I am woman

 

In 1971, Heled Reddy released a song titled “I am woman”. The first line of the song is, “I am woman, hear me roar.

Let’s travel back in time more than 50 years, and listen to it again:

Helen Reddy - I Am Woman (1971) - YouTube

There’s an old saying that describes the place of women in our society:

“When mama’s not happy, nobody’s happy.” That phrase, and Helen Reddy’s song, are reminders that there is a price to be for misogyny.

Men as diverse as Harvey Weinstein, Roger Ailes, Bill Cosby, Bill O’Reilly and Donald Trump have discovered that there is a steep price to pay for not respecting the female members of our society.

Weinstein was sentence to 23 years in prison in 2020 after losing a case in New York, and three years later¸ he was sentenced to an ADDITIONAL 16 years in prison in Los Angeles for additional sexual improprieties.

Bill Cosby served time in prison, and was forced to pay damages to numerous victims of sexual assault.

At one point, “The O’Reilly Factor” was the highest rated show on cable television for 16 years. Ultimately, the sexual allegations against him force FOX to pay $13 million to five women who he had sexually abused. That same year (2017) his contract with FOX was terminated.

Although the “Access Hollywood” tape did not prevent Donald Trump from become president, his sexual misconduct has become costly for him. He was recently indicted by a New York jury for his connection with Storm Daniels, and he recently was charged $5 million for a defamation suit tiled by E. Jean Carroll.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_Access_Hollywood_tape

In 2022, 70% of the women in America were registered to vote, compared to 68.2% of the women. If you were a member of a political party, you’d be wise to keep all those women happy, but the GOP has done exactly the opposite.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/999930/share-people-registered-vote-gender/

The overturning of Roe v. Wade, long a goal of the Republican party, has had unintended consequences. Like the dog who finally caught the car, they aren’t sure what to do next.

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/fact-sheet/public-opinion-on-abortion/

Majorities of both men and women express support for legal abortion, though women are somewhat more likely than men to hold this view (63% vs. 58%). Since the Dobbs decision, half of the 50 states have either banned abortions or rightened restrictions on the procedure. As a result, the 2022 midterms were a disaster for the Republican Party – and the 2024 elections won’t be pretty either.

 https://www.politifact.com/article/2023/jun/21/the-abortion-laws-passed-by-states-since-the-dobbs/

It’s time that we move past politics into other aspects of American life.

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has lost over a million members in the past three years, with back-to-back years of the COVID-19 pandemic following a decade-plus of decline.

https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2022/may/southern-baptist-membership-decline-covid-pandemic-baptisms.html

Pastor Rick Warren published a few thoughts on this topic in The Washington Post this morning:

“Amid an unprecedented decline within the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the nation’s largest Protestant denomination has elected to expel several churches for their interpretations of Scripture. That action has fueled a larger conversation about the future of the denomination to which I have belonged my entire life.

 I was not surprised by the vote of the SBC to expel Saddleback Church, the congregation my wife, Kay, and I founded 43 years ago, for giving three longtime female staff members “pastor of” titles. There are now perhaps nearly 2,000 other SBC churches around the United States worried they will be next.

The SBC executive committee’s unprecedented decision has opened a Pandora’s box of unintended consequences that will fundamentally destroy several tenets of the Baptist faith upon which the Convention was founded.

 The SBC has been in decline since the Baptist Faith and Message confession was revised in 2000 to add a prohibition against female pastors. Then in 2015, just eight years ago, an amendment to the SBC constitution weaponized that confession, turning it into an enforceable creed.

 For 400 years, Baptists have been anti-creed — but not anymore. Sadly, I think the decline in the SBC’s size and influence will continue as the Convention suffers one self-inflicted wound after another. These problems have weakened the identity, structure, mission and strategies for cooperation that once made the SBC a powerful force for the kingdom of God and for good in our society.”

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/06/22/rick-warren-southern-baptists-female-pastors/

Membership in Catholic churches has also declined.

While fewer than half of American adults responding to a recent poll said they are members of a church, synagogue or mosque, the findings do not necessarily mean that people have lost faith in God, a pair of church observers said.

Church membership in 2020 dropped to 47% of the more than 6,100 respondents to a Gallup Poll. It is the first time since the polling firm started measuring church membership in 1937 that a minority of adults said they belonged to a formal religious institution.

Back then, in the midst of the Great Depression, 73% of adults said they belonged to a church. Over the next six decades, membership levels remained steady at about 70% before a measured decline began

The poll's findings show that the number of Catholics belonging to a parish dropped from 76% in 2000 to 58% in 2020. Among Protestants, the membership decline in the same period was smaller — from 73% to 64%.

Membership in the Catholic church has declined because of three factors:

1)    Our society as a while has become less religious, and fully 15% of our population have no church affiliation

2)   Sexual abuse claims against current and former members of the priesthood have cost the Catholic church more than $4 billion in America.

3)   The majority of the Catholics in this country to not agree with the church’s positions on abortion and birth control.

 https://www.ncronline.org/culture/poll-church-membership-continues-decline-21st-century

Over 80 million people today identify themselves as Catholics in the United States, an increase of over 30 million since 1965.

With more Catholics, there could be an assumption that the United States is overflowing with men trying to become priests.

But that is far from the truth. Instead, the number of Catholic priests in the United States has seen a drastic decline since 1965, from nearly 60,000 to 37,500 in 2015.

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-priest-shortage.html

The solution is obvious – but it won’t happen.

Up until about the 4^th century, women served as priests in the Catholic Church, but after that, only men could be priests (unless you count Pope Joan in the 9^th century).

Believe it or not, there ARE female priests today, and the link below goes into more details. One of our friends from A.C.C., Connie Walsh, started to prepare to be a priest. However, the administrative duties of the priesthood did not appeal to her, so she became a deacon instead.

The link below provides more information about female priests:

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2021/02/pink-smoke-over-vatican.html

As a society, we need to be more mindful of the role that women have in our society. If you are in a relationship with a special woman in your life, treat her right – and don’t be afraid to send flowers.