Men, and patriarchy in the church

October 20, 2013 By TyphonBlue and JtO 63 Comments

Patriarchy is a word we’re all familiar with, often used in the context of cultural dogma of “The patriarchy”. This implies a hidden social structure threading through history, elevating men and suppressing women.

One institution, in particular, is singled out for feminist ire. The Christian Church. According to feminists; Christianity, like all Abrahamic faiths, elevates men above women.

But does it?

The existence of a male priesthood, and a male-headed nation state (the Vatican) both seem to support the feminist conception. But we are all aware of the frontman fallacy; because there is a man in the front, it does not follow that the frontman uses his power to benefit other men. Because Christianity has a male priesthood, is headed by a man and uses masculine language to refer to the God and humanity’s savior, does it necessarily follow that Christianity is male favoring?

In Christian tradition of the last two millennia, the books of the New Testament provide a foundation for the spiritual identities of men and women – based on the life of the son of the creator of the universe, born of a virgin mother, and redeemer of all human beings who accept him. Of course, the apparent son of God, who in some variations of the doctrine is the human incarnation of God, fathered by himself on a virgin mother – this is a male avatar of the God on earth.

The masculinity of the Christ is usually taken as evidence for male supremacy fostered through the church and it’s long influence on Western culture.

However, simply acknowledging the sex of God’s son, or his avatar doesn’t justify automatic assumption of male elevation. For men, spiritual identity is tied to service in the form of conformity to the doctrine of the Christ. While men may find a model for identity in the character of the son of the God, according to the books of the new testament, figure had no sexual life. This absence leaves no spiritual connection between the masculine body and the divine.

The Christ is sexless; presumptively masculine, but never actually engaging in any activity unique to his masculine body.

This stands in contrast with the story of the Virgin Mary. She, unlike the Christ, was a human woman who had a relationship with the divine mediated through her own feminine physicality. The Virgin conceived, gestated, gave birth and nursed the Infant Jesus. Absent a human father, Mary’s conception, pregnancy and birth of God’s avatar on Earth are all deeply and supernaturally rooted in the female body. As the mother of the Christ, Mary was the one human being who came closest to God.

The implicit stricture of making the female body the vessel of Holy Spirit while offering no corresponding connection between the divine and the male body creates a spiritual caste system with women on top and men on the bottom. But this is not the only or even the worst form of virulent misandry in Christianity.

The birth of Christ is without sin because, quite simply, it did not involve a penis. The entire mythology around the birth of Christ implicitly indicts male sexuality as the vector of original sin from generation to generation. This is not explicitly stated, but the conclusion is inescapable.

Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430 C.E.) was a principal theologian and philosopher of the early Christianity, and credited with responsibility for the merging of Greek philosophical tradition with Judeo-Christian religious and scriptural traditions[1]. A seminal member of the early church, Augustine denigrated male sexual desire and turned the Fascinus[2] into the demon rod.

“the organ was a lever of sin: “the demon rod.” Semen itself was a toxic glue, effectively damning both men and women to a state of sin, a neat one-two punch that rendered sex dirty by definition. Erections were less spiritual highs than demonic jolts, an interpretation that was to ripple through much of Western culture.”[3]

Augustine’s wrote City of God to discredit and undermine existing pagan traditions which did not denigrate male sexuality and were in direct competition with the Church for the hearts and minds of the citizens of Rome. In City of God he stated:

“when sexual intercourse is spoken of now, it suggests to men’s thoughts not such a placid obedience to the will as is conceivable in our first parents, but such violent acting of lust as they themselves have experienced.”[4]

Forget Eve. Forget the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the Serpent. If all human women, tomorrow, conceived and gestated and gave birth without ever coming into contact with a penis, our race would be purged of original sin.

Would anyone care to speculate where Radical Feminists got their ideas from?

Indeed even mainstream feminists cling to their insistence in blaming all the world’s ills on men. Not just patriarchal oppression, but domestic violence, rape, child abuse, war, financial crises; all original sin can be laid at the feet of men. Or their penises.

In Christianity a woman’s experience of her body’s uniquely feminine characteristics (sans male influence) brings her closer to God; a man’s experience of his body’s uniquely masculine characteristics drives him into damnation.

By contrast, the pagan traditions displaced by Abrahamic monotheism provided a path to spirituality for men and women through the experience of their own bodies. Women, quite obviously had then, and still retain a naturalistic spiritual identity as creators of life through the act of childbirth. This is preserved in the mythology of the Virgin Mary. But in most pagan traditions, men also have a connection to the divine through their own bodies, semen and the penis itself were both seen as symbols of divine generative power. It is this aspect of the spiritual masculine which is excised by the mythology of the Church.

“We speak of things which are now shameful, and although we try, as well as we are able, to conceive them as they were before they became shameful, [...] For since that which I have been speaking of was not experienced even by those who might have experienced it—I mean our first parents (for sin and its merited banishment from Paradise anticipated this passionless generation on their part)—when sexual intercourse is spoken of now, it suggests to men’s thoughts not such a placid obedience to the will as is conceivable in our first parents, but such violent acting of lust as they themselves have experienced.”[4]

Christ, the asexual model of male virtue did have a female disciple, specifically Mary Magdelen. However, the gospel of Mary although it exists today in fragmentary form, was excluded from cannon. The gospel of Thomas, also excluded mentions that Mary was the favored and closest disciple of the figure we know as Jesus. Why then would the testament of both Mary and Thomas be omitted? If Christ had a scripturally acknowledged intimate relationship with a woman, this might represent a recognition of the acceptability of male sexuality.

Our culture’s war against masculine identity, male sexuality and fatherhood is an old one. That war arguably began as we adopted a faith which marginalizes the role of men in procreation, idolizing a story that removes them completely from the process. The exemplar of male virtue in this theology is a man who had no natural sexual expression, although his character is designated as male. And his primary purpose was to be flogged, literally tortured for the “crimes” of others, and then bound and nailed through his limbs, still alive to an erected cruciform scaffold, to die from shock and exposure on a hilltop. And we somehow manage to claim that this religion elevates men over women?

Rather than supremacy, Christianity provides to men the role of asexual stewards of women’s benefit, and sacrificial penitent, preaching the gospel of a female-deifying, male-demonizing faith. It is true that women have not historically been allowed to front this farce, but mostly because that would make the message too obvious.

But we continue to ignore all of this, and we entertain the farce that our religious institutions constitute a male-elevating, female oppressing patriarchy.

Yeah, tell us another one.

[1] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/augustine/
[2] the phallus was seen as the bridge between man and the creative force of divinity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascinus

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/22/books/think-tank-the-penis-as-text-for-serious-thinkers-be-careful-what-you-wish-for.html

[4] http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120114.htm

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The Compassion for Men Movement
n1.tMen deserve compassion and recognition of their humanity.
n2.tCompassion for men does not mean less compassion for women.
n3.tCompassion is not pity; it is composed of respect for an individual’s vulnerability and recognition of that individual’s agency.
n4.tBecause the Compassion for Men movement, in respecting men’s vulnerabilities recognizes women’s agency, it also offers true compassion, not pity, to women.
n5.tThe Compassion for Men Movement is thus the Compassion for Women Movement as well. And everybody wins.

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Mark Trueblood

Interesting to note a common term used in the past for wayward females – “Fallen Women.” Fallen off the pedestal? Fallen from her assumed default holy nature?
- J Galt
  
  Let’s not forget the best of all…………FALLEN PREGNANT!!!!
Mark Trueblood

I’m old enough to remember the gnashing of teeth that ensued over The Last Temptation of Christ. Most of the condemnation was over the scenes showing that Jesus was tempted and torn between his human and spiritual nature. I personally found the movie uplifting and full of worthwhile moral insights.
Bewildered

WOW !!! you have a great ability to make people think out of the box !
Indeed! I think it’s not only Christianity but all formal religions indulge in this kind of ‘elevation’ of women.
But yet ! we have people screaming about the horrific oppression of women in the past!
rayc2

“Rather than supremacy, Christianity provides to men the role of asexual stewards of women’s benefit, and sacrificial penitent, preaching the gospel of a female-deifying, male-demonizing faith.”

Duty – sacrifice – trash heap. Rinse and repeat cycle.
http://gloriusbastard.com/ JJ

You seem unaware of “why” the gospel of Mary Magdalene was discredited?

It was written in a time that no living witness to the events it talks about was living. In other words, the accepted “canonical” books were able to be falsified by those living. Also, the twelve, including Paul, were witnesses of some of the highest orders; in other words actual eye-witnesses to the events.

For these twelve Jewish men to have traveled their known, and unknown world, often to their horrible, nightmarish deaths, claiming Christ was the immutable, all-knowing, ever-present, Son(avatar) of God; speaks volumes of why those events changed the world.

If one or two did, but the rest just went about their business never facing beatings, shipwrecks, being skinned alive, eaten, tortured, crucified, boiled in oil, imprisoned, and the like; the Gospels would never have been written. Also, the leaders of the day would have grabbed Christ’s body and paraded it through the streets claiming victory. These are many of the reasons why Mary may have been rejected, and for good reason. As we all know, men don’t do things just because, they either have incentive, or they have seen something(s) that won’t let them hold it in.

Like the so called Gospel of Judas, it was most likely a fake. Judas, the betrayer in the garden of Gethsemane, was witnesses to have hung himself right after the crucifixion. How then could he have written a gospel 230 years after his subsequent death? Mary’s gospel, attributed to her, is most likely a fake. The men Constantine assembled at the council of Nicea in 380 were not dummies. Their criterion is still used to day, not because it is convenient, but because it was actually pretty accurate criterion.
- http://www.deanesmay.com Dean Esmay
  
  There were literally hundreds of books, letters, etc. floating around the ancient world purporting to be gospels, epistles, etc. Hell there’s even one out there as I recall that’s supposedly written by Jesus himself. Such faked literature was extremely popular. There is a reason why they got together at Nicea to sift through all of it and decide which was legitimate and which not, and even there, you see various branches of the church that still go back to that time still using some books not in the canon used by the Western church, but none ever that I can tell used things like the Gospel of Mary Magdelene, the Gospel of Thomas, or any of the other hundreds of works floating around. Even of those included in the canon, some were questioned; the one that made it in that got the most pushback and argument against, as I recall, was The Apocolypse of John, aka Revelation, although apparently at the time most church authorities went with including it just because the evidence they had was that its authorship was legitimate even though nobody then claimed they understood exactly what it was about (and for 2000 years people have been arguing over interpretatation of that book).
  
  Anyway I’m always slightly amused when someone comes along and say “Hey you don’t know about the Gospel according to so-and-so!” and I’m like, “Uh, yeah I am. I’ve even read that.” I even read the Gospel According to Pilate. (There’s zero evidence Pilate wrote it, but I read it. So what?)
  - J Galt
    
    Not to be a jerk but the literature does have different intentions as defined by their designations
    
    apocrypha- “secret, not approved for public reading,” (for management only) (this is what Snowden was nailed for)
    pseudepigrapha- “ascription of false authorship to a book,” (I have a better idea, also known as academe)
    apocalypse- “revelation, disclosure,””insight, vision; hallucination” (no statistics, citations or evidence required, like feminism)
    epistle- “message, letter, command, commission,” ( because I said so)
    gospel- from god “good” (see good) + spel “story, message” ( if we say it enough so will you)
    synoptic- “giving an account of events from the same point of view.” ( I concur and I’m paid to)
    testament- “last will disposing of property,””covenant, dispensation” ( Hi I’m inventory number 073985c are you my new owner?)
    
    None of the designations suggest absolute authenticity and none of it requires you to trust guys wearing dresses or guns.
  - http://gloriusbastard.com/ JJ
    
    It’s funny actually, because most of those that purport to believe in one of those “gospels” actually have never read it, nor have they the ability to hide the real reason they claim that gospel’s truth. They usually have a bone to pick with orthodox acceptance of something, sex, theology, whatever. So they pick the Apocrypha piece that they think will cause the most damage. Most have no clue that a Church leader hundreds of years before had alreaddy seen, heard, and refuted their argument. Whoodathunkit?
Hg_CNO_2

Great!

Let’s all become Mormons then! (I grew up Mormon, and I assure you they don’t denigrate the penis)

Nice to see an article about religion here, but this one is ‘little’ and ‘late’. I also have developed a healthy regard for both TB and JtO, but I am not sure they have the gumption to go after JC religion at its core. Entirely too much respect is given to it herein. And there’s the superficial aspects. Might I point out that the female sexual ‘organs of pleasure’ are also omitted and denigrated in this narrative? Nay the ACT of sex itself?

Ok I get it. The snake in the garden represents the male penis; Do we then forget that this ‘snake’ actually had the power to remove Eve’s very agency? That scapegoating, culminating in the self-disposability of the male Jesus (and you thought he was not given uniquely male attributes!) to restitute that ‘sin’, did not in fact restore that agency, nor vindicate the penis (as it should have)?

The act of sex itself is what was to be coopted. Owned. It is this which is bequeathed to the feminists. To dictate the terms of sex and shame the aspects of sex which do not comport. It is the methodology of power brokerage that is important here.
- http://www.deanesmay.com Dean Esmay
  
  As someone with far more respect for and education in orthodox Christianity (wildly different from “Bible based” fundamentalism) than I imagine the average AVfM reader does, I would say that what I appreciate about the approach to this article, wherever I might nitpick with it, is that it restores some sense of balance to criticisms of Christian approaches to sex. In recent decades it has been wildly fashionable for feminists and others to claim that Christianity is all about attacking female sexuality, which is nonsense. If anything, it’s rough on MALE sexuality. But really it’s rough on BOTH. I get tired of hearing that Christianity is tough on women but elevates men, when in fact it’s pretty tough on both sexes. Love it or hate it or care nothing about it, it’s not “misogynist” and it’s not “misandrist,” it’s got a very proscribed view of what sexuality is and is about limiting sexual behavior for both sexes.
  
  Now whether you agree with its proscriptions or not is another matter, but the point is, it’s *not* misogynist.
http://thedamnedoldeman.com Walter Romans (TDOM)

Great article. I’m really glad you wrote it. A while back I had scribbled a few notes and questions about this, but never got around to researching or writing about it. Your thoughts on the matter are well ahead of my own.

@JJ

Certainly some of the gospels were rejected because they were obvious fakes. But politics rules in the Church just as it does everywhere else. So other gospels and books were rejected because they did not fit with the Church doctirnes of the day or of the leaders who were present at Nicea. But regardless of the reason, the result remains the same. The church raised Mary to the status of near-Godhood and condemned male sexuality to the point of making masturbation a sin. Mary was later permitted to have a sex life within her marriage while Jesus was never permitted to express his sexuality.
- http://gloriusbastard.com/ JJ
  
  CS Lewis once said about Jesus : “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
  
  The facts have been in for thousands of years, and contrary to popular belief, this argument, the article’s arguments, and others are at least 800 to 2000 years old. They have all been documented, and soundly rebuffed. Now I am not saying that these arguments will spur belief in anyone, nor squelch any or all arguments, but they make a hard case to refute, not just because they show difficulty, but because you can neither refute or prove them one way or the other. However. the evidence does suggest these are good enough to be admissible in court. The court would just have to rule inconclusive.
  
  If the Being that created it all wants to be found, I am pretty sure He can do so however He pleases. Nothing we say or do will change that. The only thing is, people want a comic book character like Galactus to show up the size of a small planet and go “Here I Am! Bow down fools.”
  
  His sexuality in regards to Mary of Magdala can never be proved, or outright refuted. However the evidence suggests it is refuted ultimately. I don’t think the council of Nicea could have known, nor predicted, the evidence that has come to life since their time. Some of it they knew, most of it they didn’t. It was over three hundred years after the events.
  
  In regards to their rejecting her Gospel, well, you can believe that if you want; but the lesser founders of the Church after The Great Author of it came were trail blazers, and the bucking horses of social convention of the day. Even in the face of the most severe forms of persecution, torture and death. If a woman was the wife of God, the Lois Lane to God’s Superman, then the Apostles would have fought that to their death.
  
  So considering what they are attributed with saying, and rejecting/accepting from their day in the face of extreme injustice I have never experienced anything like; I have to say safely that MoM’s Gospel is most likely a fake. So did Nicea, so did another council, and so have many others who even demand that females be pastors. None of that makes the truth though, and the accepted Gospel of Matthew(S), Mark(S, and Peter’s testimony most likely), Luke(S), and John(M) are the real deal. Mary’s most likely did not matter. I also find it hard to believe that a Man, be He God’s Son, or a raging lunatic that possessed the gumption suffer through something so horrible; would take on a wife in front of followers he had admonished celibacy as one of the highest callings.
  
  Nothing personal against my deceased sister in Christ, but Mary’s so called Gospel has not added up since forever.
  - Hg_CNO_2
    
    There is nothing credible about Roman occupied Palestinian martyred zealots. Compare to 9-11 hijackers, yet of a more ‘non-violent’ (mostly) nature.
    
    Ultimately, the example of Christ is one of Male Self-Disposal [Manginism] so as to retribute for the Penis’ Usurpation of the Feminine Agency, aka Originial Sin. It should be done away with. And MRAs should be suspect of any institution retrograde to their causes, especially one so blatantly TRADITIONALIST.
    
    Seeking comfort in such religiosity is like seeking a hooker for companionship.
    - http://gloriusbastard.com/ JJ
      
      I disagree. If the God I believe in exists, then He seems content to put us in situations that test us. For example, Psalm 23:5 states “You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies. You honor me by anointing my head with oil. My cup overflows with blessings.”
      
      I take that to mean He does not care that you face adversity, but that He uses it to test your strength of faith. And to forge you, make you grow as a man. Feminism is at odds with the Church for a reason.
      
      The “men” of the Church today are more often then not really good people, but they are few and far between. Most of us who go there are simply looking for fire insurance. God does not seem to sell it. Instead, he sells real estate near hell, and judges what you do with it.
      
      Jesus Christ, Luke 16:11, “So if you haven’t been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who is going to trust you with the real thing?”
      
      I suspect that explains itself, but if not, I believe God will not give you Heaven, if you can’t overcome hell. Not necessarily that, hell was already done, but you have to be willing to face. If you won’t face it, I think heaven will be too much for you.
      
      I am study engineering an science, and I can tell you that the cosmos are unbelievable. If I can’t handle this little planet, as enormous as it is, I am not ready to leave. Any being who can put all that together, be it a day, or trillions of years, is beyond my level of understanding. I just can’t believe that everything came from nothing. So I believe that He exists, like many more intelligent minds before me.
      “
      - Fredrik
        
        I like what you say; at the same time, I disagree with your conclusion, due to a different experience. At one point, I found that my acceptance of religious beliefs without sufficient proof had served as mental practice for gullibility, and had prepared my brain to accept a political dogma that was poo.
        
        Since the false political belief was harmful to myself and others, I concluded that any god that was worth believing in would want for me to practice skepticism and disbelieve in it. And I have been doing so ever since.
      - The Horseless Hun
        
        “I am study engineering an science, and I can tell you that the cosmos are unbelievable. If I can’t handle this little planet, as enormous as it is, I am not ready to leave. Any being who can put all that together, be it a day, or trillions of years, is beyond my level of understanding. I just can’t believe that everything came from nothing.”
        
        @JJ You tap upon an incomprehensibly significant issue. The universe, either in its immediate entirety (which is infinite as far as we can ascertain from our quite pathetically limited and small perspective) or ever expanding margins throughout space over time, with all of its finely tuned constants juxtaposing innumerous variables, just happened??? No cause needed, the Big Bang, or what have you, just happened??? … Who says atheists or evolutionists have no faith? That is a rather big miracle to believe in.
        
        Science, in the way that we know it as presently, does not hold the capacity to cultivate the clairvoyance to see beyond the material world, even as its calculations conclude there must be more to the universe (i.e. dark matter and energy?). However, one could ask the question, so who or what caused God? Since the argument assumes that anything in existence must have a cause, why exempt God from that requirement? The argument from contingency observes that all things that exist are temporal and depend on conditions for their beginning to be, continuing to be and, ultimately, for their ceasing to be. That is what makes them contingent. The important point of the contingency argument is that there must be some other kind of existence than contingent existence, or there would have been, at one time, no conditions to cause things to come into being. This other kind of existence is necessary existence, which is existence itself…
        
        Then the essence of existence, “existence itself”(i.e. the universe exists, we exist, but God, “the divine”, or some supreme consciousness is existence) would have to be not temporal, conditional, nor contingent, but completely independent and eternal. God is necessarily exempt as there must be a governing dimension beyond the one graspable by our finite, materialistic minds. We could update this argument using quantum physics, along the lines that the quantum collapse of the universe from a soup of an infinite number of possible universes requires an intentional act of consciousness. The problem with the Big Bang is that if time was created at the Big Bang, so nothing before, then how could the “quantum soup of infinite possibilities” ever have pre-existed it? Would not the Big Bang be a contingent event, clearly beginning at a point in time, relying on the condition of a soup of infinite possibilities, but thus finite in its actualization? This would require a consciousness, and God cannot exist purely naturally (or in other words, according to the laws and principles of this universe). He must have been in existence before or outside of nature and the space-time dynamic, that is to say super-natural. This is why I reject the evolutionary model (too simplistic and imo is just what has been in vogue for the last hundred years or so, an amount of time so small as to be insignificant in the grand scheme of things) and/or the purely atheistic worldview (there is no God, divine being, et al.), among other reasons. Alas, some things just seem to be beyond us, and cannot be explained by human reason alone, which, though great and dynamic, is fallible.
        
        Goes without saying this is jmo, but I must agree with you JJ. And yes, very many of the gifted individuals of history, just truly intelligent men, the men that built western civilization, believed in the existence of God, and I would strongly imagine not just for no reason.
      - Jotty
        
        So something can’t come from nothing; fine.
        
        Where did “He” come from? Keep in mind that according to you, he can’t “just exist”, because He is something, and something can’t come from nothing.
  - The Horseless Hun
    
    ” CS Lewis once wrote…” I hear this from a surprising amount of people. Jesus could not have just been a paragon of morality. He was either a lunatic (proclaiming you are God when you’re not is just a little insane, also it sort of invalidates whatever else he may have taught, as you would not follow the teachings of someone who is a known to be a deluded psycho) as suggested in Shweitzer’s work “the Quest for the Historical Jesus,” God as he claimed to be (this also explains why he was crucified by the Romans/Jews for blasphemy), or just a liar (claiming to be God but not believing it) which would make him the greatest con-man of history what with the millions or billions of people who have had faith in him since then. I’ve been meaning to read C.S. Lewis. I don’t know if I agree with what he has to say, but he did have a gift for the pen.
    - http://gloriusbastard.com/ JJ
      
      If you have the time, and the money as I suggest you do what I did and buy it, get a copy of “Mere Christianity” like I did. They have one that has several of his other writings about the topic. You are accurate, he, JRR Tolkien (Lord OF the Rings), and lesser known Charles Williams formed a group they called the “Inklings” and met frequently to go over literature, and each others work.
  - Theseus
    
    JJ I have an Eastern Orthodox Christian background and I also have heard these arguments many times over in respect to C.S Lewis; this is also one of the many reasons why with all due respect, that I am currently an unbeliever.
    
    There seems to be a form of willful selective thinking in regards to Lewis’ two options of Jesus either being a madman or Lord and Saviour; the third and most likely scenario is that the ancient followers of an extremely charismatic and intelligent man deified him…and like a fish story combined with man’s natural story/mythmaking ability, it evolved into what we have in the Gospels. Also, to say that ancient Semites in the middle east were story telling cultures would have be a dramatic understatement. It has always been thus with numerous figures in different myths and religions that were accepted as truth by their followers; I could give many examples if you wish, and many of them were probably based on real people.
    
    Seriously, I have many dear friends that I cherish that are in the church that believe as you do, so again no offense.
    
    I just think that Lewis’ attempts at using logic and reason fall way short. It is about faith after all.
OldGeezer

“It is true that women have not historically been allowed to front this farce, but mostly because that would make the message too obvious.”

Give them time. They’re working on it … or at least the less astute feminist leadership is increasingly insistent on their “elevation” to the pulpit and its hierarchy. Having achieved widespread success in emasculating the male herd via secular means, I don’t think they’re any longer very worried about making the religious symbolism more obvious.

In fact, any former inhibitions against openly declaring their victorious triumph are now moot, at least in the west. And they no longer really need men even for the purpose of extending that victory globally via remote-contolled drone warfare and other such female-friendly means of coercion. Admittedly, while they figure out how to accomplish more in the STEM fields by themselves, it may be necessary to keep a few male eunuchs on hand for further research and development functions. That last is a bit of a problem for them, but the “rape weapon” has also got the military pretty much under control as predicted and makes the church hierarchy little more than a minor annoyance to be disposed of in due course as convenient. Scandalous behaviour makes it highly vulnerable in any case.
Codebuster

I’d like to add another more generalized slant on why it is that men have tended to “dominate” in spiritual matters. It comes down to understanding how culture operates… more specifically, the known and unknown dimensions of culture.

How men’s and women’s brains are wired is a reflection of how they relate to the known and the unknown dimensions of culture. Glial cells constitute the white matter that dominate women’s brains, while neural cells constitute the grey matter that is more dominant in men’s brains (Haier et al, below). Thus, women’s priorities relate to sustaining the culture known (conformity as the glue that binds culture) while men’s priorities relate to the cultural unknown (making the decisions that take place at the boundary of the known/unknown are important in evolution). Too much glue not enough dynamism, and you have the stultifying conformity of matriarchal insect colonies… too much dynamism and not enough glue and you have chaos, and life cannot sustain itself. Hence the basis of male/female attraction and the key to understanding hypergamy. Why are hypergamous women drawn to successful men? Why do many women choose charismatic/spiritual men? Why do many women choose thugs? Why do women often finish up with losers? The full spectrum of women’s choices can be understood from this perspective.

Why are questions of spirituality and religion principally the domain of men? As we see in the men’s movement itself, men must try to understand why reality bears down on them as it does. Women, as the provided-fors, generally don’t have to do that… a pretty damsel in distress does not have to wait long to be saved by some chump eager to establish his man-up credentials… and in being removed from the need to make real decisions, her white-matter-bound brain is less inclined to rewire itself with neural structures.

The dangerous unknown that exists at culture’s boundary is mysterious, exciting and dynamic. The thrill of the forbidden is the thrill of the cultural forbidden, and it plays a central part in female sexual arousal… hence the proclivity of many women to be drawn to thugs and troglodytes. It is because female sexual arousal relates more to the cultural forbidden that female sexual promiscuity has been universally more problematic for cultural norms. The thrill of “throwing it away” is, at its core, a fundamentally devolutionary dynamic, guaranteed to take us back to the stone-age, swinging from tree to tree.

Thus, women cannot become spiritual leaders in any authentic sense because their brains are not wired for it, and the current fashion of trying to encourage more women to become priests is a major symptom of how dysfunctional our society has become.

Haier, R. J. et al., 2005. The neuroanatomy of general intelligence: sex matters. NeuroImage, 25, 320-327.. NeuroImage, Volume 25, pp. 320-327.
- OldGeezer
  
  Such inate differences between the sexes, observable even in very young children, can account for quite a lot of things. As recently published here on AVfM there also appear to be very distinct differences in male and female responses to challenging problems, especially amongst brighter girls and boys. See also Motivation, “Mindset” and Gifted Students (PDF format download) extracted from studies by Carol Dweck, Daniel Pink and others. It appears that, when faced with difficult challenges, girls are significantly more inclined than boys to just give up.
  
  Male advantages in physical strength may easily be ignored by feminist insistence on “equality” in all things, but such charactersistic male attributes as determination and perseverance in the face of adversity are much less easy to dismiss. Apparently that “defective” Y chromosome and testosterone “poisoning” do have a few beneficial results after all. And even mentioning those “unfair” male advantages drives the feminists absolutely bananas.
  
  Overcoming feminism’s male allies is going to be a hell of a lot harder than overcoming female feminism IMO.
- Hg_CNO_2
  
  Some interesting thoughts here. I can’t say that I agree with them all, but food for thought.
http://gynocentrism.com/2013/07/14/about/ Peter Wright (Tawil)

The following excerpt from an interview with Joseph Campbell (a leading scholar on religion) and Bill Moyers:

MOYERS: There are women today who say that the spirit of the Goddess has been in exile for five thousand years, since the –

CAMPBELL: You can’t put it that far back, five thousand years. She was a very potent figure in Hellenistic times in the Mediterranean, and she came back with the Virgin in the Roman Catholic tradition. You don’t have a tradition with the Goddess celebrated any more beautifully and marvelously than in the twelfth- and thirteenth-century French cathedrals, every one of which is called Notre Dame.

MOYERS: Yes, but all of those motifs and themes were controlled by males — priests, bishops — who excluded women, so whatever the form might have meant to the believer, for the purpose of power the image was in the hands of the dominant male figure.

CAMPBELL: You can put an accent on it that way, but I think it’s a little too strong because there were the great female saints. Hildegarde of Bingen — she was a match for Innocent III. And Eleanor of Aquitaine — I don’t think there is anybody in the Middle Ages who has the stature to match hers. One now can look back and quarrel with the whole situation, but the situation of women was not that bad by any means.

MOYERS: No, but none of those saints would ever become pope.

CAMPBELL: Becoming pope, that’s not much of a job, really. That’s a business position. None of the popes could ever have become the mother of Christ. There are different roles to play. It was the male’s job to protect the women.
Fredrik

Amazing. Reasoning from the fact that feminist culture is Western culture — and therefore steeped in Christian culture, whether they like it or not — I just realized that feminists’ conflicted attitude toward women who choose to have sex with men can be traced back to the conflicted Western attitude toward Mary Magdalene.

I also just realized that it doesn’t matter if she actually had sex with Jesus. Even if all that she did was turn him on, then she sullied him — not with her own sexuality, but by activating his. Since I’m talking about cultural influence, it doesn’t even matter if either really existed, let alone whether a particular gospel is true; the stories influenced the culture regardless.

Reasoning further, I can see how a feminist would claim that Western culture thinks women are dirty and that MM was polluting God’s son with her female sexuality. My very simple response would be to challenge them to find a devout Christian who would be comfortable with the idea of Jesus masturbating 3-4 times a week. Then find one who would be comfortable with the idea of Jesus masturbating to a gay fantasy even once.

I never thought of that before, and I adore anyone who makes me think something new. I already adored you both, but that’s okay. Please feel free to continue giving me more reasons, and thank you.
John Narayan

I am yet to find any “ism” that does not require the disposable male to keep it going.

Extreme capitalists, communists, feminists, far left, far right all require the stone cold bodies of young men.

Look at all the fiddling with young boys in the church.

The MHRM is the threat to their supply of cannon fodder.
Shrek6

Interesting article, I have to say.

I think your version of original sin is drawing a very long bow in my opinion. And as for St. Augustine’s City of God being used throughout the Catholic Church as some sort of reference text that will describe how men are to be viewed by the Church, well, that’s a new one on me..
Sure his writings are strong, after all he is a Doctor of the Church and a learned man, but not everything he wrote has been handed down through the ages and taught to all.
St. Augustine played around prior to his conversion, was a womaniser and a great disappointment to his mother.
I wouldn’t mind betting that his staunch teachings against the ‘penis’ was more drawn from his own depraved fornicating behaviour.

I have heard many things taught within the walls of the Catholic Faith, but I have never heard anything like this theory and I think it is bordering on poppy cock!
But, I shall not reject it totally, because there is truth to some of the other points raised in this article.

People who do not know the Catholic Faith, tend to draw their conclusions from their fraudulent copy of the ‘Catholic book’ called ‘The Bible.’ Even the real Bible itself is not the centre of learning or focus within the Catholic Faith. Unlike the approximate 40,000 protestant religions, the Catholic Church is not based on a book that was butchered and changed to suit one’s new flavour of religion.

If you want to know more about this Church, you have to delve a lot deeper, almost to the point of actually living it. You will not find your answers in The Bible, the New York Times or on Wikipedia. New Advent is a pretty good source and there is a lot of good reading, but still is not going to give you what you seek, if you are not of this faith and have not lived it.

As for the false belief that the Catholic Church elevates men over women. All orthodox Catholics, both men and women never bother to consider this, because they know the truth and are not interested in debating such a ridiculous claim. Nonetheless, the feminists use it and use it well.

Women are not feted in the Church for their sexuality and neither are they considered to be of a higher moral station than men. These beliefs are a fallacy. Women will suffer for all they do on the day of their judgement, just as men will. Sexual experience will not be deemed good in one and bad in the other.

This is like saying that only men play around on their wives/partners/girlfriends, but women never do. So who are the men playing around with?

This is a farcical belief, but has been forced fed to women in societies around the world for hundreds of years and gullible women believe it. They believe that they are more Godly or Saintly than men. Utter rubbish of the most stupendous order!
And yes, the feminists within the Catholic Church have fed this garbage to women as well.

The Catholic Church, or rather the many institutions and people who work, live and operate under the banner of the Catholic Church, have probably been the cause of most of what we men suffer today. Feminism and a Homosexual Mafia, is strong within these organisations and have been able to have control over great portions of the institutions.

Yes, the day will come where there will be women who claim to have been ordained as Priests and Bishops, and they will be operating in what is called the Catholic Church. However, this will be at or after the time of the great schism. There will never be female Priests in the Catholic Church!

Once The Church has suffered this schism, it will become a very small entity/religion unlike what is seen today. This is expected and has been warned about by the at least the last 3 Popes.

Thanks for the article though. Thought provoking for sure, but I disagree with quite a bit of what you say. You clearly do not know nor understand the Catholic Church, where it came from and why it exists. You build your case from modern assumptions, Cherry picked information and false teachings.

I do fully agree with your attempt to explain the furphy of women being seen as subjugated by the men of the Church, when in fact what Dean said is true. Subjugation of both sexes (sexuality) is what is true. This is why most orthodox Catholics don’t bother debating it, because it is our Faith and we have no need to question it.

Even if the feminists want to twist the meaning of this to suit their causes, it will change nothing in the Church!
Tofeldian Sage

Somebody decided there was a fault line in society that divided the interests of men and the interests of women. A hundred years earlier Karl Marx decided there was a fault line as well, except he drew it in a different place, between the ‘workers’ and the ‘capitalists’.

The Catholic Church has been around a very long time, and has more experience of humanity than any other institution on the planet. Bar none. It knew immediately that these supposed fault lines are purely political constructs, and has refused to be drawn into such simplistic world views.

One of the things that brought me back into the Church was realizing that love was something never discussed in political ideologies like Feminism. Feminism is all about power and money, but it has very little to say about love. Worse, it seems to be able to advance its interests only by holding to ransom love-based relationships.

Have you ever heard a Feminist talk about how love works in a marriage? No, but you’ve heard lots about power dynamics, money problems, burdens of child-rearing, etc. Never anything about love.

I read Dr. T’s series of stories of how love-based relationships are grossly abused by people, in what is surely the most perverted form of love that could exist. I lived that for 20 years, and yet the one true thing I really believe in is love.

And guess what they talk about when I go to church on Sunday morning? What do you suppose is the order of the day? Is it money, or power, or struggle? Does the priest give a homily about how to break through the glass ceiling?

No. The priest talks about how we are called to love each other, and what that means in our day-to-day lives. He doesn’t draw any distinction between man or woman. We are called to love.

It is such a refreshing message.

And completely gender-neutral too, if you’re inclined to worry about such things.
- Shrek6
  
  Well said!
rayc2

“The Catholic Church has been around a very long time, and has more experience of humanity than any other institution on the planet. Bar none. It knew immediately that these supposed fault lines are purely political constructs, and has refused to be drawn into such simplistic world views…”

And yet the Catholic Church, along with other Christian churches, continues to act as an agent of the government and deliver men and their families on a platter to the Feminized State through civil marriage…knowing that the ensuing ‘marriage’, likely divorce, and many years following will be the closest that many of these men and their children will ever get to Hell on Earth and that some of them won’t survive. By their fruits you shall know them. I’d like to see someone put a positive spin on that.
- rayc2
  
  “And yet the Catholic Church, along with other Christian churches, continues to act as an agent of the government and deliver men and their families on a platter to the Feminized State through civil marriage…knowing that the ensuing ‘marriage’, likely divorce, and many years following will be the closest that many of these men and their children will ever get to Hell on Earth and that some of them won’t survive. By their fruits you shall know them. I’d like to see someone put a positive spin on that.”
  
  I’m seriously asking here. Would somebody please show me the positive spin for the Church participating in, and supporting the political constructs of civil marriage and divorce laws?
  - Shrek6
    
    I can’t speak for other so-called ‘Christian Churches,’ but the Catholic Church does not recognise civil marriages or divorces. The people were told by Christ to give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, which also means to obey state law where you are required to. And yes even that is open to interpretation as well.
    
    The civil marriage is a state dictate and has nothing to do with the Catholic Church. It is used to bind men into a contract they cannot get out of, without losing everything. This is simply a tax or revenue raising bill made against the husband and they will collect one way or the other.
    
    It is also the same as with your birth certificate. Your birth certificate does not have your name on it. It has instead the name of a corporate entity in ‘all caps’ that resembles your name, but it is not you. This corporate entity is then used by the govt to pay back its debt to the Bank of Britain.
    
    The Church recognises its own right to perform the sacrament of marriage between a man and a woman and the two are supposed to behave and obey the laws of God.
    
    Many of the state laws are in direct conflict with the Catholic Church and although we are directed to obey the law with regard the registering our marriage civilly, we are not directed to follow all state edicts that are against the laws of God.
    
    The most prominent of these state laws that are in direct contravention of the laws of God is divorce!
    - rayc2
      
      So Catholic marriages are not State sanctioned? The Priest doesn’t end the ceremony with “by the power invested in me by the state of __________, I now pronounce you man and wife?” A Catholic marriage doesn’t entitle the participants to a valid state marriage license and subject the parties to State law regarding marriage and divorce?
      - Shrek6
        
        That is not a Church requirement. This is a requirement under the license given to them by the State to perform or fulfill on of 2 tasks. The most important is the sacramental task of marriage, then the lesser is the arranging of the contract on behalf of the State. You have to remember that there are 2 separate tasks involved.
        
        Watch what happens when States change laws to allow Homosexual marriages. This won’t happen in all Diocese, but in those diocese that have orthodox Bishops, the Priests will be ordered to hand back their marriage licenses and they will no longer perform the States task in arranging the contract.
        
        So from then on, even Catholics will have to attend the Registrar’s office to arrange the State Contract, then attend the Church to have the Sacramental Marriage performed and blessed.
      - rayc2
        
        Thank you for your responses Shrek. I wasn’t aware that marriage in the Catholic Church was a two step process of the religious aspect, on one hand, and the legal aspect on the other. I am left still wondering, however, why the Church continues to support and participate in the legal aspect.
      - Shrek6
        
        Mate, I have no idea why the Church is still engaged with the State, especially when the Church knows the State is doing all it can to destroy it. I guess the Church needs to remain in the fray for as long as it can, to protect those souls it is charged to protect.
        
        Once the hammer comes down on the Church in the legal arena, then it will be forced to remove itself from all state contracts.
        Mind you, this will be also at a time of the schism too, because there will be renegade Bishops/Priests who will disobey the Magisterium. In fact they already do.
        This will be how the schism occurs and this is when it will drive the ‘orthodox Catholics’ underground. From that point onward, the ‘True Catholic Church’ will be a small remnant of faithful followers of Christ, who will end up facing the same as those who faced the Romans way back when!
    - rayc2
      
      “The people were told by Christ to give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, which also means to obey state law where you are required to. ”
      
      Render unto Caesar what is Caesars, and unto God what is God’s. Does marriage belong to Caesar or God?
      - rayc2
        
        “Watch what happens when States change laws to allow Homosexual marriages. This won’t happen in all Diocese, but in those diocese that have orthodox Bishops, the Priests will be ordered to hand back their marriage licenses and they will no longer perform the States task in arranging the contract.”
        
        Never mind homosexual marriages….I’m wondering why they aren’t doing that NOW.
      - Shrek6
        
        Sacramental Marriage is between a man and a woman. It is a union blessed by God that has been in existence for a long time. How long, I have no idea. Who it belongs to, I guess you could say God.
        
        That contract called ‘Marriage’ that you sign according to State laws, is a financial contract binding the husband to the State. That is no marriage, well, unless you want to say it’s a marriage between a husband and the State.
        
        The Church is simply obeying the law of the land or State. For the moment!
        Once the Church is told it must compromise or disobey Canon Law or the Catechism of the Faith, it will simply shut up shop and stop performing State Marriages.
      - rayc2
        
        “Once the Church is told it must compromise or disobey Canon Law or the Catechism of the Faith, it will simply shut up shop and stop performing State Marriages.”
        
        I suspect that it already is by automatically subjecting men and their families to Feminized State law as part of marriage through the Church. There is nothing (yet) that I know of to stop the Church from performing the religious ceremony alone without any State involvement.
http://www.genderratic.com Typhonblue (Alison Tieman)

It’s actually simpler than what’s in this post.

Even if you condemn sex equally between the genders, women can still take value from their physical bodies via their role in gestation, child birth and lactation. This is reinforced by the mythology of the Holy Virgin.

Men can take value from no aspect of their physical bodies. Except their strength and expendability in service of something greater. This is reinforced by the mythology of Christ on the cross, sacrificing for the Church.

What’s that greater thing? Women and the Church(coded feminine in the bible.)

Do you see the gynocentrism now?

There is a huge difference between biological expendability existing while society does whatever it can to prevent it and forcing a gender to take their identity from being expendable.

Also, the worst people to listen to when you’re trying to analyze an ideology are people who believe it. When you’re within the umbrella of an ideology that includes different factions, you are focused like a laser on your differences, not your overarching similarity. In fact when you’re within that umbrella it’s impossible for you to see your similarities. NACALT.
- Commonplace
  
  This would be true, if the Catholic Church condemned copulative sex within marriage. It doesn’t. Additionally, the human activities and institutions which the Catholic Church considers “valuable” are various, and not simply “the Church”, which is self-admittedly feminine, or “men dying”.
  - http://www.genderratic.com Typhonblue (Alison Tieman)
    
    “This would be true, if the Catholic Church condemned copulative sex within marriage. It doesn’t. ”
    
    Where is the Christian mythology that offers a tie between a man’s physical body and the divine?
    
    Men’s role is either to serve the Church or take authority over sacrificing for women. So their role is either to be gynocentric or preach gynocentrism.
    
    It’s amazing people don’t see this.
    - Commonplace
      
      Well, there’s the whole “Imago Dei” thing, if you want theology; or Adam being first created, if you want mythology. Admittedly women are “Imago Dei” as well.
      “Men’s role is either to serve the Church or take authority over sacrificing for women. So their role is either to be gynocentric or preach gynocentrism.” This is wrong, but understandable, since you believe that talking to someone within an “ideology” will gather you no understanding. What is wrong about this is that it ignores the entirety of the root of Christianity. Christianity is about God, and the life of a Christian is supposed to be seeking after God. There are even many explicitly religious roles which have nothing to do with “supporting the church”, and are fundamentally about looking for God. Priests may support the Church, but the Church supports monks and nuns, not to mention hermits. Now, you may think this is entirely stupid, or you may want to give a genetic account which entirely ignores the experience of those within the religion; but that doesn’t change the fact that what most Catholics are seeking, insofar as they are Catholic, is God, and not some kind of social position.
      Edit: To clarify, since I wrote that too quickly. You seem to think that support of the Church is an end in itself. Catholics don’t think that. Supporting the Church is supporting individuals as they try to relate to God. And this is a gender neutral activity.
      - http://www.genderratic.com Typhonblue (Alison Tieman)
        
        The New Testament supersedes the old, does it not.
        
        Again, where is the link between the divine and the male body? Other religions and cultures have an explicit link between the uniquely male structures of the male body and divinity. And there is a reason why they do this.
        
        Christianity does not. There is no subset of Christianity that does. Yet it still allows for a spiritual connection between the female body and the Divine.
        
        There will always be hermits who seek to find God through meditation; Every group of humans have them and they all do so in the context of their regional faith. They’re also irrelevant to the real world political and social consequences of a religion.
      - Commonplace
        
        Well, for one thing, Mary is the “Mother of God”, but not a “Divine Mother”. For another, many Catholic theologians (Aquinas among them) think that the paternity predicated of the “Father” is predicated properly of Him and secondarily of creatures. In other words, the paternity of the man is a participation in the paternity of the Father, and this includes the males “creative act”, which is more formal than the female’s. There is semen in Catholicism too. I think Aquinas talks about it in the Summa 1.33.(2?)
      - J Galt
        
        “Supporting the Church is supporting individuals as they try to relate to God.”
        
        Really??? If that were the case why does the church even exist why don’t people just support those individuals, hear the message of their efforts and have done with it.
        
        I think religion throughout time has always acted as a mediator between people as “chattel” and the ruling class be it monarchy, government, dictators what have you. I love this article because it challenges the role of “chattel” and the interests that are served.
      - Jotty
        
        Catholics don’t think that.
        
        This is a form of No True Scotsman (or NAFALT) applied to Catholicism, and it’s wrong for the same reasons.
        
        Now you can claim that, like feminism, that not all (or even most) Catholics are in it for the institution itself; what you can’t do is deny the effects and actions of that institution as it draws strength from your tacit approval.
      - Commonplace
        
        The difference is that what we have here is one group which says that the Catholic Church is misogynistic because such and such Church Father said this mean thing about women, and another group that says the Church is misandric because so and so Doctor of the Church said this revolting thing about men. It isn’t as if either side would be unable to make something of a case. The reason that the Catholic Church seems so contradictory here is either that it simply isn’t ideologically committed to a demeaning view of either, or that it is ideologically committed to the hatred of men and women. I think it is more obviously the former. Especially since it DOES have good things to say about men beyond their mere usefulness, and that it explicitly attempts to balance the feminine and masculine elements as best as it is able. Why will there never be female priests,? Precisely because the Church is self-admittedly feminine. You may think that the leadership is entirely irrelevant to how the Church acts and reflects on itself, but that is wrongheaded.
- Tofeldian Sage
  
  Alison, you’re making this more complicated than it is.
  
  Look, Feminists dreamed up the docrine of abortion, and how women could only be liberated if they had the right to abort at will.
  
  They were able to bully virtually every organization on the planet into agreeing with them, but were never able to budge the Catholic Church. The Church stands almost alone in its absolute opposition to abortion, and for this the Feminists hate it with all the passion they can muster.
  
  The language of patriarchy came in much later (late 80’s); up to then Feminism was called Women’s Liberation, and what they wanted liberation from was the ‘tyranny’ of the family.
  
  The Church taught then, and teaches to this day, that the family is sacred. So the two philosophies are diametrically opposed. In Catholic terms, Feminism is a simple heresy. In Feminist terms, the Church is [insert whatever hateful epithet you like].
  
  The Church has out-lasted many heresies, and this one is no different.
  - rayc2
    
    “The language of patriarchy came in much later (late 80′s); up to then Feminism was called Women’s Liberation, and what they wanted liberation from was the ‘tyranny’ of the family.”
    
    And feminists got what they wanted with no fault divorce and family courts. Women are able to cherry pick what they want from a marriage and discard whatever they don’t want. Modern laws have inverted coverture of the past. Married men are now essentially under the protection and authority of their wives in that they only have the rights that their wives are willing to grant to them, especially in the area of reproduction, and can be discarded or traded in on her whim. A married woman is able to abort her husband’s children without his consent. I don’t know how you can say that the Church has out-lasted this heresy when it looks to me like it is fully participating in it. Talk and posturing is one thing but where the rubber meets the road, the Church is just going along for the ride.
    - Tofeldian Sage
      
      Ray, state-sponsored marriage is turning out to be a very bad deal for men; on that you’ll get no arguement from me. But I think your outrage is misdirected.
      
      The idea of the modern nation state grew out of Western Christendom, and all of its institutions have their roots in the Church. State-sponsored marriage is one such institution, but no longer guided by Church doctrine. That is why it is so subject to tinkering by every social engineer that comes along; it no longer has a foundation. It is adrift.
      
      When you get angry at state-sponsored marriage it is because it is a perversion of what the Church originally taught. Others here have adequately pointed out that the two interpretations of marriage have diverged, and it appears the gap is widening. It may well be that the Church comes to a point when it can no longer recognize state-sponsored marriage as legitimate, but we’re not there yet.
      
      Certainly if you are expecting the Church to stop encouraging people to marry you will be waiting a long time. Even if everyone else has forgotten that families are the building blocks of civilization, the Church has not.
      - rayc2
        
        “The idea of the modern nation state grew out of Western Christendom, and all of its institutions have their roots in the Church. State-sponsored marriage is one such institution, but no longer guided by Church doctrine. That is why it is so subject to tinkering by every social engineer that comes along; it no longer has a foundation. It is adrift.”
        
        I agree.
        
        “When you get angry at state-sponsored marriage it is because it is a perversion of what the Church originally taught. Others here have adequately pointed out that the two interpretations of marriage have diverged, and it appears the gap is widening. It may well be that the Church comes to a point when it can no longer recognize state-sponsored marriage as legitimate, but we’re not there yet. ”
        
        I understand that. When does the Church get to that point?
        
        Sometimes, within an organization, you find certain SOP’s. You might find that these SOP’s are cumbersome, inefficient, and barely workable. You might ask “why do we have to do it this way.” sometimes the only answer you get is “because this is how we have ALWAYS done it.” Other times you might, by questioning, get the answer that “you’re right, that doesn’t make any sense anymore because that SOP was written when we had such and such, and things have changed so it is really stupid to continue to try operate this way.”
        
        Would it hurt Churches to tell their congregations that they would only officiate over marriage ceremonies as vows before God, and that they would have to enter into a civil marriage contract separately, if they so chose, because the two have diverged so much? Or would it strengthen them?
        
        Would it weaken marriages to be lacking the backing of the full force of law, with no fault divorce and family law creating perverted incentives for women to divorce or would it strengthen them? Civil marriage or religious marriage is only as strong as the word of the bride and groom anyway, but I think we can all agree that civil marriage is potentially far more unjust and damaging.
        
        “Certainly if you are expecting the Church to stop encouraging people to marry you will be waiting a long time.”
        
        You have that wrong. It is only the definition of marriage that I have a problem with. Sometimes you see them…the man and the woman truly in love…they are tenderly holding hands and gazing into each others eyes and smiling….it’s a beautiful thing…it is the ultimate.
    - Shrek6
      
      Now you are just talking a pile of nonsensical crap. You are deliberately conflating the evils of feminism with the Catholic Church itself.
      And what is your purpose? To get a religious argument going with some of us here? You’re wasting your time.
      
      Haven’t seen your name around before, so I’m guessing you’re new or another user-name invented by someone else on this site, so you can put your anti-Christian points of view forward by attacking the Church.
      
      You know nothing about what you speak of and your naive ignorance is plainly obvious.
      
      I refuse to discuss or debate with people who deliberately talk garbage just to start a fight. My last comment. All yours sunshine!
      - rayc2
        
        I’m sorry that I offended you so much. Fwiw I have financially supported certain Catholic organizations in the past and will continue to do so in the future. I suspect that I get more snail mail from Catholic organizations than perhaps anyone else on this site. Some of them are trying to do very important work with very few resources…which reminds me.
Bombay

Doesn’t Christianity get the reputation of being patriarchal because people claim that the Bible states that women must obey and submit to their husbands? And that the father is head of the household?
- Shrek6
  
  Bombay, I can’t quite remember the passage, because my dyslexia refuses to allow me to remember much of what I read and where I read it, but I think it is in Ephesians somewhere.
  
  The feminists like to Cherry pick to suit their cause. If they bothered to read the rest of it, they would have found that there was a more detailed description of what men have to do for women. This is the basis for male disposability that Western Culture was built on.
  
  It wasn’t spelt out in black and white, but the inference was that a man must do for his woman, all or more than what he does for himself. From what I remember the connotations/implications can be endless the more you wish to read into that passage.
  
  The feminists have read the rest of that passage, but deliberately played dumb and only used the first part, which is what you have quoted and they have used this for many decades as a weapon against the Church. The women were indeed given the better side of the deal. That I am most certain of!
  - Bombay
    
    Yes. Mutual commitment was instructed. And like most everything else, the feminists focus only on having rights with no responsibility. Thus, Christianity is patriarchal because there are obligations.
  - rayc2
    
    “Bombay, I can’t quite remember the passage, because my dyslexia refuses to allow me to remember much of what I read and where I read it, but I think it is in Ephesians somewhere.”
    
    Here it is. I could only find the NFV (new feminist version) though. It would be a good idea to cross reference with another version:
    
    Ephesians 5:21 – 5:33
    
    Instructions for Christian households.
    
    21 Submit to your wife out of reverence for Christ.
    25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing[b] her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives more than their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— 30 for we are members of his body. 31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be submitted to his wife, and the two will become like one flesh for a while.”[c] 32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. 33 However, each one of you also must love his wife more than he loves himself.
rayc2

“Mate, I have no idea why the Church is still engaged with the State, especially when the Church knows the State is doing all it can to destroy it…”

The only positive spin that I can think of for Christian Churches to remain involved with the government as agents of State sanctioned marriage and divorce laws, rather than exclusively supporting their own biblical view of Holy Matrimony, is that they see it as benefitting women. The consequence that it has for men and children is only of secondary, or no consequence. Proof, to me, that the Christian Church is indeed looking at marriage solely from a gynocentric perspective. I find it particularly unethical that they sell their congregations on a ‘deluxe’ version of marriage and divorce but deliver something else entirely.
http://kevin-wayne.blogspot.com Kevin

“For men, spiritual identity is tied to service in the form of conformity to the doctrine of the Christ. While men may find a model for identity in the character of the son of the God, according to the books of the new testament, figure had no sexual life. This absence leaves no spiritual connection between the masculine body and the divine. The Christ is sexless; presumptively masculine, but never actually engaging in any activity unique to his masculine body.”

CORRECTION: Conformity to Christ is the identity of all Christians:

Php 2:5 The attitude you should have is the one that Christ Jesus had:
Php 2:6 He always had the nature of God, but he did not think that by force he should try to remain equal with God.
Php 2:7 Instead of this, of his own free will he gave up all he had, and took the nature of a servant. He became like a human being and appeared in human likeness.
Php 2:8 He was humble and walked the path of obedience all the way to death— his death on the cross.
Php 2:9 For this reason God raised him to the highest place above and gave him the name that is greater than any other name.
Php 2:10 And so, in honor of the name of Jesus all beings in heaven, on earth, and in the world below will fall on their knees,
Php 2:11 and all will openly proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

And your assumption that because Jesus didn’t have a sex life, that this means all men are to conform to it is outright laughable. None of the homilies on the life of Christ in the NT ever mention his celibacy. Just like they never mention the cleansing of the temple, or latter analogies such as Christ on the White Horse in the Apocalypse. They didn’t expect (most) Christians to be in Military Service!

You’re committing the same error I told you before: trying to take latter revisions such as that of Augustine and anachronistically reading them back into the Bible. You also ignored the connections between Jesus advising his followers to call God “Father” and the older Patrilinealism of Jewish culture. We wet round & round about that, also.

Here’s some advice: Start with the Bible itself next time.

A Voice for Men

Humanist Counter-Theory in the Age of Misandry

Men, and patriarchy in the church

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