Women’s rights in the Catholic Church, generally, are a controversial subject. Many people believe the Church is masculine and excludes women in any leadership rules. The Catholic Church has been around for over two thousand years. The modern world believes the Church is outdated. Jesus Christ lived during a time when women were secluded. It is time, in their thoughts, for the Catholics to change their beliefs to adequate with the contemporary society, some Catholics even deliberate with the idea of change. Pope Paul VI portrayed the Catholic Church in three words, tradition (the practices of the faith), magisterium (God’s Plan) and the Gospels (Jesus’ teachings). It is not the Church’s responsibility to change but to follow what they have been given, the Truth. As more go to the advanced society and the feminist movement continues on, the Church stays with their beliefs on who each of the sexes really are.
The Feminist Movement
The women’s movement began in the 1800s to justify the right to go to university. Before the women’s movement in the nineteenth century, females were to focus on the sixteenth century of the three C’s, church, children and cooking. The Catholic Church did not start the inequality of men and women. It was already in the world. For most of the years, the Church followed society with many of the factors in life but teachings of the Church state females and males have the same opportunities in faith and are equal in God’s eyes. Many women, including Catholic women, were part of the women’s movement. When it began, the movement did not want equal opportunities but independence.
“If women’s contribution to the development of culture is to occur only through the exercise of masculine qualities, then that de...
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In the discourse of family relations, views of women, and sex, it is necessary to begin with the standing that Catholicism held on the issues. The nuclear family model was the ideal of the Catholic Church; for this model provided protection, stability, and business connections. Ozment describes the nuclear family as the “total subjection of the wife to home and husband, of the home to the production of children, and of the children to the will of their parents” (Ozment, pg. 2). This view provides that a woman’s only purpose in life was to marry and bear children; if this was not viable she could enter the convent as not to be a finical burden upon her family. The Catholic Church also had strict views on the topic of sex, which was no sex outside of marriage and only in marriage to procreate. This view was held for the Church believed that “an upright person took pleasure only in God and used the things of the world to God’s glory, fallen men and women were enslaved to their lust and passions, no longer masters of their wills, and eager to worship the world in place of its creator” (Ozment, pg....
The marianismo gender role beliefs vary depending on where one is located. Marianismo beliefs influence what women see as “appropriate female behavior” (Craske, 1999, p. 12). Stereotypes of women are created which have stuck to what is ‘appropriate’ for what women can and cannot do. It is out of the normalcy for women to not follow these marianismo beliefs. It is obvious that motherhood is found as the ultimate role for women. Though it would make sense that men have fatherhood is not the ultimate role for men (even though both man and woman are needed to create a child) this is not the case at all. Another key marianismo belief Craske (2002) found was that women are “dominant in the private world of domestic organization,” while men are dominant in the public sector (p. 11). This is important to know because women lived very secluded lifestyles. This exclusive lifestyle connects to how Catholic women in Latin America had greater transgressions than men when it came...
The article, published September 23rd on Newsweek, informs the public about how seven women were arrested after a protest started. Approximately 50 members of the Women’s Ordination Worldwide assembled to attract the attention of Pope Francis during his visit. The women took extreme measures by laying in the street to block traffic. From there, the police addressed the situation by arresting three men and four women who were participating in the protest. They claimed to only be a small group but were representing thousands of Catholic women who demand equality and religious freedom.
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Religion is powerful in that it controls followers’ behaviours and beliefs throughout their entire lives; it is a form of social control. Catholicism is one of the most widely known religions influencing more than 2 billion people around the world (Ross). Within Catholicism not everyone are seen as equals; men have greater privilege than women. The bible and church are from a male’s point of view (Christ 86) and passages within the bible are used to enforce a sexual hierarchy. In fact, the oppression of women begins with the first story in Genesis about creation, which portrays females as being inferior to men and even of an evil nature. This one passage is the main source of justification of oppression of woman in the church (Daly 13). The church and its teachings instil low self-esteem and low self-worth in women; it creates false identities that are supposed to be God’s plan (Daly 3). One has to wonder why women participate in the church and follow its teachings, and how women can overcome the oppression in the church.
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“Today I appeal to the whole Church community to be willing to foster feminine participation in every way in its internal life. This is certainly not a new commitment, since it is inspired by the example of Christ himself….nevertheless, he also involved women in the cause of his kingdom; indeed he wanted them to be the first witnesses and heralds of his resurrection. In fact, there are many women who have distinguished themselves in the Church’s history by their holiness and hardworking ingenuity.”
The attempt for feminist movement dates back to the early 1800’s, where women were not considered equal to that of a man in religious contributions. If women did not belonged to a rich class, they had no privileges or the will to think freely. Around the 19th century religion gained some popularity amongst the general women population. The goal for the religious feminists was to change how their roles were perceived in the church life. Their aim was to create an image that would shape their role in the church and hope the outcome would positively influence their quality of life at home. This motivation for change created two feminist camps, egalitarians and complementarianism. Egalitarians were feminist camps, focused on equality. The Democratics Socialist Perspective belief was ...