Sunday, July 27, 2008 Sun.Star Essay: Women in issues By Erma M. Cuizon
THE world never gets enough of problems and sticky issues (not to mention local tribulations). And any one situation looks like a part of what you might call the process of the world growing up, or is it of the world deteriorating fast?
What used to be problems before aren’t so now, depending on outlook, and what were never considered problems then are problems now.
In all the blogs you bump into while surfing in the net space are expressions of why we should or shouldn’t. And there are forums everywhere in the Internet, agree or disagree?
And so the issues are. …
More questions---should or shouldn’t there be gay marriages?
Should or shouldn’t American soldiers withdraw from Iraq?
I will withdraw the troops fast enough, if I get chosen as president, says a politician.
But Bush insists, “I will not agree to any timetable withdrawal.” Then he’s supposed to have said, “But I will agree to a ‘time horizon’ withdrawal.”
And a blogger, referring to Bush, says, “What a bonafide jackass!”
Now the troop withdrawal issue is big, affecting the rest of the world. It will stay in the limelight until after a new American president will try to resolve it.
Should we ban tobacco or shouldn’t we be given the right to kill ourselves?
In England, the Archbishop of Canterbury shook Western Europe when he said that in the future, the Islamic laws would be incorporated in the United Kingdom. This look into the future has been called a “prediction.” But it has angered other Anglicans.
Perhaps for love of neighbors, the head of the Church of England was thinking of Britain’s 1.8 million Muslims who probably feel alienated in their own birth place. But he said to the objectors that he didn’t mean acceptance of certain laws, such as the treatment of women.
But the woman issue goes back in time.
Long ago, the contention was whether the Muslim woman should continue to wear the veil or not, spurred on and pushed by talks of freedom for women. Even if it isn’t about implications of lack of freedom, take the simple act of being forced to wear the veil. Someone who had just come in from Oman in a house job talked of the discomfort of wearing a veil on a dry, sizzling summer day. Do this beyond 24 hours, every day in your life, and know how it feels.
But there’s a more interesting woman issue in focus. The Church of England is shocking conservatives by allowing the possibility of women becoming bishops. As it is, there have been women ordained as priests since 1994.
The news reverberated and shocked not only Anglican “traditionalists” but the Catholics.
The story in England was one of the earliest woman issues---should a wife be easily disposed of? Some hundreds of years ago, the English king wanted to marry another woman, Anne Boleyn. Henry VIII asked the Pope for permission to divorce Catherine of Aragon, the king’s first of six wives. When the Vatican refused to give in to Henry’s caprice, England under the king put up an independent church, the Church of England.
And there was that quarrel---the Catholics versus the Anglicans. But hundreds of years later, there has been reconciliation between the Holy See and the Anglican Communion.
Well, perhaps, until not so far from now. It’s said the Vatican “regrets” the Church of England’s allowing women to become bishops. This is because it would be like teaching outside the Christian belief. Objectors refer to Christ’s choice of the disciples---all men.
But an objection to this objection would also cite the fact that Christ descended into the human world to spread the Word. In doing so, it was best for him to move within the culture and the era he chose. Imagine a woman bishop in King Herod’s time; would anyone listen to the Word from her!
In our time, politics comes into the scene. The objectors to women bishops in the Church of England were given the idea of creating “super bishops,” perhaps for a promise of continuing power in place. I imagine the super bishop position would never be made available to a woman, not even if she were ordained a bishop.
