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Their own dicks--in their crazy, not to mention sinful, exclusion of women from the priesthood. Sorry to put it so crudely, but they are the ones who assert that their being male makes them special to God, and other people being female makes them not so special. This HUGE error of the Catholic Church institution has a lo-o-ong history (back to 3rd to 5th Century AD) but one thing is very clear: It did NOT come from the founder of Christianity, who promoted ONE simple precept, over and over again, in every way that he could: "Love thy neighbor." Tell me how these egocentric men, swishing around in velvet robes with gold trim, and issuing edicts as if they were God, and accumulating vast properties and power, is "loving thy neighbor." What they have done, instead, is to write a prescription for abuse of power--a highly secretive, highly monolithic boys' club that can (and does) condemn people to Hell, and that can (and does) worship ITSELF, not God. Big, big, BIG error.
They need to CORRECT this error, but it is very difficult for them to do so. Their entire identity is mixed up with it. They have re-written history to defend the myth that only men were deemed worthy to perform the fetishistic acts that they turned the story of "the Last Supper" into. They equate this fetish with the Christian message itself and feel that Christianity itself is under attack when anyone points out how wrong it is. They have created an institution that CAN'T change and that creation is so not in the spirit of Jesus as to be insanely ludicrous. Jesus changed the rules of orthodox religion. He opposed priestly fetishism and power-mongering. He welcomed all. He furthermore surrounded himself with women and often chided his male followers for "not getting it." And they have convinced themselves that Jesus really said, "Upon this blockhead, I will build my church." (If he did say that, he meant it humorously.) Has there ever been a more anti-institutional teacher than Jesus?
Anyway, I see their problem. It's truly hard to give up self-puffery--an inflated idea of your own worth on the basis of something you didn't earn or choose (your biology). It's hard to reform an institution that feeds your egocentric notions of yourself. It's hard to yield power, position, authority, chosenness. Very hard. I don't think that this should be underestimated--and those who CAN do it are all the more praiseworthy. Married priests is a step in the right direction--and it takes courage for a church official to say even that. Women priests is the ultimate correction of this 1,500+ year wrong turn. The Church hierarchy has rendered itself unfit to promote Christian teaching in the modern world--out of long-standing error and sin. On the whole, they do not understand why they should held to account for child abuse. They think they are above the law, that they are special, that the peon churchgoers who are calling them to account and the victims of child abuse are less important than maintaining their power and authority as privileged male conduits to God. Where does that idea come from? It comes from their false notion that they are superior to women. That is what is at the heart of the child abuse scandal--false self-importance, false authority based on biology, false power.
Their thinly veiled contempt for marriage (despite their avowals to the contrary) and their not-at-all veiled contempt for women must end. These things have created a sick and insular institution in which some men have horribly harmed innocent children in the belief that they are superior beings, chosen by God for their biology, who cannot be held to account in human terms. THAT is the problem--a false sense of superiority--and it starts with their belief--reinforced by constant messages from the institution--that they are inherently superior to women.
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