Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Irony alert: L'Osservatore Romano

After the new pope sent a message to American nuns on Monday, saying "the pogrom is still on," (okay, I'm paraphrasing a bit here), I went to L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's newspaper, to see if I could find a statement about the renewal of the church's attack on American nuns.

Since the paper is updated on a weekly basis, I wasn't surprised when I found nothing on this topic. However, I was shocked to see an article that is not just supportive of women, but wildly supportive of women. It speaks about the need for women to enter politics en masse because men have botched everything up. (And of course, the Vatican comes to mind as an example of men screwing everything up.)

You don't expect to see a pro-woman article at L'Osservatore Romano. You just don't.  Here's a link in case you'd like to read it. It's bizarre that this article -- which is resoundingly feminist in nature -- appeared on the Vatican's news site. I mean, really. They do everything they can to knock women and prevent them from participating in the church as full partners -- and then they post this at exactly the same moment that the pope says "Game on" to the American nuns?!

But I think that's what it is: a game. It's like when the Republicans trot out a braindead African-American guy and say, "See? We're not racists." Gotta be. This is psy-ops. Either that, or we're about to see a huge change in the church. And that seems extremely unlikely.