Why Do Many Women Want to be Like Men?

I am going to stir up some trouble, I suppose, in posting on this topic. What I don’t understand well is why so many women want to be like men in the Church, and why so many men don’t want to be like women in the Church.

I have heard it said that comparatively, we don’t have so much a priest shortage as we do a “mother shortage.” By this is meant that the strength of the Church lay in the hands of the holy women in years past, and too many men have failed to emulate the holy women in their families and in their parishes.  It was from women that the Gospel was transmitted to children, to the sick in the hospitals, to the dying. Nowadays, the role of motherhood is so diminished by society that women seek to be like men, whom they perceive as holding the power, and men get lost in their efforts to de-masculinize themselves without assimilating the strength of women.

At least, that is what is seems to me.

One problem with that is women have taken on the vices we men have never overcome, and we men have never assumed the virtues of women. Both sexes suffer.

If the definition of power is the  ability to create change, then I think it is a fair statement that women have demonstrated great power within the Church, for they have change hearts, souls, and minds of countless individuals throughout the generations.

The recognition of difference, and mutual respect of those differences, is not cause for dissension or competition; rather for a cooperation in the divine plan of God for all of humankind. Power comes in many forms. Even Popes bow down to the power of mothers and other holy women.

Don’t take my word for it; read the writings of Pope John Paul I to see it described. It is unmistakable in the writings and spirituality of Pope John Paul II.