You're not listening!

The penalties callously doled out to Sister Louise Lears – a woman who has dedicated her entire life to serve the Church – is a prime example of the way women are often wrongly treated by the Catholic hierarchy, where dangerous secrecy runs rampant and preserving power in the hands a few ordained men reigns supreme.

A.M.D.G comments

There is so much wrong with this one statement, it’s amazing that anyone could be so far off base.
1. What makes Aisha think that the penalties were “callously” doled out? Lears had every opportunity to recant and repent of her public scandal but refused. She apparently invited the penalties.

2. How is it possible to “serve the Church” while at the same time refusing to believe or assent to what the Church proposes for our belief or discipline?

3. How can Aisha claim that the imposition of these just penalties is a “prime example of the way women are often wrongly treated by the Catholic hierarchy,” when similar interdicts have been applied to “men”? Intellectual honesty demands that one’s assertions be substantiated by truth, however, the claims made by Aisha Taylor are, at best, dishonest and deceptive.

4. She also asserts that the Catholic hierarchy engages in a “dangerous secrecy.” One logically must then ask – If it’s a secret, how does she know about it. If there is some “secrecy” running rampant among a few men in the Vatican, then it’s not much of a “secret” anymore, is it? And if this “secrecy” runs rampant and very few know about, how can she claim that it’s dangerous?

Taylor seems to say that the Catholic hierarchy conspires and schemes so that they can find news ways to keep women in their place, so to speak – they’re trying to keep the woman down! Such an implication speaks volumes – it’s delusional and it seems to demonstrate a unhealthy paranoia or some phobia or hatred of men.

A rational mind can only conclude that Taylor and her cohorts have a talent for combining insulting and accusatory words into calumniating ramblings. And we have only looked at the first sentence! Let’s continue:.

In a weekend article in Newsweek which is totally in the bag for women’s ordination they interviewed a nun who recently left her order and had once written a book supporting women’s ordination.

With dissenters it is always others who are deficient in listening. Not surprisingly it is never they that need to listen to the teaching authority of the Church. The reason the CDF fails to grasp how wonderful their theological positions is because 1) they are not listening and 2) Did you know it was once called the “Holy Inquistion?” Anybody even slightly familiar with the CDF knows that there investigations take years and much time is spent in dialogue to determine if what someone says could be understood in an orthodox manner and for them to fully explain themselves.

In a work published shortly before Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope he wrote.

The task of the teaching office is not to oppose thinking, but to ensure that the authority of the answer that was bestowed on us has its say and, thus, to make room for the truth itself to enter. To be given such a task is exciting and dangerous. It requires the humility of submission of listening and obeying. It is a matter not of putting your own ideas in effect, but of keeping a place for what the Other has to say, that Other without whose ever-resnet Word all else drops into the void. The teaching office, properly understood, must be a humble service undertaken to ensure that true theology remains possible and that the answers may thus be heard without which we cannot live aright.

To which dissenters would reply “You’re not listening.”