all...
101: You're the first of those I've ever felt I could converse with. Any testifying you wanted to do I'd be all ears, er, eyes.
101: Really? My eyes aren't actually bugging out, but wow, that's a shift. If true, I sincerely have a great deal of respect for your ability to question and examine your own philosophy such that you landed in such a different place.