A Women's Strike For Equality In The Church Is A Great Idea But It Will Be Thwarted By The Big Money

I WAS GOING to write in response to Michael Sean Winter's second and, I'm sad to say, as bad column claiming to know what Democrats got wrong in their narrow loss earlier this month but that will have to wait.  

Instead I'll point to this much better idea from today's National Catholic Reporter, Women calling for Women to hold a strike against the Catholic hierarchy during Lent next year:

What would the Catholic Church do without women? If some activists have their way, we're about to find out.

A new project is urging women to strike by withholding time, labor and financial resources from the church during Lent, which begins March 5. The planned action is in response to the Vatican's synod on synodality, which concluded in October without action on women's leadership, including the opening of ordination to the diaconate or priesthood.

"The strike is for Catholics who are looking for a way to express their disappointment, frustration or anger at an institution that refuses to recognize the equal dignity of half of its members," said Kate McElwee, executive director of the Women's Ordination Conference, which is organizing the strike.

The project, called "Catholic Women Strike: Global Witness for Equality," calls on women to "make your presence in the church known by your absence." It was launched earlier this month.

It would be a good idea to ask men who support Women to do the same.  They will need it because I'm sure that like the aristocrats who sullied their pure, clean hands to break the General Strike in Britain, there will be many a quisling Woman who will do that, too.   The billionaire-millinaire catho-fascists will do their best to thwart this.

I am not an active Catholic, though I'm still considered one in good standing, one interested enough so I followed the Synod process only to be one of those who, at the end of it, was left to wonder is that all there is to it?   I acknowledge it was a radical step for Pope Francis to take to call it but I'm left disappointed by its results.  It was no Vatican II, it's more like Paul VI's timid post-Council response to the reforms that so many Catholic lay people and even many members of the religious and clergy desperately needed.   I think what should have been the high point of Francis's generally great papacy has been a huge let-down leaving Women, especially, but Catholics in general demoralized and discouraged.   It's clear that Francis will not do anything to fix one of the greatest crises in the Church, the reform and expansion of the priesthood either through letting married men be ordained or ordaining Women.   He will not even reopen the absolutely documented office of deacon to Women, something that is older than the office named "Pope," 

If this doesn't work, I'd suggest that Women should seriously consider giving their support to the Roman Catholic Women Priests and the Intentional Eucharistic Community movement instead of going back to the institutional church.   Why support them when they won't listen and they never, ever will practice the justice they preach.