FOR THE NEW EVANGELIZATION
The
woman could not stand straight. For 18 years, for 18 centuries, for thousands of
years, she lived bent over, turned on herself and tied down.
That was the work of the
devil, it was said. Women had encounters with the devil. This was something
well known. They used the devil to do peculiar things, like cures, for example,
or have babies, see things…
First of all, we dressed up
the women from head to foot, we locked them away, we cloistered them and we
stoned many of them because we believed that they were more or less all
prostitutes. We made them responsible for the vices and the sins of the men. A
man would rape, strangle, massacre kill and we would say: « look for the woman
».
Next, we had them to be
burnt alive. If a village was struck by catastrophe, it was the witches’ fault.
A witch-hunt was then launched. We always ended
by finding a witch. Was there a woman who had become very keen on cats or
picked up strange mushrooms in the woods or went to mass very often or never
went to mass or had red eyes ( by continuously cooking over the flame of the
hearth, how could things be different? We did not think further than that...);
did she have a wart or any strange spot on her body? Nothing then could be more evident, she was a
witch! She was burnt alive in the market
place. It was the death of a dog, the end of a rabies carrier…For some time, no
more hail, no more flu, no more fires, no more toothaches in the village.
Everybody was happy.
For 18 centuries, for
thousands of years, women were forced to live bent over, turned on themselves
and tied down.
Women were subjected to
repulsive tasks and extremely hard labor, and even to mutilation as it is still
going on in some cultures, or to rape and sexual slavery and honor crimes as it
happens on a daily basis. Hundreds of millions of women were prevented from
being born or were killed at birth for the only «error» of not being
males. For a lot of people, to be a
woman is still a flaw, an accident of nature, at best, a necessary evil.
They had the right to be
servants, toys, dolls or male trophies. They had the duty to bring pleasure to
the male and to produce descendants for him, but they themselves had no right
to pleasure. Most probably the males loved them, but within those conditions.
They could embroider and
play the piano, but prevented from advanced studies; they could not sign checks
neither contracts nor could they vote. To enter a church, they had to wrap
themselves in so many petticoats.
Since that was the lot given
to women, it is not surprising that getting out of bed, the good orthodox Jew
still makes every morning this prayer to God : « I thank you, Lord, for
not having made me a woman ».
In our less traditional societies,
things have changed. Through epic battles which they fought by themselves
without weapons and without shedding a single drop of blood, women succeeded in
conquering the recognition of their dignity and of their essential rights.
Still, their work is not finished. A lot of distance has to be covered so that
everywhere on the planet all women will be happy to be women.
In Latin America, where we can be
found the greatest concentration of Catholics in the world, churches are full
of women. Without them, the Church would be dead. But there, as well as in some
other countries, the high Catholic hierarchy leaders has decreed that God, by
creating woman, has irretrievably made her incapable of celebrating a simple
mass. That would have been inscribed since eternity in the feminine genome …
That high hierarchy is actually
busy in mobilizing all the forces of the Church to embark on a « New
Evangelization » on a world scale. Whether those
venerable beards like it or not, here is Good News from Jesus that should be
inscribed for eternity within the genome itself of the Church:
A woman was
there. She was not asking anything. For
18 years, she lived bent over, turned on herself and tied down. She was « so
bent over that she was incapable of standing erect » Jesus saw her and was deeply touched. He
laid his fraternal hands on her and said to her: « Woman, you are set free! ».
At those words, the woman at once stood up straight like a tree. (Luke 13: 10-14).
The top synagogue brass immediately attacked Jesus
for daring doing such a thing on the sacred Sabbath day. That was forbidden in
virtue of an immemorial law.
The guardians of the «unchangeable
», obsessed with the sacred, are all the same: for them, a woman is worth less
than a she-ass or a cow (go to the text),
and whatever eludes their control comes from the devil.
Ironically, it is because she stubbornly attaches herself
to «unchangeable» laws, beliefs and practices that our poor Church (who, on the
other hand, has realized great things in her history ) has herself become an old all bent over woman.
Let us hope that by re-actualizing the Good News of Jesus concerning the bent
over woman will come to her the desire to recover and grow straight as a tree, and
that in the name of Jesus, in all the churches of the world and outside them, everywhere
on Earth, women can go on walking, holding their heads up high and that they
may celebrate mass without the fear of offending God…
How could they offend that God of genius who had the good idea
of creating women as well as men « in his image and resemblance»?
(Genesis 1: 26-27)
Eloy Roy
Translated from the French by
Jacques Bourdages
Comments
Post a Comment