Poor Jimmy Carter wasn’t much of a president so he’s trying his hand as theologian it seems. In the latest issue of Time Magazine, Carter criticizes the Catholic Church for not ordaining women.
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…
It seems that Carter can only view the Church through a secular lens. He doesn’t allow at all that there may be a theological reason for the Church not ordaining women. For him it’s simply an equal rights issue. Anything that doesn’t agree with his political stance on this issue is, according to him, just wrong.’
When asked what Scripture verse guides his work on human rights, he once again criticizes the Church and says that sometime in the third century men “took over” the Church. He says this despite the fact that there’s no evidence that the Church ordained women as priests. But Carter knows best, you know.
…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.
He then blames the Church for human rights abuses.
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]?
I don’t have time to blog more on this but I think we can all agree it’s pretty outrageous for a former president to criticize the Church, especially since he seems to have zero understanding of it.
June 24, 2013 at 4:57 am
The man's a pea-nut!
June 24, 2013 at 5:38 am
Jimmy who?
😉
June 24, 2013 at 5:41 am
Embarrassing to watch Carter flailing around with Scripture. Should be easy for him to quote chapter and verse in the Gospels where Jesus elevated women to the priesthood.
June 24, 2013 at 10:03 am
It appears as if Mr. Carter doesn't already know that God gave women equal rights as human beings!
June 24, 2013 at 11:57 am
Don't read much more into this other than the fact that Carter has always been an old-school anti-Catholic bigot.
Fundamentalist Baptists are often accused by Catholics of being anti-Catholic; in actuality, you won't find someone more viscerally anti-Catholic than a liberal Baptist who is almost fanatical about the whole "priesthood of the believer" and "I can interpret it for myself" mentality.
Oh, and in addition to being an old-school anti-Catholic bigot, Carter is also an anti-semite.
June 24, 2013 at 11:57 am
It's always been odd to me how some people see the all-male priesthood as misogyny and devotion to Mary as idolatry.
June 24, 2013 at 1:18 pm
He is, was and remains a moron.
June 24, 2013 at 3:06 pm
He was an embarrassment in office, and has only deteriorated since.
June 24, 2013 at 4:32 pm
He is on the outside looking in. When has anyone heard the Church criticize a denomination lately in a homily. Me thinks they "Protest" too much.
June 24, 2013 at 5:26 pm
Despite the power of incumbency Carter won only six states in the 1980 election. Four years later, his former vice-president won only one state. How is it that he has never grasped the fact that his philosophy has been soundly rejected?
How dense is this guy?
June 24, 2013 at 6:05 pm
He's been viewing Church stuff with the feminist lens seeing only the sociological perspective without a clue of the sacramental form involved in Holy Orders. Myopic. Lacking in context & depth.
Fr. Barron has a humorous yet pithy commentary video on this subject of the limits of diversity and inclusion which may be apropos here: http://divine-ripples.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-limits-of-tolerance-commentary-by.html?utm_source=BP_recent
June 24, 2013 at 7:48 pm
Not sure what impresses me more…
The countless times I am told by the MSM that we Catholics need to change because we have no influence anymore and need to get with the times to keep numbers and political influence up.
Or
That we are in control of every aspect of life as evidenced by the fact that every social ill is and continues to be our fault.
Which is it?
We can't simultaneously have little influence, yet be so influential.
More secular schizophrenia.
June 25, 2013 at 12:02 am
I think he went senile quite some time ago.
Dave
June 25, 2013 at 3:37 am
Glad you don't only hate Obama. Most ethical president in 50 years and you slander him. Well played sir, well played.
June 25, 2013 at 5:57 am
Yeah, he turned out to be the expert on "malaise"!
Uh, er uhm, known alot of so called, "intellectuals" that had their hiney handed back to them on a platter because they stupidly undermined a situation.
Like the high and mighty "peanut" moralist!
Wasn't HE at the demo-rat convention siding with the satan minions, against God? Didn't hear much as a "squeak" defending what itty- bitty faith he had. Cowardly and backwards. Works without God, in faith, hope and charity are empty! Absolutely worthless!
June 25, 2013 at 7:53 pm
Ah, Jimmy Carter, a small man in so very many ways.
June 25, 2013 at 8:29 pm
Why does Carter keep mentioning equality in the "eyes of God?" Being a priest has nothing to do with equality in God's eyes. We are all equal in the eyes of God whether we are called to be priests, nuns, husbands, wives, or single. It's not like holding the title of priest makes someone more holy and hence more in God's grace.
To put it another way, there are plenty of priests that have fallen from God's grace and there are plenty of lay women who are in it. Just look at the number of women saints — none of whom were ordained as priests. Being a priest is a vocation, not a measure of spiritual status.
June 26, 2013 at 12:16 am
Well said!
June 26, 2013 at 3:39 am
This is what you get when you use an electric mixer to clean the peanut butter out of your ears. (And I'm a protestant.)
June 27, 2013 at 7:35 am
Brother John,
That struck me as absolutely hilarious! So caught off gaurd!…;) and lovin' it!