From: People For Peace
Colleagues Home & Abroad Regional News
BY FR JOACHIM OMOLO OUKO, AJ
NAIROBI-KENYA
THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 2012
Pope Benedict’s general intention for March is that the whole world may recognize the contribution of women to the development of society. March is a time to remember and appreciate the important historical contributions of women, as well as recognize their continued influence in our society today.
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The contribution of women nuns to the development of society cannot also be ignored. They have contributes a lot on health, education among various development sectors. Even though women are not ordained to priesthood, during Pope John Paul’s pontificate, women took over pastoral and administrative duties in priestless parishes, they were appointed chancellors of dioceses around the world, and they began swelling the ranks of “experts” at Vatican synods and symposiums.
In 2004, for the first time, the pope appointed two women theologians to the prestigious International Theological Commission and named a Harvard University law professor, Mary Ann Glendon, to be president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.
In his 1994 apostolic letter on ordination, Pope John Paul said the church’s ban on women priests is definitive and not open to debate among Catholics.
The all-male priesthood, he wrote, does not represent discrimination against women, but fidelity to Christ’s actions and his plan for the church.
The pope’s document reaffirmed the basis for ordaining only men: Christ chose only men to be his Apostles, it has been the constant practice of the Catholic and Orthodox churches, and the magisterium’s teaching on the matter has been consistent.
While insisting women cannot be ordained priests, Pope Benedict XVI says it is right to discuss how women can be more involved in church decision-making. This is because women not only have exercised a charismatic function in the church, being prompted by the Holy Spirit to found religious orders, expand charitable projects and develop new forms of piety.
Nuns like any other women have had “a real and profound participation in the governance of the church. The contribution of women, “always has been a determining factor without which the church could not live.”
For decades women have been excluded from decision making and development is society, even in the Church. This is because women have been considered weaker gender. Even philosopher Aristotle thought that women were not important in the society that is why he declared that they were equal to infertile male.
According to Aristotle, woman’s role is to be compassionate, more easily moved to tears, while at the same time being more jealous, more querulous, and more apt to scold and to strike. She is more prone to despondency and less hopeful than the man, more void of shame or self-respect, more false of speech, more deceptive, and of more retentive.
Women have been considered people whose role is to belong in the home. They are physically inferior to men. That is why Aristotle claimed that their proper place is in the home, controlled by their husbands, because this corresponds to Greek constitutional law and as such he thought that women should not be educated with or like men, but should receive training in gymnastics and domestic arts to enable them to manage households, to bear and raise children, and to please and be obedient to their husbands.
He wrote that a virtuous wife is best honored when she sees that her husband is faithful to her, and has no preference for another woman; but before all others loves and trusts her and holds her as his own. And so much the more will the woman seek to be what he accounts her.
Emanuel Kant on the other hand thinks women should not have “civil personality”. Women he thinks have a “purely inherent existence” as servants who should always obey her husband.
Like Kant, Plato also thinks that women are physically inferior, bear instead of beget children, and are generally weaker than men. Their role was to be a significant part of society, different from men, but still play a part.
The only thing he differed with Kant is that Plato believed that women were necessary for society to run smoothly. This of course did not mean that women were equals of men. Men are the head of families and as such he is the one to dictate the rules that governed the house.
Women he thought are naturally maternal and these maternal skills made them better care takers for children, this womanly instinct is one of the many skills women possess that men just don’t possess enough of.
Even though Plato was of the idea that women need to have jobs but cant always have the same jobs as men because they don’t have the same abilities as men.
David Hume also thought that women were weaker gender and pious sex. In other words, their being in the society was to satisfy men sexually as if they did not need sex except men.
Commentary
By Joy Babu
Via-email
I have read your peace on the untold story of Michuki. My only comment is that some of the claims or allegations (especially the last two paragraphs) cannot be substantiated and are in fact generating unnecessary tribal animosities. I am afraid this is dangerous, coming from a peace organization. Please restrain from anything akin to propaganda and propagate message of peace.
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