Kathleen Barry and Helen Benedict challenge masculinity of war

I found this video courtesy of Spinifex Press. It's not Mary Daly, but it looks as if it would be worth watching:

Kathleen Barry and Helen Benedict discuss war and masculinity

Bishops condemn book by feminist theologian

And no, we're not talking about Mary Daly. We're talking about Sister Elizabeth Johnson, who in 2007 published a book called Quest for the Living God, which, among other things, discussed the female nature of God. The Committee on Doctrine of the US Catholic bishops recently announced that this book shouldn't be used by Catholic schools and universities.

I discovered the controversy thanks to the Facebook page of Feminist Peace Network, which pointed me to a Washington Post blog entry by Jason Pitzl-Waters of the Pagan Newswire Collective. He writes:

Leaving aside the “separate but equal” theory of religious gender roles for a moment, one has only to look towards the headlines to see how dangerous the idea of female empowerment still is within the world of faith and belief. The New York Times reports that a committee of American bishops have accused Catholic theologian and nun Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson of violating church doctrine, issuing a lengthy critique of her book “Quest For the Living God” due in part to her suggestion of using female imagery for God, an idea (among others) the Committee on Doctrine says “contaminates” traditional Catholic understandings of God. “Contaminates,” what an interesting and unintentionally apt choice of words! Because reading that critique you can see the fear of contamination dripping from its sentences, hoping against hope of placing (in the words of the NYT) “the study of the male and female aspects of God [...] substantially off-limits,” lest women once more start making offerings to the Queen of Heaven.

(If you don't know who the Queen of Heaven is, you can find this out by reading the rest of the post.)

I followed Pitzl-Waters's link to the statement of the Committee on Doctrine of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. They object to more than her treatment of the female nature of God. They don't like her "pantheism" or her belief that non-Christian religions also convey useful knowledge about God. They think she undermines their rigid and unchangeable idea of a god who is all-powerful and unchanged by the suffering in the world. They object to her portrayal of the official Catholic God as an "arrogant monarch," and go to great pains to explain what a sweet, kind, caring monarch he is. And they strongly defend Biblical language that describes God as "father" and "lord." They insist that "The names of God found in the Scriptures are not mere human creations that can be replaced by others that we may find more suitable according to our own human judgment." They would surely resent being called sexist, but what they are saying is, (as Mary Daly would have put it) God is male, and male is God.

Why the bishops waited four years to attack this book is not entirely clear. The National Catholic Reporter says that "the committee felt compelled to publicly denounce the 2007 book because it is directed to a `broad audience,' and because it’s being used in many venues `as a textbook for the study of God.'" The same NCR post notes that Sister Johnson says that the bishops portrayed her book inaccurately and did not talk with her before condemning it. Cardinal Donald Wuerl responded that Johnson should have sought the bishops' imprimatur (official approval) before publishing the book. The NCR  has a link to Wuerl's statement.

One can only imagine the choice words that Mary Daly would have used about this situation. (Or, one could pick up a copy of the Wickedary.) But even some Catholics--including a Catholic columnist for the Washington Post--think that the bishops went too far in trying to stifle theological discussion. And sales of the book have increased dramatically.

Power from within

Last night at the Mary Daly discussion group at the Church of the Open Arms, part of our discussion involved pagan and goddess spirituality.

Later, I was working on finding information for a library science class online discussion about power and information. The definition of power used in the textbook seems to be all about power-over, but I know that among feminists there is also the concept of power-from-within, power that heals, achieves, nurtures, and cooperates, power that is so powerful that it does not need to dominate.

While I was searching, I ran across this biography of Starhawk and was reminded of the discussion we'd had earlier.

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

Today is the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.  Live streaming of commemorative events can be viewed here.

A piece of women's history

I found this video on YouTube, showing a newscast of the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp right before Christmas 1982:

The story of the Feminist Peace Network

Feminist Peace Network is consistently one of my favorite blogs. As part of FPN's celebration of Women's History Month, this post shares the story of FPN's founding as it appeared in an article published in 2003 in Expository Magazine.

Feminist artist Lucinda Marshall founded FPN in the sad and confusing days following the terrorist attacks on the US in September 2001 and the invasion of Afghanistan shortly thereafter. A few months later, Marshall visited an FPN member in Washington, DC. After eating dinner in a restaurant one night, they realized that neither one felt safe walking to their separate destinations. This brought the realization that all of the mainstream news coverage about "terrorism" ignored the terrorism against women that goes ignored day after day. FPN's Statement of Conscience was the result.

Feminist Peace Network also has a Facebook page, and Lucinda Marshall has another wonderful feminist blog at Reclaiming Medusa.

After everything we discussed last night, some good news

The effort to defund Planned Parenthood is faltering according to National Partnership for Women & Families. Even some conservatives are starting to recognize that cutting family planning, cancer screening, and HIV prevention services to poor women is a bad idea. For instance:

Mark McKinnon, a former adviser to former presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), wrote in a Daily Beast column that the proposal to cut funding for Planned Parenthood is "shortsighted political posturing," adding, "It's overreaching, and it's why Republicans get a bad name with many independent voters and women. ... Republicans would be well advised to keep their focus on real economic issues that have impact, like entitlement reform."

Entitlement "reform" is just one more trick to take funding away from important programs like Social Security. But if some conservatives are getting a clue that cutting services for poor women is a bad idea, that is a good thing.