Boy!  Do I agree….I have so many friends who feel the very same way.  it is time for a woman to run the Church!  Want to apply?

Jeanette, I think women in the hierarchy of the Church is a wonderful idea but you and I won’t get very far with that suggestion.  It never did make sense to me that a bunch of old men who are so out of touch with their constituency make the decisions.  Priests should marry so they know what it’s about and contraception as a means of birth control should have been approved years ago. 

Also, I got very tired with women being the root of all evil.  If we got pregnant is was our fault and shame, if we were married we had to do  what our husbands wanted and have children until our uterus fell out and the word "obey" was in the marriage vows until very recently.  If we complained we were not good Catholics.  My blood pressure goes up just thinking about it. 

Years ago, there was an episode of Designing Women that has stuck with me.  Charlene, who was a long-time, devoted member of some church, finally had it out with her pastor.  In a nut shell, she said she couldn’t continue to be part of a church that considered her, and half the congregation, not good enough to stand at the alter and preach.  That pretty much distilled it down to basics.

Totally agree with your viewpoint here, Joan.  Their preoccupation with sex is bizarre, and its impact on poor and overcrowded populations is unforgivable.  

I am Catholic, pro-life, anti-contraceptive, and I have only 2 children (my choice, for various reasons).  I use NFP (NOT the rhythm method) and my children are spaced 3 years apart.  The Catholic Church has no problem with limiting the number of children you have (for a good reason, like being poor, health, mental issues, among many many other things) and in fact the official teaching is that you should have children responsibly.  "The Church is interested in quality, not quantity," is what a conservative theologian has said to me.  He was talking about being able to raise your children so well that they are well-equiped to live good lives and get to Heaven.  In fact, if some of the time and effort was made teaching poor women about their bodies and their fertility, they would be able to use this knowledge to limit their family size, and space their children, and best of all, it costs nothing.  I get extremely weary of people (including poorly-educated priests) misinterpreting and misleading people regarding the Church’s position on family size, and I get even more tired of people who claim to be Catholic publicly criticizing her for things that are a fundamental part of the faith.  If you do not believe the Church is the one true faith that you need to get to Heaven, then go ahead and find something else.  If you do believe, then you also believe that her authority was handed down by Christ, and thus, whether you like it or not, you need to respect and obey that authority.  It is not a multiple choice faith!

As a child we look at things through a child’s eyes and as an adult we take all we learned and live the best life we can.  Same goes for  religion.   To me heaven and hell are right here and the best laws ever written are the Ten Commandments.  After fishing around the net, I read that there is some evidence of a Mrs. God and that Adam had a first wife named Lilith. 

Trouble with accepting religion just as we were taught is that we most likely didn’t get the whole story and shouldn’t be looking for magic places that we will go to when we die.  Purgatory has been downsized, we can eat meat on Friday and we don’t need to wear a headcover in church.  Minor things yes but it shows that we need to take everything with a grain of salt.

By the way, God’s wife’s name was Asherah, I’m just saying …….