Madam, - Archbishop Brady's article in your edition of August 9th is a perfect example of the canon lawyer's zeal for arguing that black is white. He states that "throughout the Bible the authentic relationship between men and women is presented". Really?
Madam, - Archbishop Brady's article in your edition of August 9th is a perfect example of the canon lawyer's zeal for arguing that black is white. He states that "throughout the Bible the authentic relationship between men and women is presented". Really?
In Leviticus 12:2-5 we are told that if a woman has a male child she is unclean for seven days. If the child is female she is unclean for 14 days. In Numbers 5:27 we are told that if a woman trespasses against her husband a curse shall enter her, her abdomen will swell and her thigh shall rot and she shall be a curse.
In Proverbs 6:24 we are told to keep away from the evil woman and the flattery of a foreign woman. In 1 Corinthians 7:1 St Paul says the ideal is that a man should never touch a woman. In 1 Corinthians 11:6 Paul says that ideally a woman should be covered and, if not covered, shaved. In 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 Paul says that women should be kept silent in church. In Timothy 2:12-14 Paul says a woman is not to be allowed to teach or have authority over a man, but to be silent.
How can the Archbishop of Armagh contend that the Bible presents the authentic relationship between men and women? His Grace also claims that "the Catholic tradition celebrates the uniqueness and dignity of every human person!" Really? Let's listen to the Church Fathers, the touchstone of Catholic tradition.
Tertulian said: "God's sentence hangs over the female sex; you are the Devil's gate." St Augustine taught: "Compared to man woman may not be called the image of God."
St Thomas Aquinas held that "the female comes from a defect in the male seed".
Rome's recent document on the place of men and women in the Church is nothing more than 5,000-year-old patriarchal sexism dressed up in flowery and deceptive language. Cardinal Ratzinger and Archbishop Brady are fooling nobody but themselves. - Yours etc.,
Bishop PAT BUCKLEY, The Oratory Society, Larne, Co Antrim.