Jimmy Carter: A Sunday Interview

[rug]

In a wide-ranging interview, the former president calls on Catholics to accept female priests, America to denounce the death penalty, and Obama to stay out of the Syrian war.

June 23, 2013
By Elizabeth Dias

Let’s get right to it. This week the Carter Center’s Mobilizing Faith for Women conference will ask the question, “Can religion be a force for women’s rights instead of a source of women’s oppression?” What’s your answer?

Well, religion can be, and I think there’s a slow, very slow, move around the world to give women equal rights in the eyes of God. What has been the case for many centuries is that the great religions, the major religions, have discriminated against women in a very abusive fashion and set an example for the rest of society to treat women as secondary citizens. In a marriage or in the workplace or wherever, they are discriminated against. And I think the great religions have set the example for that, by ordaining, in effect, that women are not equal to men in the eyes of God.

This has been done and still is done by the Catholic Church ever since the third century, when the Catholic Church ordained that a woman cannot be a priest for instance but a man can. A woman can be a nurse or a teacher but she can’t be a priest. This is wrong, I think. As you may or may not know, the Southern Baptist Convention back now about 13 years ago in Orlando, voted that women were inferior and had to be subservient to their husbands, and ordained that a woman could not be a deacon or a pastor or a chaplain or even a teacher in a classroom in some seminaries where men are in the classroom, boys are in the classroom. So my wife and I withdrew from the Southern Baptist Convention primarily because of that.

But I now go to a more moderate church in Plains, a small church, it’s part of the Cooperative Baptist fellowship, and we have a male and a female pastor, and we have women and have men who are deacons. My wife happens to be one of the deacons.

http://swampland.time.com/2013/06/23/jimmy-carter-a-sunday-interview/?xid=rss-topstories&

It's a good interview and his answers are directed more at religions in general than Catholicism in particular. Still, these questions are some that the Church should take quite seriously and not shunt off as "decided".

[IrishAyes]

1. Always did like Jimmy.

And I don't understand the Southern Baptists at all. They completely skip over the teaching that in Christ there IS NO male or female, slave or free, etc. We are ONE. How ludicrous for the foot to say to the hand, I'm a better part of the body than you!

[rug]

2. That was the Epistle today.

Brothers and sisters:
Through faith you are all children of God in Christ Jesus.
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.
And if you belong to Christ,
then you are Abraham’s descendant,
heirs according to the promise.

[IrishAyes]

3. I hope this is not topic spread too much

But I've always maintained that while a Jew can be Jewish w/o being a Christian - of course! - still, a Christian cannot be a Christian w/o being Jewish too, whether they realize it or not. (I don't mean by circumcision) Because we were grafted onto their tree, not vice verse.

[rug]

4. That's an orthodox view.

This guy had a good series on the topic (even if it was on EWTN).

[IrishAyes]

5. Maybe it was the blessing of long exposure

to modern Jewish culture, at least the Reformed variety, that influenced much of my thinking. The idea is certainly not original. One of the proudest moments of my life happened when a certain rabbi complemented my 'very Jewish' way of thinking. His mother was a close personal friend of mine, and she always referred to Jesus as 'a good Jewish boy'. Coming from her, high praise indeed. Despite our theological differences, we respected and loved each other very much. That is how I believe our Lord and Savior wants it to be.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

6. My mother is Jewish, so I have always had a considerable interest in Judaism

I very nearly wrote my masters thesis on Martin Buber.

I have posted previously on why the arguments against the ordination of women in the Catholic Church as given in the Vatican document Inter Insigniores are bad. (Basically, because it relies on shoddy reasoning, a dubious reading of history and the belief that women are inferior to men -- an argument which Inter Insigniores admits is no longer acceptable, but falls back on without admitting it is doing so.)

[IrishAyes]

7. Whether a person considers him/herself officially Jewish or not,

There is much of value to learn there.

This is independent of the most important stricture, to respect a person's humanity whether you respect their views or not. Opinions, as they say, are like behinds: everybody's got one, and a lot of them stink. I don't respect views I consider sociopathic, and that goes for at least 99% of the unholy garbage underpinning RedNeckLand.