Angry in the Great White North

News of a woman being ordained as a Roman Catholic priest:

An English literature instructor from Vancouver Island says she will be ordained as Canada's first woman Roman Catholic priest in a ceremony conducted on the waters of the St. Lawrence River.

Michele Birch-Conery of Parksville said Friday she expects the church to threaten her with excommunication, but she believes she is fighting a human rights issue.

Why the ceremony on the water? Because no diocese has jurisdiction there. I guess that means God's not watching either.

God is probably snapping His fingers in frustration, "They found a Me-damn loophole!"

OK, maybe not.

But the story inspired me to study the reasoning used by these groups pushing for women priests. First, I noted that many of them are also pushing for the Church to embrace contraception, abortion, and liberation theology (an amalgam of Catholicism and Marxism), so even if the Church did not have a problem with women priests in general, she would have a problem with these women priests in particular.

I also noticed that in more than a few places, these women made reference to the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). How does a UN document support one side or another in a theological argument?

The answer is simple: the United Nations and its pronouncements take precedence over any belief or custom of a religious community, because they're all meaningless anyway.

First, what does CEDAW concern itself with? Discrimination of all kinds, not just the egregious violent forms, and it calls on all UN member states to eliminate gender-based discrimination:

(e) To take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women by any person, organization or enterprise;

(f) To take all appropriate measures, including legislation, to modify or abolish existing laws, regulations, customs and practices which constitute discrimination against women;

Notably absent is any provision for discrimination within religious institutions. You might wonder where religion is actually mentioned. The phrase "customs and practices" is UN-speak for religion.

So any organization and enterprise that discriminates against women is subject to punishment by UN member states. That includes "all appropriate measures, including legislation, to modify or abolish existing laws, regulations, customs and practices".

The Women's United Nations Report Network, the NGO that helped draft CEDAW, does explicitly call out Catholicism as practising a form of discrimination:

(i) Christianity

178. Many Christian sensibilities and religious practices agree that women should have no responsible functions. Roman and Mediterranean culture attributed limited roles to each sex: the man represents sacramental authority, and the woman is in the image of the Virgin, Bride and Mother of Christ. Exclusion from priesthood implies exclusion from church government.

179. Protestant churches are more supple but women have only recently become pastors after theological training.

Does that mean the UN is against religion? Not at all.

In fact, the aim of the UN is to fix religion:

The aim is not to change religions or to hurt religious sentiments but to restore the reforming role of religions against patriarchal domination.

Enlightened religions can inform women of their rights and how they may be abused by culture.

Culture, religion, and freedom of religion or belief are relative notions, while respect for life, human dignity, non-discrimination and women's rights are invariants which can serve to unite humanity.

Funny how all religions are covered by these statements. When it comes to "relative notions" and "invariants", though, some Church Fathers would argue that the Church has been remarkably invariant over two thousand years, and that the secular society, especially in modern times, is awash with relativism.

I guess they would be wrong. I bet none of them are on the committee that oversees compliance with the Convention:

For the purpose of considering the progress made in the implementation of the present Convention, there shall be established a [committee of] experts of high moral standing and competence in the field covered by the Convention.

But then how can a misogynistic bigots be experts of high moral standing? Some might call that a stereotypical view of a Catholic male, but every member state has obligations under CEDAW with regards to stereotypical attitudes:

States Parties shall take all appropriate measures:

(a) To modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women, with a view to achieving the elimination of prejudices and customary and all other practices which are based on the idea of the inferiority or the superiority of either of the sexes or on stereotyped roles for men and women;

UN member states can sign the treaty with reservations, but few reservations are acceptable. In fact, just about nothing is acceptable:

Neither traditional, religious or cultural practice nor incompatible domestic laws and policies can justify violations of the Convention.

Oh yeah, they mention religion explicity here.

Does an all-male priesthood in the Catholic Church count as a concern for the UN? The focus of CEDAW is on egregious violations, such as female circumcision practised in Africa, severe forms of discrimination seen in Islamic countries, and limited legal and property rights common in Asian cultures.

But in order not to appear too "Western" the document treats all relgions as equals, and finds fault with all of them. It also makes certain not to give an explicit exemption to any religion for any role performed by men, which is why the women's priesthood movement is able to use the UN documents in support of its goals.

Moreover, the UN's assertion that as a super-state its legal determinations must supercede all religious edicts (which are of course just local cultural phenomena in its view) is an inspiration to any group to use the UN as a club to beat on religious rules it doesn't like. It doesn't help that the UN sees as part of its job to "restore" to the role of religions against "patriarchal domination", and yet it denies being out to "change" religion.

Odd that an organization not even 60 years old has the wisdom to see what has gone wrong with the two thousand year old Catholic Church, and the far older Jewish faith, and will work to "restore" them. I bet Pope Benedict is just waiting for Kofi Annan to call and tell him what things need fixing.

OK, that's an absurd image, but then it's the image that the statements in CEDAW evoke in me.

Now some might say that to be consistent in defending the autonomy of the Church against the UN social engineering projects, I would have to leave alone the people who enslave women or practice female infanticide or force women to undergo circumcisions.

That would be true if I was a moral relativist like the people who run the UN. But I'm not. I can say, with a clear conscience, that the UN should leave the Catholic Church alone, and go after these other people. Why? Because they're wrong!

What did you expect me to say? I'm Catholic, for crying out loud.

With no hesitation whatsoever, I can look at the practices of Islam, for instance, and pass judgment. Why? Because in my mind, I'm not making a religious decision. Islam is a false religion, following a false god, based on a book of bad poetry.

There. I said it.

It should come as no surprise to anyone. Nor would I be surprised at a Muslim making similar statements about Catholicism. Of course that's what he believes. I expect no less. That doesn't mean I condone violence between people of faith, and I hope that they can sit together to find areas of common ground. But I don't have to believe that all religions are equally right, or even equally worthy of respect. CEDAW tries to to do that, and instead of saying this religion does it better than that one, or that this aspect of this religion is not subject to the goals of gender equality, it if forced to conclude that all religions are equally meaningless (a logical conclusion, given the mutually exclusive beliefs and dramatically different ways different religions treat women), and thus steps into the vacuum of its own making to be the ultimate moral arbiter.