Minneapolis-St.Paul Archdiocese "Listening Session"

Speaking as a young woman, radical feminism is dead. Now, if that's true, then why are they still making so much noise???

Check out: www.thecatholicspirit.com This is the website of the newspaper for our archdiocese, which tends to have "liberal" or "dissenting" or even "heterodox" leanings, from my observation.

The latest: The archdiocesan Commisssion on Women is having a bunch of "listening sessions", inviting people to "express their concerns about women in the church and their hopes for the future". OK, fine. I have no problem with this.

The sessions seek to learn about women's concerns, but their real ajenda is one of power, expressed in the first couple paragraphs of the article; the commission has decided that there not enough women in "leadership" at the diocesan or archdiocesan level.

They have posted several topics that apparently were brought up in earlier sessions, and I will get to that in a moment. First, I would just like to comment that if women in our larger Catholic community are griping about not having positions of leadership, two issues are in place:

1. They do not understand the gospel messages
2. They do not understand what Jesus taught or what the Church, obedient to the Sacred Tradition instituted by Jesus teaches
3. They are asking the wrong questions.

Remember, I am speaking as a young woman and I have no problem with women in influential positions. How can I gripe about the latter? I, myself, hold a position in a male-dominated field, and I excel at the work I do...but when I enter the Church, I don't have to put up that front. I don't have to be a "guy". I get to enter the sanctuary that is the Church and be the woman God made me to be. I bow my head in the holy presence of my Savior and I am expected only to have the "power" the Holy Spirit bequeaths to me...whether through speaking, praying, loving another, or serving in menial ways. If God institutes me someday in a position of "power" as assessed by observers, then so be it, but as I have read the Bible and understand the teachings, I understand that it is not our place to seek power. It is God who bequethes, and God who takes away.

Now, that said, I will move on. Here are the "variety of concerns raised at the pilot sessions":

* How to retain young women in the church.

First, I would like to point out that unless they are talking about a building as an impersonal noun, then "church" should be "Church". This could just be a typo, but one I see all too often. Do people understand the difference in meaning between "the Church" and "the church"?

It's the difference between saying to someone, "I have learned so much from the Church that I decided to convert to Catholicism", and "I had such a great time at the church on the corner that I think I might attend Mass more often."

Moving on...how to retain young women. As a young woman, I happen to be somewhat of an expert on this....so, my advice is, first of all ATTRACT YOUNG WOMEN to the sessions you are instituting! Furthermore, again speaking from my rightful platform, I suggest that you take a look at the parishes that are turning out Vocations...both for men and women. What do they have in common? Maybe, then you should have "listening sessions" there instead of the list of pseudo-Catholic parishes which are advertised? You could also try the novel idea of providing instruction in the actual teachings of the Church, including devotion to Mary, Perpetual Adoration, understanding of the Eucharist...and in short....ORTHODOXY. (Try reading GKChesterton's "Orthodoxy" and you may be enlightened. His writing style is much like Anna Sewell's, the author of "Black Beauty")

Women (and men) are tired of this watered-down 1970's idea of "feel good" pseudo-theology with a label reading "Catholic" stamped on it and reeking of the radical feminism that has so usurped the understanding of our faith. We are tired of seeing women who have not realized that their imperfect understanding of feminism (better termed "feminaziism) has died a quiet death still trying to promote anything anti-Church tradition.

We are tired of searching for religious orders in our efforts to find our true Vocations, only to find that the Ursulines have become Wiccan with a false Catholic label and the Benidictines have largely followed suit with few exceptions. We as Catholic women do not seek to enter a labyrinth in order to meet God, because this is a form of pagan worship and only feeds the fuel for the likes of James White and Jack Chick. We do not care about "Eco-Spirituality" when we are reading the actual life of St. Francis. Who needs something "based on" or "derived from" St. Frances when we can actually access what he really did?

I should blog a whole topic on this...you want to know how to retain young women in the Church? Then pray. Teach your children the true faith and eliminate all the static. We want the truth..the hard truth that without Jesus Christ, we will not enter Heaven. We want to hear sin called "Sin" with the sibilant "S" reminiscent of the serpent of Genesis.

I will stop there, but look for this topic to continue in another posting.


Moving on now....

* How to reclaim their baptismal call

I am completely clueless as to what this means. WHAT?! Our "baptismal call" is to recieve the sacraments appropriate to our station in life and then live our our lives in accordance with GOD'S WILL...not our own. What in the WORLD are they talking about?


* How to have better dialogue with priests

Again, I am mystified. Have they tried going to confession? Sought out a Spiritual Director who happens to be a priest? Have they maybe tried to have friendly conversations with parish priests and learned they are human, too? Have they invited priests to their gatherings and sought out the advice (as opposed to giving criticism and making demands) of the the priests who toil so hard to save souls?

I am always suspicious of the word "dialogue" when used by the feminist or homosexual movements...usually, their version of "dialogue" does not refer to the pre-written words of a stageplay, but rather, refers to a veiled demand to "Sit down, kiss my shoes and be silent while I tell you what I want, confirm it's OK to use contraception, have relations outside of marriage, and then give me your blessing while I trample all over what God actually said."

Next..

* How to make language more inclusive.

I thought that PC was finally dying, right along with rabid feminism. Apparently I was wrong. WE DON'T WANT INCLUSIVE LANGUAGE! Please stop insulting my intelligence as a woman by inferring that I don't understand that when St. Peter referred to "men" in scripture, that he was referring to "man and womankind".

I refer you to the Spanish-language usage of the words for "all". If only women are present in a group, the feminine, "-a" is used for "todas", or if all men, then the masculine "-o" ending is used for "todos". When referring to mixed company, all are referred to as "todos".

So if, then, when reading the Bible, I am offended by the word "men" when used in reference to all humankind, should I then be offended when reading any Spanish, or Italian, etc., texts? I think not.

So can we retire this nonsense and move on?

* How to expand homilies to include female perspectives

What does your priest talk about? Personally, I don't go to Mass to explore the viewpoints of random women...I go to worship God and to learn about GOD'S PERSPECTIVE. Need I say more? If you're listening to a homily looking for support for feminism, then you need to spend more time listening and understanding that Mary is your mother and she is the ultimate feminist. So why don't we sit back and let God tell us what he has to say and just shut up and listen?

* How to complete the work of Vatican II:

Well, first begin by READING what Vatican II actually said! I have learned that many things attributed to Vatican II were actually misunderstandings and confusions brought about by people who just didn't bother to read what the documents taught. So the first idea in carrying out the work is understanding the messages.


So now I come to the end of my lengthy rant. I welcome discussion, and I will likely rant in individual posts going forward from here.

I hope to attend some sessions and defend Mother Church from the dissent from within. It saddens me that so many are being raised under the withering but still influential thumb of radical feminism, and so I take upon myself this yoke of truth and I pray that hearts will be opened to hear the true message of our Messiah.

For those of you within the Minneapolis-St. Paul archdiocese, please consider attending the "listening sessions" and speak up! It's time for these hangovers from the 70's to realize that orthodoxy has returned and we are ready to defend Jesus from the attacks against the Truth.

Please comment...I may forward the information to either the Archdiocese or to the Catholic Spirit.