I suppose we should start with full disclosure — I identify as Roman Catholic, 16 years of Catholic schools, and all my kids have followed the rituals for a Catholic upbringing.

These parts of my identity do not imply that I agree with everything that is deemed true or an accepted belief in Church teachings and materials.  I am more interested in the positives I see in the Church.  For example, I like that the Church promotes such ideals as humility, service and love. But mostly, it is the result of where and to whom I was born, how I was raised and who I met along the way.  I think most of my friends are Christian, but not all, and some are “areligious,” which has many arguments that make sense.

OK, here we go — but many of the accepted practices and rules of the Roman Catholic Church just do not make sense to me.  I do not wish to provoke, but to document my ideas, and hopefully start or join a discussion about these ideas as the impact can be great.

In future posts we can explore some of these issues, but I need to start with women and the Church.  Of all the issues, this one is most frustrating to me because it is so obvious a problem, and should be so easy to address.  I cannot believe I have to state that “women are people too.”

The main reason I still hear for this injustice is that Jesus choose all men as his apostles.  Really? He also did not use air planes or microphones like the current leaders of the Church, all men.  Plain and simple, this is misogyny, and I disagree vigorously.

I advocate for diversity in my work, so it makes me sad that I also need to do so here.  I also would expect that women in the clergy would fix other issues, such as the horrible impacts of pedophilia.  I am not even considering the practical reasons for equality, such as the insanity of eliminating over half the population for consideration at a time when the clergy is shrinking in numbers.

I hope this situation changes, but I suspect not in my life time.  The current Pope has embraced many refreshing approaches, but not this one.  I have heard the “separate but equal” approach used in other contexts like civil rights for blacks, civil unions for gays — but it is not equal to the disenfranchised.

Thanks for letting me vent, now back to removing the big splinter from my own eye.