Oh, golly! Now I'll have time to bake a pie!

You may have heard that yesterday was International Women’s Day.  So what did the Vatican’s newspaper do to honor the occasion? Why, demand you little ladies give thanks to the washing machine of course.

Sigh.

Yes, that’s right.  Forget the pill or women’s liberation. The Osservatore Romano, has decided us vessels of sin should be most thankful we save an extra few hours a week washing our man’s skivvies:

….the humble domestic appliance had done more for the women’s liberation movement than the contraceptive pill or working outside the home.

Look, there’s no doubt I love a good washing machine as much as the next gal.  And sure, it has marginally decreased the house-chore workload for modern women.  But Jesus H. Christ (pardon my French, Pope), this is pretty insulting and backwards.  First, how about we all, men and women, be thankful for the washing machine.  Last I checked, plenty of dudes did laundry too. Second, while I suppose its somewhat comforting that in this day and age of rapid change the Church is holding tight to its pipe dream of keeping women barefoot and pregnant, could the Church look more absurdly out of touch with reality of women’s day-to-day lives?

All kidding aside, stories like this and the excommunication of the mother and doctors who performed an abortion on a 9 year old girl who was raped by her stepfather make me angrier and angrier each day.  I suppose I should just be thankful that most Catholics I know are able carry on their day-to-day lives as they see fit regardless of the Church’s stance on the Pill, etc. but women  in many countries (see Brazil) are not so lucky.  I pose the question to our readers: what can we do?

Sorry to kick off the week as Debbie Downer.

Tags: Feminism, religion, the pill

This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 9:18 am and is filed under Et alia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.