Jimmy Carter, as good on theology as he was with foreign policy

Some mistakes keep coming back to bite you. For example my first vote in a Presidential election – Jimmy Carter.

From an interview with *TIME *magazine:

I think there’s a slow, very slow, move around the world to give women equal rights in the eyes of God. What has been the case for many centuries is that the great religions, the major religions, have discriminated against women in a very abusive fashion and set an example for the rest of society to treat women as secondary citizens. In a marriage or in the workplace or wherever, they are discriminated against. And I think the great religions have set the example for that, by ordaining, in effect, that women are not equal to men in the eyes of God.

This has been done and still is done by the Catholic Church ever since the third century, when the Catholic Church ordained that a woman cannot be a priest for instance but a man can. A woman can be a nurse or a teacher but she can’t be a priest. This is wrong, I think…

This though is the typical arrogance of those outside the Church who would proclaim on theology regarding the Catholic Church. Done without of course actually looking at why the Church teaches as she does. There is never any actual engagement regarding this just a nebulous call to equality as if no further thought is required. Although almost exactly the same problem exists regarding member of the Church.

Notice how the Catholic Church is singled out. Funny how he doesn’t call out Islam for not having women inmans or lack of Buddhist women monks. I guess he just throws in the “great religions” to provide cover, while going after the Catholic Church. In fact in this article he brings up Catholics over and over again never referencing at all the actual mistreatment of women in Muslim countries.

Now Jimmy Carter also calls himself pro-life yet once again is remains totally silent regarding this and thinks the great problem that has to be addressed is women clergy.

Further on he goes on attack again:

To repeat myself in a way, I think that what the major religious leaders say is used by others who discriminate against women as justification for their human rights abuse. For instance if an employer, who might be otherwise enlightened, if he is a religious person and he sees that, he might be a Catholic, and a Catholic does not let women be priests, then why should he pay his women employees an equal pay [as men]?

What? This is totally incoherent. Once again he can’t be troubled to find what Catholics actually believe regarding this.

From the Letter of Pope John Paul II to Women

As far as personal rights are concerned, there is an urgent need to achieve real equality in every area: equal pay for equal work, protection for working mothers, fairness in career advancements, equality of spouses with regard to family rights and the recognition of everything that is part of the rights and duties of citizens in a democratic State.

Again theologian and scripture scholar Jimmy Carter opines:

But there are a lot of them, for instance if you look at some of the verses I think in Romans, I can’t remember exactly, maybe Acts, or Romans in the 16th chapter, Paul delineates a lot of top leaders in the church and about a third of them are women. So I think in the original status of the Christian church, women played a very important role, even in the leadership role. And then after about the third century when men took over control of the Catholic Church, then they began to ordain that women had to play an inferior position, not be a priest.

Amazing he didn’t bring up Constantine since this is just about as intelligent as the Da Vinci Code. The magical third century where everything that happened before gets replaced without people at that time noticing it. Whatever you don’t like about the Catholic Church then just say that whatever you dislike didn’t happen until the 3rd century. He also makes a very common mistake of equating the priesthood with leadership as if priests could only be leaders. This again sees the priesthood only in terms of power, another common mistake.