The Catholic Church is missing a trick

Before and during his state visit to Britain Pope Benedict XVI – as you probably noticed – was under a lot of criticism. While the media focused on the historic ties being reconnected between the Vatican and Lambeth Palace, non-media voices tended to focus on the negative side of the current Pope, his Church and religion as a whole. But most of the recent criticism concern the sex abuse scandal which implicates his Holiness in official cover-ups. While that is undeniably A Bad Thing, it's only the most recent issue to cause problems for the Papacy.

What really irked me during Pope Benedict's speech at Westminster was his assertion that democracy and reason were under threat because secular societies no longer underpinned those values with the moral code of religion (ie. Catholicism). This coming from the man considered infallible by himself and his followers (no room for reasoning that one out, nor even any need to think about it), who not long ago banned any discussion in his worldwide Church on the subject of female ordination. So, no chance to think or argue about that either. The reason women can't be Catholic priests is tied into that moral code of religion that Pope Benedict insists should underpin reason and democracy. I for one can't see the logical reasoning behind (not even a discussion on) prohibiting female ordination.

Thing is, I've seen enough women leaders (both in churches and the secular world) to know that they can do just as good a job as men. In the pastoral role required of priests, they're often better than men – it's the maternal instinct. In fact, lads of the Catholic clergy, women are – whisper it – actually good at stuff sometimes. I know, I know, hard to believe. A quick look back through English history (not worldwide, nor Catholic, admittedly) shows that the periods commonly regarded as golden ages were presided over by women: Queens Elizabeth I and Victoria come to mind...it's probably too early to pass comment on the current Queen Elizabeth and the jury's still out on Thatcher, I know.

The Catholic Church is really missing a trick in not allowing women into the priesthood. I say this partly as a result of watching Peter Tatchell's The Trouble with the Pope on Channel 4, in which the one person Tatchell found to defend the Church and its policies was a woman. Fiona O'Reilly is an eloquent and non-judgemental defender of the Church (despite Tatchell's repeated efforts to trip her into calling him an evil person because he's gay), and her defence would have carried more weight had the Church taken her seriously (she clearly takes the Church and her faith seriously) and given her a dog collar. From what Tatchell says on Channel 4's website, O'Reilly sounds like she was put up by the Church as a low-level minion willing to parrot the Church's teachings without dragging the (male) hierarchy into a documentary they had no desire to be involved with. Most disappointing was that Tatchell didn't ask her about female ordination, because he was too wrapped up in the Church's apparent homophobia (though there were plenty of other disappointments in Tatchell's documentary).

As some of the strongest advocates for faith, healing and understanding, women deserve a place in the Vatican's priesthood – and should certainly not be denied ordination merely on the basis of gender. But now I'm just tripping out old feminist arguments. My point is that the Church is backward-looking and conservative on so many issues as to be radically out of step with the secular world. Its attitude to women is one major part of this; how can the Church hope to maintain its followers, or even expand, when it subjects half of the world's population to an inferior status? I don't ask the Church to change its opinion on homosexuality (not just yet) or contraception (not just yet), but the attitude to women – God's children as much as men, and surely able to hear God's word as much as men (the Virgin Mary comes to mind) – has to be re-examined.

Photo of the Vatican by Diliff.