Prepared to stand outside the clubhouse

NEVER, EVEN IN my badgewearing, marching, student phase of feminism, have I had difficulty spending time with a God who is addressed as Father, Son gnd He with a capital H. Nor have I ever minded hailing Mary as the ultimate disciple of Jesus, for I believe mothers take on the most important job in the world, and most of my waking hours are spent striving to make the mark.
However, there are aspects of our Church and its teachings which raise my temperature to such a degree that I am glad I have never had to rely on the Billings Method.
Contraception must be the main point of contention for all Catholic women bigger, I'm sure, than women priests and one which has always reminded me that the rules are written by men. Of course we realise that a dedicated adherence to charts and an uninhibited approach to our own bodies can do the trick (90-odd per cent of the time); we know our mothers managed it; we gather our fathers went along with it, but somehow it seems a little ridiculous to be cast into a state of sin if we decide to set the thermometer aside. Women in the '90s, with all the added expectations that the past few decades have brought to them, want and deserve to feel in control. The ultimate responsibility of contraception is that if it fails, a woman has to do a little bit more than earn a fatter pay packet.
Call me a fair-weather Catholic if you like, but I truly believe that God won't judge me for choosing when to have my children, and if he has more sympathy with the priest commenting on the new catechism on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, then I am certainly walking the wrong path. This man made the analogy of a club with rules, and that if you didn't like them, you need not, and more importantly, could not belong to the club. Frankly I'm happy to stand outside the clubhouse and watch, for though the Catholic Church has all my emotional and spiritual fidelity, I don't want to stand next to members like that.
As a single mother, not by choice but through circumstances, I am in grave danger of the strict rule-abiders considering me an adulteress if I ever remarry. I am in danger of being considered in a state of sin if in that position I decide to have no more children. And all because men with no families, no spouses, no sexual encounters, have written the rules.
What is written down seems certainly to be written in stone, never to be reconsidered by hard-line Catholic rulemakers, for surely this is the fundamental reason against women priests. Because of the example "recorded in the Scriptures" of Christ choosing his Apostles only from men, along with the "constant practice" of doing the same, and the teaching authority which has "consistently held" that there should be an exclusion of women from the priesthood, the Pope says "No".
It seems increasingly obvious that the concepts of reasoned change, of positive progress, of social consideration, simply do not come into the hard-line Catholic mind. Do any of his advisers point out to the Pope that just because it has always been, does not mean it should always be?
Does he still believe that Jewish women (and Judaism is where we come from, so therefore Catholic women too) are unclean when they are menstruating? Does he really think of women as merely man's "helpers", for in Genesis that is the very reason for our creation? Is "a woman's wantonness" still something to be wary of, because in Ecclesiasticus it is written that "she will sit down in front of every tent-peg and open her quiver to every arrow"? From all I understand of Christ himself, he would have none of this.
But rather than accusing the Church of conscious misogyny, as many of my friends do, I am convinced that everything we see not happening is due to a sort of feckless patriarchy, an entrenchment, a refusal to step out.
Of course I know that there are women readers, women ministers of Communion (though I still see people deliberately joining the much longer priest's queue), women involved in the training of priests, women writing learned pieces in the Catholic press.
But I also know that women still clean the churches after
their day-time jobs and when the children are in bed. In Italy very recently I witnessed flocks of nuns fluttering round priests and ministering to their every need. And we still have to endure the reading from Paul to the Ephesians, in which he says that "wives should be subject to their husbands", whereas men simply have to love their wives as they love themselves.
I am aware that kicking against the traces of Catholicism's boundaries is not exactly evidence of my humility or obedience. But as a potential adulteress and sinner, I feel I have little to lose in pointing out to the men who make the decisions in our Church that the law of God which they lay down for us has absolutely nothing to do with the spirit of God as most women understand it.t
© Katy Brown