msjen141

[msjen141]

Dear Andrea Tornielli

I work for the church and have in some capacity since 1994. I was a Catholic high school teacher when the news broke that a popular priest in our parish—one that fed into the high school—had been sexually assaulting altar boys in parish after parish after parish in the LA Archdiocese. I sat across the table from a 17 year old student whom I had known since he was a child and waited for his words…

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Baptism of Love

This Sunday is the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. In the three synoptic Gospels, the story is remarkably the same: Jesus appears where John is baptizing, receives baptism, and upon that moment a dove descends from the sky and a voice is heard saying “You are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew’s makes it more a proclamation than an acknowledgement: “This is my beloved…

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News...

News…

So as we wait in the quiet winters of our lives—not only this season of Advent, but also this time of COVID, or whatever winters we are currently experiencing—we have to keep the light of hope burning in our hearts. God will keep his promises to us. Just as he said. Over the summer, my parents spent 78 days on the road with their dog and their RV. When they returned, my mom had soreness in her…

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Hope, Justified

The first week of Advent, the candle is called the Prophet’s candle, and the theme for the week is Hope. The old testament reading on Sunday spoke to the hope of the people of Israel: The days are coming, says the LORD,     when I will fulfill the promise     I made to the house of Israel and Judah (Jer 33:14) My heart thrills to these words because I know they will be echoed on Easter Sunday…

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How the Household Codes Justify Racism

How the Household Codes Justify Racism

There is a group of white moms in this nation who call themselves “Moms For Liberty”. In Tennessee, one of the most vocal leaders is a nasty woman whose only school-age child attends a private school. Nevertheless, she has made a name for herself attacking public school curriculum that tells the truth about race relations in the founding and building of this nation. I’m not talking about #CRT.…

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Original Sin

(This is #9 in a series) Barr helped us understand how hierarchical patriarchy was self-serving for the Greeks and Romans and perpetuated a culture of war where those who control the resources—money, power, violence, property—make rules that have historically served themselves. She showed us how the Catholic church and then the Protestant churches used—profited from?—supported?—patriarchy as a…

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Sacred Oppression

(This is #8 in a series). After everywhere we’ve been in this book, Chapter 7 starts with some surprising facts: Women preached in evangelical churches for a century prior to WWII. Barr cites Timothy Larson’s “Evangelicalism” Strong History of Women in Ministry” (2017), in which he characterizes “women’s involvement in public ministry ‘a historic distinctive of evangelism’” (175). From…

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The Good Girls

Barr opens this chapter with a gnarly cautionary tale from a medieval sermon: The story goes like this: Sex was considered impure, so medieval Christians were encouraged to abstain from sex during holy times (which was a lot of time on the medieval calendar). A woman wanted to have sex with her husband on Easter morning. He said no. She was so overcome by desire that she tried to seduce her…

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The Word is Vulnerable

The Word is Vulnerable

(This is #7 in a series) One of the things I have always wanted to ask a biblical literalist is this: How did you decide which translation of the Bible is the right one?  Even the King James has five versions, spanning 160 years.  If you drop into Biblegateway.com to grab a verse or two, the menu has over 200 translations in many, many languages. On one hand, all these versions which are…

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Knowledge IS Power

(#6 in a series) An intrinsic element of a hierarchical society is knowledge—who knows it, and who controls access to it.   Throughout the medieval period, the Catholic church controlled much of the academia of the Western World. Institutionally, she did not handle this charge well, as evidenced by her poor reaction to the Age of Reason. The Inquisition could be framed as a last ditch effort to…

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The Lost Women of the Middle Ages

The Lost Women of the Middle Ages

*In this chapter, Barr asserts that Mary Magdalen is the same as Mary of Bethany, sister of Martha and Lazarus. The medieval church believed this as well, thanks to a sermon by Pope Gregory the Great in the 6th century. Since then, Catholic biblical scholars have found more evidence to support that they were not the same woman and in the Catholic church, we tend to draw a line between the Marys…

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Reading Paul Wrong

Chapter 2: What if Bibilical Womanhood Doesn’t Come From Paul? (This is #4 in a series. Please see homepage for previous posts) St. Paul was not my favorite guy. I had this in common with many Christian feminists. But a closer study in recent years has brought me to a new conclusion: In fairness to everyone, Paul must be read within historical context. Also, Paul had a HUGE task before him:…

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Uniquely Biblical

(This is number 3 in a series) CHAPTER 1: THE BEGINNING OF PATRIARCHY In chapter 1, Barr tells a story that blew my mind. First, some background:  complementarianism is a theological view from the Abrahamic religions that places men and women in different but complementary roles in marriage, family and religious life.  Specifically, in the evangelical and fundamentalist Christian faiths: Men…

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Holy. Mother. Mary.

(#2 in a series. Please refer back to home page of blog for earlier posts) The Introduction lays out Barr’s experience growing up Southern Baptist in Texas. She has a PhD in history with a focus on European women and medieval England. Her husband is a Baptist minister who was fired from his position for petitioning the elders to allow women in ministry.  In the Baptist church, and based loosely…

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Biblical Womanhood: A Book Study

Biblical Womanhood: A Book Study

I want to tell you about this book: There are a lot of reasons I’m reading it, firstly because my dad sent it to me marked “for discussion when we see you next”. Also, because I am a feminist Catholic—in that exact order. I internalized my feminism before I internalized my Catholic faith, so I tend to view faith through a feminist lens. This is very different from viewing feminism through a…

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Confession

Last Saturday, Gabe asked if he could spend the night at his friend’s house, I said yes. I asked how many kids were going to be there, but just because I wanted to know. He said most of the freshman football team. I drove him there. I let the dad show me around the property. I saw the theater room where they were all going to sleep. I made a joke about what that room would smell like come…

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In My Bones

I’m on my walk. It’s a 3 mile trail on a hill. There’s a huge section on the downhill that runs along what I think of as “the bracken”—wetlands-y, bordering the woods, lots of overgrowth. Just as I enter the bracken, I see a man coming towards me. He’s about a football field away, which starts my heart racing because it’s not much time to plan. Plan what, you ask? Ha! No you didn’t, because…