McCulloch wrote:
TMMaria wrote:Now, how can you call me to be one way in church, and to be another way in the society at large?
But you already do. Your Bible teaches that women should not teach or have authority over men, that women are the glory of men as men are the glory of Christ. Yet, outside of your church, enforcing such attitudes is generally illegal.
Why McC, you surprised me... who has been calling on people to use the power of their reasoning to discover God or as in your case, no God...so how come when it comes to the position of women in the Catholic Church and the attitude of Christ towards women, you stop short? Why on something as important as women's rights you'd want to do a less than a thorough examination?
In an ideal social condition where men loves and obeys God's calling to holiness and follow the prescription: Husband loves your wives as Christ loves...in an ideal condition where the equality of man and woman in representing humanity, they become and function as one in the Spirit of Love, where the man is in full relationship with our Creator and answer God's calling to love, mercy, justice, woman had protection. In a homogeneous socio-organic co-operation, the social pre-eminence must necessary falls to one of them...whom God assigns as the man. Although he is in the head position, it doesn't take away her independence and equality of rights and privileges. Just because she is in the social subordination position doesn't mean she is anyway inferior. To deduce from this the inferiority of woman or her degradation to a "second-rate human being" contradicts logic just as much as would the attempt to regard the citizen as an inferior being because he is subordinate to the officials of the state. Unfortunately, history in most peoples testified evidence of low moral level by their degrading oppression of woman. The paternal pre-eminence of the man has developed into unlimited tyranny in many peoples in history. Women had no status independent of men.
Christ proved himself to be the central point in the history of mankind, and not least by the change his teaching effected in the position of woman.
Have you missed that to the great astonishment of his own disciples Jesus converses publicly with the Samaritan woman (Jn 4:27); he takes no notice of the state of legal impurity of the woman who had suffered from hemorrhages (Mt 9:20); he allows a sinful woman to approach him in the house of Simon the Pharisee (Lk 7:37); and by pardoning the woman taken in adultery, he means to show that one must not be more severe towards the fault of a woman than towards that of a man (Jn 8:11). He does not hesitate to depart from the Mosaic Law in order to affirm the equality of the rights and duties of men and women with regard to the marriage bond (Mk 10:2; Mt 19:3).
Have you missed that in his itinerant ministry Jesus was accompanied not only by the Twelve but also by a group of women (Lk 8:2). Contrary to the Jewish mentality, which did not accord great value to the testimony of women, as Jewish law attests, it was nevertheless women who were the fist to have the privilege of seeing the risen Lord, and it was they who were charged by Jesus to take the first paschal message to the Apostles themselves (Mt 28:7 ; Lk 24:9 ; Jn 20:11), in order to prepare the latter to become the official witnesses to the Resurrection.
Have you missed that Mary occupied a privileged place in the little circle of those gathered in the Upper Room after the Lord's Ascension (Acts 1:14)? In His childhood years, Jesus was obedient to both Joseph and Mary, not just Joseph. (Luke 2:51) The Virgin Mother's position was affirmed by Jesus on the cross with his dying breath: "This is your mother" She is as the Mother of God-Incarnate also Mother of the Church? Her motherly influence was not just the type that belongs in the home but extend into state and church as well. In a world where women had no status except in marriage, Christianity granted unmarried woman value and importance without man. The same apostle you quoted above, imitating Christ's call to both men and women to virginity to be in service of the Kingdom, placed the position of women in an independence of man unthought of before in calling virgins and widows to stay unmarried if they so chose. Elisabeth Gnauck-Khne says truly: "The esteem of virginity is the true emancipation of woman in the literal sense". This elevation of woman centres in Mary the Mother of Jesus, the purest virginity and motherhood, both tender and strong, united in wonderful sublimity. The history of the Catholic Church bears constant testimony of this position of Mary in the history of civilization. The respect for woman rises and falls with the veneration of the Virgin Mother of God. Consequently for art also the Virgin has become the highest representation of the most noble womanhood. This extraordinary elevation of woman in Mary by Christ is in sharp contrast to the extraordinary degradation of female dignity before Christianity. In the renewing of all things in Christ (Ephesians 1:10) the restoration of order must be most thorough at that point where the most extreme disorder had prevailed.
Have you also missed that the same apostle you quoted above recognized elsewhere women possessed the right to prophesy in the assembly, and we owe to him one of the most vigorous texts in the New Testament on the fundamental equality of men and women, as children of God in Christ (Gal 3:28)?
"For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." 
