The media – and the political sphere, by extension – often neglects to explore the reasoning behind much of the Catholic Church’s ideologies, choosing instead to thrash out the more “controversial” issues surrounding the issues. The opinions of individuals – and, by a large degree, women – are constantly manipulated by the media into believing that the negation of the Catholic Church to elect women into the priesthood is wrong. My opinion is that these media masses are just as blinded as they accuse the Catholic Church of being, as they consistently starve the public of the nutrients of truth engrained in the Church’s teachings. Male-oriented priesthood is a long-held Catholic tradition necessary to sustain apostolic succession, a tenet essential for the worshiping of the Eucharist, which is the unequivocal core of Catholicism itself. To rebuke the Church’s ideology on women’s ordination, then, is essentially to rebuke the very core of the Catholic Church. The mistake that many media personnel make during all of this is to expect the same secular definition of “equality” that we expect from our political organizations, when in fact the Church’s structuring of equality is, though different, no less present.
In her 2010 New York Times article, “Rome Fiddles, We Burn,” Maureen Dowd discusses her opinion of the current state of events happening within the Catholic Church. According to an unidentified Catholic document recently disclosed, says Dowd, the Church has now placed the ordination of women among one of the “graviora delicta,” or grave offenses, of the Church. As a response to this, Dowd argues, “Letting women be priests — which should be seen as a way to help cleanse the church and move it beyond its infantilized and defensive state — is now on the list of awful sins right next to pedophilia, heresy, apostasy and schism.” Dowd urges the Church to “embrace the normality of equality” by ceasing its subordination of women wishing to be priests, labeling the Vatican’s insistence on the tradition as wrong and “misogynistic poppycock.”
Dowd’s article is not by any means unique. It expresses the long-standing negative opinion that many individuals have of the Catholic Church. Being a media representative, however, Dowd and others of her field should be expected to maintain a certain loyalty to the truth, and not just a biased perspective of it. In this aspect, Dowd inarguably fails. The “equality” that Dowd urges Catholicism to embrace is merely a secular construct; to expect the Church to maintain this worldly definition of equality for men and women simply because “that’s what we’re used to” in the public sphere is tantamount to expecting religion itself to maintain not just this but all the precepts of a political organization.
The absence of Dowd’s secularized vision of equality in the Church does not mean that the Church does not provide equality, however. On the contrary, a closer examination of the Vatican’s teachings shows us that the Catholic Church does more to respect the values of each gender than most denominations. As the head of the parish, the priest acts as the father of the community and as the Christ figure in the Eucharistic setting, which occurs during every Mass. During the Eucharist, the priest, as the father of the church, is “standing in the place” of Jesus during the Last Supper, performing the necessary act of transubstantiation to turn the wine and bread to the literal blood and body of Jesus Christ. The apostolic succession of the Church guarantees that the line of male priests can be traced back to Jesus’ “sending forth” of the twelve male disciples – a tenet that is key to proving the priest’s authority to handle something as precious as Jesus’ body, blood, soul, and divinity.
On the other side of the coin, the equality of women within the Catholic Church is sustained by the opportunities they have within the life of sisterhood. Although it is often difficult for non-Catholics to contemplate an individual finding self-fulfillment within a convent, I would argue that this perspective almost always stems from some false interpretation of nuns that that individual has come across in their lifetime. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The sisters of the Catholic Church are beautiful representatives of what it means to be brides of Christ. Their positions are powerful, taking on the responsibilities of leading thousands of volunteer efforts, school improvement projects, and upholding the dignity of Catholic women across the world. The efforts to divide the roles of the Church between men and women, priest and sister, then, are not meant to diminish gender equality, but rather to honor the natural attributes that God endowed us with. Only a woman can represent the true bride of Christ in the Church, just as only a man can represent the father of the church. This tradition ensures that both sexes have the ideal model for servitude allowed to them. The intent is not to exclude women from ordination but rather to honor the obligation that Jesus entrusted to the male gender.
The media’s right to report controversial issues like female ordination is hampered by its insistent exclusion of verified information. Journalists like Maureen Dowd claim the truth reporting only a sliver of what the Church’s theology on women’s ordination really is. The expectations that we hold for the Church are incessantly tainted by our own secularized view. The media must take responsibility for what information is being left out of the religious packages, and must accept that how they view an issue like gender equality is not necessarily how another division will view it. If media representatives continue to detract from exploring a subject like female ordination beyond the superficial layer (the layer that says that the Catholic Church is wrong simply because most people says it’s wrong), then the average reader will almost inevitably fall short of knowing the truth
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