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from the priesthood. And this grave sin of fetishism and self-worship has very deep roots in Church history all the way back to the 5th Century AD. The problem is that this monolithic institution has been unable to apply the extremely simple, essential teaching of Jesus--"love they neighbor"--to women in the modern world.
Through the 1960s--and maybe in some Catholic churches still today--women who had given birth were required to be "purified" (by fetishistic church ceremony) in order to take communion. Their giving birth set them apart as "dirty." How primitive and voodoo-istic can you get? All women were furthermore not allowed on the altar--because that is the voodoo scene of male supremacy, whereby a male (and only a male--a human with a prick), invested by the Church, supposedly has the magical power to change bread and wine into Jesus' ACTUAL body and blood. The priest and the people then EAT Jesus. Now go back and read the "synoptic" Gospels. Even those highly selected, expurgated, 'Bowdlerized' and messed with documents (the work of the 5th century "patriarchs") provide NO basis for this bizarre male fetishism and its extremely distorted monarchical institution.
It is INCREDIBLE how twisted the supposed Church of Jesus became, to the point of Medieval scholars questioning whether women even have souls! Jesus did NOT say, "Love thy neighbor except for women"! He in fact surrounded himself with women--and the vestiges of those egalitarian and loving relationships are still present in the New Testament, despite all the murky bullcrap that was done to those texts.
In an important book called "The Gnostic Gospels," Elaine Pagels explores the other gospels--the gospels that were banned in the 5th century. Some of those texts were recently found buried in jars in the Nag Hammadi desert near Alexandria. They tell a very different story of what the earliest Christians believed--that everyone in Christian circles was equal, that women and even children could be designated as the "priest" for the Christian ceremony (by drawing lots), and that Christians worshiped both God the Father and God the Mother. The Bushwhacks of the later era (3rd to 5th century) purged all of these more Christian beliefs, banned and burned their scrolls, and allied the church with the state, to enforce their narrow doctrine by the sword. After a period of complete dissolution of the church (6th to 8th centuries), Roman powermongers invented an entirely mythical male "line of succession" back to "Saint Peter" and cemented this corruption with the bloody "crusades" against the Holy Land and other outrages, such as the burning of "witches" and pogroms against the Jews.
There is a moment in the 5th century Church that epitomizes the 180 that Church took away from true Christianity--and that is the murder of Hypatia, the female philosopher, scientist and head of the Alexandria Library--and beloved teacher of the better sort of Christian bishop (such as Bishop Synesius of Ptolemais)--who, in my opinion, was attempting to bridge the two competing religious factions of that era--the Neo-platonists (i.e. 'Pagans'--in the Greek tradition, especially as to the sacredness of science and mathematics) and the Christians, who were already internally divided between the real Christians--the Gnostics--and the newer "patriarchs" who were taking over the Church. The very first bishop to call himself a "patriarch" was Cyril, bishop of Alexandria (now considered a "saint" in Rome's pantheon). Cyril was seeking to break the rule of Roman law in Alexandria, and he ruled by sending mobs of Nitrian monks (crazed desert monks, who saw visions of Devils) through the streets to attack the Roman Prefect, with whom Hypatia was allied, to drive the Jews out of Alexandria (once the most tolerant city in the Roman Empire), and, ultimately, in 415 AD, to drag Hypatia through the streets into a building that had been converted from a Roman temple into a Christian church, and skin her alive.
That was the end of the Christian Church--and the beginning of this monstrosity we see today, of men parading around in lace trimmed robes, with all the pomp and circumstance of Charlemagne, and claiming to speak for God, and believing that male physiogamy gives them that right.
The Catholic priesthood is a very sick culture, based on this egregious sin against women. It cannot negotiate the modern world. It is unstable and self-serving and it clings desperately to this "male line of succession" myth in order to claim "authority" from God. They could cure their psychosis, and solve their recruitment problem, tomorrow--if they would accept women and married men into the priesthood. I would include gays and gay couples, but that is probably too much to expect from these sick hypocrites. They would also, by doing this, become real Christians. But they have strayed so far from anything that Jesus would recognize as Christian that I don't have much hope for them.
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