A “Feminized” Catholic Church?

by Jonathan Ekene Ifeanyi

“Religion does not fear the dagger’s point; but it can vanish under corruption. Let us not grow tired of corruption: we may use a pretext, such as sport, hygiene, health resorts. It is necessary to corrupt, that our boys and girls practise nudism in dress. To avoid too much reaction, one would have to progress in a methodical manner: first, undress up to the elbow; then up to the knees; then arms and legs completely uncovered; later, the upper part of the chest, the shoulders, etc.,” says International Review on Freemasonry, 1928.

If you wish to visit a Church where this freemasonic instruction is being followed to the letter, then Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church, located in Victoria Island, Lagos, is the place to be. It is a typical example of a “Vatican 11 Catholic Church” here in Lagos State. A similar example is Church of the Assumption, located in Falomo, Ikoyi, but Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church, built just a few years ago, has simply “out-shined” the Falomo Church in immorality—in the war against Catholic beliefs and practices. Among innumerable evils existing in this church, particularly in the area of their Protestantised Mass, if you haven’t witnessed young girls serving the “mass”, with their hairs completely uncovered, then visit this Church. If you haven’t witnessed a Church where almost the entire women dress like harlots every Sunday during “mass”, with the hairs completely uncovered, then visit this Church. If you haven’t witnessed a Church where women—instead of God—are increasingly becoming the object of worship on each passing day, then visit this same Church.

Modern atheistic democracy that preaches gender equality, human right and freedom without a limit has simply confused most Catholic men and women—starting from the very clergy themselves—in these times. In 1930 Pope Pius XI condemned the previous decades' women’s emancipation movement as undermining the divinely founded obedience of the wife to her husband and a false deflection from her true and sole role as mother and homemaker. Feminism was intrinsically linked to suffrage and therefore abhorred by the church. Nearly 50 years later in the late 1960s and early 70s, the women at the helm of the second feminist movement again found the Catholic Church to be among their “staunchest foes”. But today’s tragedy is that those who have been given the mandate by heaven of opposing the errors of feminism and defending Catholic doctrine, now hiding under the priestly cassock and manifesting like angels of light—more than the feminists themselves—are the very people championing these errors in ours time with all their powers. Their quest for “women empowerment”—women lay readers, altar girls, priestess, etc—goes together with the clamour for women’s nudity inside the church.  There are even some seemingly “good” priests who are also sympathetic to feminism, and support its errors either directly or indirectly because of the powerful influence of democracy.

We start from the issue of head-covering: In fact, today if you wish to see real religious women, who need not be reminded that they must cover their hairs during worship, then the Mosque, rather than the Church, is the place to be. But why this? Is head-covering only a Muslim practice and not a Christian practice?  

Now pay attention! On the issue of head-covering, we know that canon 1262 of the 1917 code (promulgated by Pope Benedict XV) says that women must cover their hairs while in the Church. We also know that the same canon says that women should be separated from men in the Church—a pious practice which also exists now only in the Mosques, and in the Catholic Church only among the traditionalists such as the Society of Saint Pius X. However, this canon was “abrogated” by John Paul II, who promulgated a new Code of Canon Law in 1983, which is “in force” today. With regards to head-covering, this new canon—deliberately silent on the issue—is the cause of the scandal we witness today all over the Catholic world. We have seen “priests” who even believe that to tell women to cover their hair and dress modestly during worship is to marginalize them. We have seen “priests” who, following the atheistic principles of modern democracy, clamour for women leaders in the church, and even openly give the impression that the early Church of the Apostles was biased against women simply because it was against their current unchristian belief. Saint Augustine, the greatest Catholic theologian after St. Paul, tells us that the entire Scripture—from Genesis to the Revelation—was written by God Himself. He calls the sacred writings of St. Paul “letters sent to us from heaven”. Now this Bible—particularly the writings of St. Paul on this issue of women—is simply put aside as something biased and outdated by the majority of modern clergy and “theologians.” The reason? Because “the times have changed!” But ironically, these are the same people who, after the evil Council, now claim that the Bible, more than ever before, has been made accessible to all and is now well read and understood by all!

Women indeed played a large part in the ministry of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Some of His closest friends and faithful followers were women (cf. Matt. 27:55-56; Luke 23:49, 55). They were the last to leave Our Lord’s cross and the first to see Him resurrected (Luke 23:55; 24:1ff.). There were women who followed Jesus as He travelled about, and who supported Him and His disciples (Luke 8:1-3). If perchance we are inclined to think that the role of women was primarily in the kitchen, or preferably in the kitchen, we need to be reminded that Jesus commended Mary for sitting at His feet, while Martha was obsessed with fixing the meal (Luke 10:38-42).

We must also recall what women did not do to minister when they accompanied Our Lord. Our Lord did not choose women to be among the 12 apostles. He did not send women to teach, preach or heal. So far as we know He did not invite women to the Lord’s Supper in Matthew 26:20. When the great commission was given in Matthew 28:16-20, it was given to men. In brief, women did minister to Our Lord and with Our Lord, but never in a capacity of leadership or of authority such as teaching or preaching.

Likewise the Apostle Paul had high regard for women. Many of those greeted in the last chapter of Romans were women. Phoebe was especially mentioned as one who had greatly helped the church at Cenchrae (verses 1-2). Paul’s teaching on the marriage relationship greatly enhanced the position of the married woman (cf. Eph. 5:22-33). But once again we see that women were not allowed to assume positions of leadership or authority within the church. In 1 Timothy Paul wrote:

“Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments but rather by means of good works, as befits women making a claim to godliness. Let a woman quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet.” (1 Tim. 2:9-12).

And why should a woman remain quiet? Saint Paul explains:

‘But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to use authority over the man: but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed; then Eve. And Adam was not seduced; but the woman being seduced, was in the transgression. Yet she shall be saved through child-bearing; if she continues in faith, and love, and sanctification, with sobriety.’   (1 Tim. 2: 12-15).

Again, in 1 Corinthians we read:

“As in all the churches of the saints, let the women keep silent in the churches; for they are not permitted to speak, but let them subject themselves, just as the law also says. And if they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is improper for a woman to speak in church. What! Did the word of God originate with you, or are you the only ones it has reached?...If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that what I am writing to you is a command of the Lord. If anyone does not recognise this, he is not recognised.’” (1 Cor. 14:33-37).

The uniform practice of the churches, then, was that women should not take leadership in the church meeting. They were not to teach or to exercise authority, nor were they to engage in questions. They are to subject themselves, as the law teaches, says Paul. 

Now back to head-covering: St. Augustine, the great theologian, describes any failure in the veil to conceal all the hair, even a minor one, as a violation of chastity. St. Ambrose of Milan says: “Is anything so conducive to lust as with unseemly movements thus to expose in nakedness those parts of the body which either nature has hidden or custom has veiled, to sport with the looks, to turn the neck, to loosen the hair? Fitly was the next step an offense against God. For what modesty can there be? ”

We read the following from the same Apostle Paul:

“But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God. Every man praying or prophesying with his head covered, disgraceth his head. But every woman praying or prophesying with her head not covered, disgraceth her head: for it is all one as if she were shaven. For if a woman be not covered, let her be shorn. But if it be a shame to a woman to be shorn or made bald, let her cover her head. The man indeed ought not to cover his head, because he is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. For the man was not created for the woman, but the woman for the man. Therefore ought the woman to have a power over her head, because of the angels. But yet neither is the man without the woman, nor the woman without the man, in the Lord. For as the woman is of the man, so also is the man by the woman: but all things of God. You yourselves judge: doth it become a woman, to pray unto God uncovered? Doth not even nature itself teach you, that a man indeed, if he nourishes his hair, is a shame unto him? But if a woman nourishes her hair, it is a glory to her; for her head is given to her for a covering. But if any man seems to be contentious, we have no such custom, nor the church of God.” (1 Cor. 11: 3-16).   

First Corinthian (11:3-16) is not limited to a woman’s presence in the church, angels are indeed present in the sanctuary with the consecrated host, for angels bring the Eucharistic sacrifice to God’s altar in heaven (as the Eucharistic canon says: “may your angels bring this sacrifice to your altar in heaven”). The angels have a keen eye on the entire proceedings of Mass, including how the parishioners are conducting themselves. As St. Paul says in First Corinthian (4:9), “we are made…a spectacle to angels.” St. John Chrysostom, chiding the misbehaving parishioners of his day, once said, “Know you not that you are standing in company with angels? With them you chant, with them sing hymns, and do you stand laughing? Is it not wonderful that a thunderbolt is not launched…For such behaviour might well be visited with the thunderbolt.”

The angels are sensitive to the issue of head-coverings, for the covering demonstrates that one is under authority, since the angels, in the presence of God, always cover themselves, yet God is uncovered (Is 6:2).

Now on “women leaders” in the church: In First Corinthians (11: 3) we read again: “But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God.”

Here St. Paul indicates that there is a divinely ordained hierarchy, in which men are directly under Christ as their “head” while women are under the headship of man. Christ is directly under the head of God the Father in this grand scheme of things. A similar hierarchical conception was expressed by Paul earlier in the epistle, in 3:21-23, where the arrangement is of teachers under the church, which is under Christ, who is under God. There the relationship is expressed in terms of ownership. The point concerning Christ being under God is also repeated in 15:28, where it is expressed in terms of subjection. Paul mentions it here, in the context of his discussion of the relationship between men and women, so as to impress upon the Corinthians how important the “chain of being” principle of hierarchy is in spiritual matters, and in the very constitution of the universe. And perhaps he mentions the subordination of Christ in particular to suggest the teaching we have in the second chapter of the Epistle to the Philippians: “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.”

The subordination of the woman to man is no more done away with in Christ than is the subordination of men to Christ. Christ himself is functionally subordinate to God the Father, and did not “seek equality” with God. Though he is the “radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3), he also willingly fills his place in the divine economy. 

It may be that Paul had information that certain women in Corinth were falling into extravagant notions of Christian liberty (the usual problem at Corinth — “all things are lawful to me”), and had cast off their head-coverings in some kind of demonstration of sexual equality. 14:34-35 gives us some reason to think that egalitarian tendencies had created problems at Corinth. If this was the case, then Paul’s words here go straight to the root of the problem.

In verse 7 of First Corinthians 11, we read: “For indeed a man ought not to cover his head, being the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. 8 For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. 9 Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.” The Greek passage reads: 7 Ἀνὴρ μὲν γὰρ οὐκ ὀφείλει κατακαλύπτεσθαι τὴν κεφαλήν, εἰκὼν καὶ δόξα θεοῦ ὑπάρχων· ἡ γυνὴ δὲ δόξα ἀνδρός ἐστιν. 8 οὐ γάρ ἐστιν ἀνὴρ ἐκ γυναικός ἀλλὰ γυνὴ ἐξ ἀνδρός· 9 καὶ γὰρ οὐκ ἐκτίσθη ἀνὴρ διὰ τὴν γυναῖκα, ἀλλὰ γυνὴ διὰ τὸν ἄνδρα. 

Here Paul begins a new argument in which the head-covering is explained as a symbol. He begins by explaining that man and woman are themselves like symbols, pointing to the purposes for which they were created. When he says that man is the “image” (εἰκὼν) of God he is referring to Genesis 1:26-7, where it says, “Let us make man (Heb. adam) in our image, after our likeness.” When he adds “and glory” (δόξα) he is probably using it in the sense of “honour, majesty,” in contrast with the “dishonour” mentioned in verse 4. The majesty of God belongs to men according to the mandate, “Let them have dominion,” and for a man this is part of what it means to be the image of God. The phrase “image and glory” in Greek is “εἰκὼν καὶ δόξα”. It is probably best understood as a hendiadys, meaning “image of the majesty” (or perhaps “majestic image”). Man was created to symbolize God’s dominion in the earth. But the woman was not created for that iconic purpose, she was created for man. It should be noticed here that Paul does not say that woman is the εἰκὼν καὶ δόξα “image-glory” of man, but only the δόξα “glory” of man. The omission of the qualifying word εἰκὼν is not accidental — the implication is that her “glory” is not iconic or imitative. She is not merely a lesser man, an inferior second-hand copy of the image of God, as those who accuse us of “male chauvinism” rashly suppose. While she remains substantially human like man himself, she symbolizes something altogether different, and this will have consequences for the way in which she ought to worship God.

We should notice at this point that Paul rejects the idea that God has ordained a “unisex” spirituality for Christians. God, who created us male and female, has ordained a masculine spirituality and a feminine spirituality. The influence of the Holy Spirit does not lead us to androgyny, but to a sanctified masculinity for men and a sanctified femininity for women. This is contrary to certain pagan ideas which were becoming popular in places like Corinth in ancient times. Under the gnostic ideologies that arose from Middle Platonism in the first century, the human soul was essentially a spark of the cosmic Reason or mind of God, and the ideal and glorified human soul, liberated from the accidents of the flesh, was androgynous or sexless. Women in their spiritual exercises were supposed to become more like men, and men more like women. This idea is plainly expressed in various pseudo-Christian writings of the gnostic sects in the first three centuries of the Church, and there is good reason to suppose that it was present already in the first generation of the Corinthian congregation. The first-century gnostics, like the “inner light” Quakers and the Transcedentalists of the nineteenth century, maintained that there is “no sex in the soul.” But Paul does not share that opinion.

For Paul, the outstanding fact of woman’s existence is her subordinate position, or rather her subordinate nature, as revealed in the story of creation. It is not merely a matter of position, determined by custom, or an accident of the flesh. A woman is womanly by nature, and by God’s design. She is ontologically subordinate to man because she was fashioned for man. In another epistle he says that in this subordination she symbolizes the Church under submission to the authority of God. A well-ordered marriage is a holy mystery that “refers to Christ and to the Church” (Ephesians 5:32). This is the inherent symbolism of man and woman, intended by God from the beginning. Sexual differentiation and identity is not a tragic result of the Fall, to be reversed or transcended by the soul’s escape from the body of flesh (as the gnostics taught), but a consequence of the Creator’s good design.

We have witnessed how, in his two years at the head of the sprawling worldwide Church, Jorge Bergoglio has, among innumerable errors and heresies, consciously—and assiduously—worked towards a complete “Feminized” Catholic Church. Feminism is Atheistic Communism in liquid form. Massively championed by atheistic democracy, it has seeped into every crack and crevice of our families, our culture, our schools, and our churches. The papacy was to be infiltrated by Communists and Freemasons, as warned by Our Lady of Fatima, and it is clear that now the warning has been fulfilled. But something that perhaps no one expected: a homosexual "Pope" posing as the leader of the Catholic Church to further attack and attempt to destroy her from within. In March this year (2015) the Vatican formally hosted one of Britain’s most virulently pro-abortion and pro-homosexual writers, as well as the head of an American organization promoting female ordination, at an officially sanctioned event inside Vatican City walls. Organizers spoke to Vatican Radio as well as the secular press, praising the new atmosphere within the Church’s leadership that made the conference possible. The presence of the outside-organized event held inside the Vatican is being forthrightly hailed by organizers and the secular media as feminist victory over the traditional stance of the Church. Among the organizers and speakers were Deborah Rose-Milavec, one of the US’s most prominent agitators for female ordination, and Tina Beattie, a British feminist academic notorious for her advocacy for abortion, homosexual relations, and “gay marriage,” and who once compared the Catholic Mass to homosexual sex.

Even Moscow has vehemently condemned this. The Patriarch of Moscow and All Russians, Kirill, warns against the “danger” of feminism, condemning the existence of a propaganda which encourages women to take on roles that jeopardise their household and family duties. “I believe that this phenomenon, feminism as it is called, is very dangerous,” Kirill said in a speech to an organisation of Ukrainian Orthodox women, the content of which is published on the official website of the Russian Orthodox Church. “Feminist organisations proclaim a pseudo-freedom for women, which must be manifested outside of marriage and the family,” Kirill said, adding that “it is the man's job to take care of things outside the home; he must work and earn, while the woman's place is inside the home, looking after the family.” “If this incredibly important role the woman has is broken, then everything else will collapse along with it: family and, in a broader sense, the country,” he added.

Hopefully, however, this Satanic plan has never been unnoticed by an insignificant number of the faithful and church leaders themselves. It has particularly roiled many conservatives and traditionalists. US Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, the former top canon lawyer at the Vatican, now demoted by Bergoglio himself, is a perfect example of a Church leader who seems to understand a little about the evil mission of the man called Jorge Mario Bergoglio.  Cardinal Raymond Burke has warned that Bergoglio’s views had “done a lot of harm” at a so-called synod on family life held in October, 2014. Burke went even further in a website interview when he spoke out, in no uncertain terms, against what he said was the “radical feminism which has assaulted the Church and society since the 1960s”, and which “has left men very marginalized.”

The “heroic nature of manhood” has been lost, the former archbishop of St. Louis told the online site The New Emangelization, a magazine whose pun decries what it terms the “man-crisis” in the Catholic Church today.

“Manly character” and “chivalry” have been obscured since the church has had “to constantly address women’s issues at the expense of addressing critical issues important to men,” Burke said.

“Apart from the priest, the sanctuary has become full of women,” Burke continued. “The activities in the parish and even the liturgy have been influenced by women and have become so feminine in many places that men do not want to get involved.”

Beyond the current controversy, his words illustrate the wide gulf between Jorge Bergoglio and many American bishops, unlike what we witness in Nigeria among the wolves who masquerade as Catholic Bishops and Cardinals.

The Cardinal, too, suggested that the child sexual abuse scandals that shattered dioceses around the United States since the past 20 years, came as a result of “feminized men” entering the priesthood, rather than “manly and confident” men.