Eve & Adam both partake. She is not only responsible for HER choice, but HIS also.
Of all the religions I have studied to date, only Wiccanism & Satanism honor women.
“When the Dalai Lama was asked whether that honor could be held by a woman, he laughed.
“If a female Dalai Lama comes, she should be more attractive,” he had told foreign correspondent Rajini Vaidyanathan, who had asked the Dalai Lama to clarify similar comments he’d made in a past interview with the BBC, when he said that a female Dalai Lama would have to be ‘very, very attractive.’ Otherwise, he added, there would be ‘not much use.’ The Dalai Lama first made similar comments in 2015, which received wide backlash at the time.”
SHE must be attractive, but he does not need to be. Got it. Good to know the standards are the same for both genders.
Exactly. Eve gets blamed for human damnation and Adam just... follows along like a confused intern and somehow walks away with a lighter sentence. Make it make sense.
You’re absolutely right... most mainstream religions have spent millennia using women’s bodies as battlegrounds for morality, and then calling it holiness. And don’t even get me started on the Dalai Lama comment. Imagine being a literal spiritual icon and still thinking women need to be “hot” to qualify. Enlightenment, but make it misogynistic.
Honestly, it says everything that the only two belief systems you’ve found that honour women are the ones routinely labelled heretical or evil by the rest. Maybe the devil was just the first feminist.
I’m just here to leave my religious dogma spam 👏🏼🔥
I’m not catholic, I’m Protestant, so I’m not as close to Catholic Church history as general early church history.
I’m going to make a RADICAL claim here from a religious persons perspective: Anyone who abuses others should be brought to justice to the full extent of the law and no organization (like a church) should “protect” an abuser from repercussions of their actions — that puts others in harms way.
A separate comment: whenever I see a disparity between what Jesus taught and what someone is living or professing, it reminds me of an analogy. (I know this isn’t your argument in this piece, but many people see hypocrisy in the church = church hurt = blame God.) If I hear a bad musician attempt to play Mozart, if I leave the room thinking “wow, Mozart sucks!” I’ve missed the point. Mozart is the standard, and the musician did a poor job. When people sin and say they’re holy, we have a North Star to look at to see: hey, is this legit good behavior or are they blowing smoke? And it turns out people are broken, and that brokenness often hurts others. One more time I’ll say: abuse should = legal action immediately. The Catholic Church has done immeasurable hurt with the abuse they’ve covered for so long. I hope and pray they’re prosecuted.
Really appreciate your tone here — thoughtful, honest, and not defensive, which is rare when religion’s involved.
Totally agree that saying abusers should face legal consequences shouldn’t feel radical, but when you look at decades of cover-ups across dioceses, it still weirdly is. The system wasn’t built to protect the vulnerable. It was built to protect itself.
I get the Mozart analogy too. But if every orchestra keeps butchering the same piece for centuries and still insists it’s “divinely inspired,” at what point do we stop blaming the musicians and start asking who’s running the conservatory?
This isn’t just people falling short. It’s institutions weaponising that star to blind everyone else. I think that's the difference.
It’s funny… your comment about asking about religious leaders… strikes very similar to what Jesus himself said in Matthew 7:15 Beware of false teachers/wolves in sheep’s clothing. When Jesus was in a town square and a woman was discovered as an adulterer, the religious leaders brought her to Jesus and demanded that he sanction her stoning and death. When he said “he who is without sin cast the first stone” he was condemning the religious leaders and letting the woman go. The story ends with him tending to the woman and telling her to go and sin no more.
The whole story of the Bible is we are sinful and the law is impossible to upkeep, no one can do it — not even one (the Bible says that itself). Jesus says “I am the way the truth and the life, there’s only one way to the Father and that’s through me.” That message, the ethos of the gospel, how can we see that and come away with “it supports the subjugation and abuse of vulnerable people?” The fact is Jesus explicitly says to protect the vulnerable.
We cannot hold people to the same standard of perfect as God. When we see suffering and evil and wrongdoing, any thinking person SHOULD come away with questions like “if there is a god, why is there evil in the world? Does that mean he doesn’t care, supports evil, or isn’t powerful enough to stop it?” But when we put the full weight of responsibility of perfection on people to uphold Holiness… that’s what the old law did, that’s what the old religious teachers did who Jesus condemned… he came to give us life and to fulfill that law because we’re unable to.
So many great things here!! So many little 'jabs-it's great. So many of these points you could write their own piece on!! Thank you for making this for us!
This is so deliciously hilariously written. And well researched. I feel like Fleabag and hot priest should have a special episode where they read this post and talk about it.
This is my first impression of you and I am wholly impressed. Your writing is so clever and smooth, first. Second, I felt very validated reading this having grown up in the Catholic Church harbouring my own suspicions. Not only this, but it was a place that made me feel very wrong about my identity before I even fully knew what my identity was. So thank you. Will be checking out those sources and the rest of your work.
I'm not only Catholic, I'm wildly, unapologetically Catholic. That said, I read with an open mind. It goes without saying that I disagree with you on many points but I'm not here to argue. There are points we agree on, too. Anyone who abuses another person for any reason must be punished, full stop. There is still a ton of corruption in my church though I will continually state there are many, many good priests who love and guide and minister to people in need every day. I also have to point out that the most respected, admired, and venerated woman in history is Mary, not only because she was Jesus' mom, but because she stood up, against all odds, and said yes.
Really appreciate your tone. You clearly care, and I respect anyone who can hold devotion and still admit there’s corruption. I don’t write to mock belief. I write to point at contradiction. Because that's the real heart of my piece. The Catholic Church is full of them. It preaches celibacy while closeting half its hierarchy. It talks about protecting the innocent while covering up systemic abuse (see Ferns Report, Ryan Report, Spotlight, Royal Commission — this isn’t fringe conspiracy, it’s public record). And it calls itself pro-woman while excluding women from sacramental leadership entirely.
On Mary — she’s held up as the most “respected” woman in Church history, but that respect is conditional. Her worth is tied to virginity, obedience, and silence. She says “yes” and becomes holy. But any woman who says “no,” who leads, questions, or takes authority? Historically punished, excommunicated, or erased. That isn’t empowerment. That’s a template for submission.
Even the women in scripture who did lead get rewritten. Junia is literally called an apostle in Romans 16:7, but was mistranslated as “Junias” (a male name) for centuries to erase her role. Phoebe is named as a deacon in Romans 16:1. Prisca (Acts 18) taught theology alongside her husband. Mary Magdalene was the first witness to the resurrection and called “apostle to the apostles” in early tradition — but was reduced to a repentant sex worker in later doctrine with no scriptural basis. That edit wasn’t accidental. It was institutional.
And modern examples? Catholic women today still cannot be priests, bishops, or deacons. In 2012, the Vatican launched an investigation into the LCWR (a group of U.S. nuns) for “radical feminism” which meant speaking about women’s ordination and reproductive justice. These are women running hospitals, schools, crisis centres. But when they ask for power in the Church? Suddenly they’re a problem.
So yes, Mary said yes. But the Church has spent two millennia punishing women who speak in full sentences.
Thanks again for engaging with sincerity. This is what makes space for real reckoning.
Of course, you're right about a lot of this. The misogyny of the early church is unmistakable. (Yes, I know it continues in many, many places.) I think the treatment of Mary Magdalen, which is only now being corrected, is preposterous. This is true of other significant women in the Bible and in church history. This is one of the reasons I started writing my book that I'm releasing here. The idea that most of the world believes Mary was suspected of adultery is stupid and cruel. The truth is so much more beautiful.
When I subscribed to your stack, I knew we disagreed on many topics but I still really like the way you write. As someone I know recently said, "You ain't getting rid of me that easily."
I really appreciate this response. Honestly, it’s rare to have someone stay in the room, acknowledge historical harm, and not instantly get defensive.
I want to say too, I don’t have an issue with faith. Truly. Faith can be powerful, comforting, transformative. What I do have an issue with is when institutions use faith to rewrite the narrative - to justify harm, exclude voices, and retroactively call it holy. That’s the tension I keep coming back to. It’s not belief I’m critiquing. It’s the way belief has been repackaged into a hierarchy that protects itself.
And with women? That rewriting is everywhere. Mary Magdalene wasn’t the only one rebranded to serve a patriarchal script. Look at: Junia, Phoebe, Prisca, Deborah, Huldah, Miriam, the women at the well in the Gospel of John, Lydia, etc. (I was Catholic growing up so I know it all well). These aren’t footnotes. These are foundational figures. But how many pulpits teach them as such?
So yes, it’s good that Mary Magdalene’s story is being reclaimed. But it’s not enough. It’s not just about correcting the footnotes. It’s about questioning why the edits happened in the first place, and who they served.
And again, I really do appreciate that you’re still here, still engaging. I don’t expect everyone to agree with everything I write. I just hope people notice where the silence is, and who put it there.
this was fucking sensational. you had me laughing out loud from the first paragraph. you also—side note—sound like a mad bitch (i'm australian; that's a compliment) and i back a woman with a brain who can sprinkle this much sass and humour into complex subjects and still come across (to me) as respectful in the undertones (respectful-adjacent?)
Eve & Adam both partake. She is not only responsible for HER choice, but HIS also.
Of all the religions I have studied to date, only Wiccanism & Satanism honor women.
“When the Dalai Lama was asked whether that honor could be held by a woman, he laughed.
“If a female Dalai Lama comes, she should be more attractive,” he had told foreign correspondent Rajini Vaidyanathan, who had asked the Dalai Lama to clarify similar comments he’d made in a past interview with the BBC, when he said that a female Dalai Lama would have to be ‘very, very attractive.’ Otherwise, he added, there would be ‘not much use.’ The Dalai Lama first made similar comments in 2015, which received wide backlash at the time.”
SHE must be attractive, but he does not need to be. Got it. Good to know the standards are the same for both genders.
https://www.thecut.com/2019/07/dalai-lama-says-female-successor-should-be-attractive.html
Exactly. Eve gets blamed for human damnation and Adam just... follows along like a confused intern and somehow walks away with a lighter sentence. Make it make sense.
You’re absolutely right... most mainstream religions have spent millennia using women’s bodies as battlegrounds for morality, and then calling it holiness. And don’t even get me started on the Dalai Lama comment. Imagine being a literal spiritual icon and still thinking women need to be “hot” to qualify. Enlightenment, but make it misogynistic.
Honestly, it says everything that the only two belief systems you’ve found that honour women are the ones routinely labelled heretical or evil by the rest. Maybe the devil was just the first feminist.
Appreciate you dropping this. Truth served.
Holy shit! 'Maybe the devil was the first feminist.' What a thought-provoking line!
I’m just here to leave my religious dogma spam 👏🏼🔥
I’m not catholic, I’m Protestant, so I’m not as close to Catholic Church history as general early church history.
I’m going to make a RADICAL claim here from a religious persons perspective: Anyone who abuses others should be brought to justice to the full extent of the law and no organization (like a church) should “protect” an abuser from repercussions of their actions — that puts others in harms way.
A separate comment: whenever I see a disparity between what Jesus taught and what someone is living or professing, it reminds me of an analogy. (I know this isn’t your argument in this piece, but many people see hypocrisy in the church = church hurt = blame God.) If I hear a bad musician attempt to play Mozart, if I leave the room thinking “wow, Mozart sucks!” I’ve missed the point. Mozart is the standard, and the musician did a poor job. When people sin and say they’re holy, we have a North Star to look at to see: hey, is this legit good behavior or are they blowing smoke? And it turns out people are broken, and that brokenness often hurts others. One more time I’ll say: abuse should = legal action immediately. The Catholic Church has done immeasurable hurt with the abuse they’ve covered for so long. I hope and pray they’re prosecuted.
Really appreciate your tone here — thoughtful, honest, and not defensive, which is rare when religion’s involved.
Totally agree that saying abusers should face legal consequences shouldn’t feel radical, but when you look at decades of cover-ups across dioceses, it still weirdly is. The system wasn’t built to protect the vulnerable. It was built to protect itself.
I get the Mozart analogy too. But if every orchestra keeps butchering the same piece for centuries and still insists it’s “divinely inspired,” at what point do we stop blaming the musicians and start asking who’s running the conservatory?
This isn’t just people falling short. It’s institutions weaponising that star to blind everyone else. I think that's the difference.
It’s funny… your comment about asking about religious leaders… strikes very similar to what Jesus himself said in Matthew 7:15 Beware of false teachers/wolves in sheep’s clothing. When Jesus was in a town square and a woman was discovered as an adulterer, the religious leaders brought her to Jesus and demanded that he sanction her stoning and death. When he said “he who is without sin cast the first stone” he was condemning the religious leaders and letting the woman go. The story ends with him tending to the woman and telling her to go and sin no more.
The whole story of the Bible is we are sinful and the law is impossible to upkeep, no one can do it — not even one (the Bible says that itself). Jesus says “I am the way the truth and the life, there’s only one way to the Father and that’s through me.” That message, the ethos of the gospel, how can we see that and come away with “it supports the subjugation and abuse of vulnerable people?” The fact is Jesus explicitly says to protect the vulnerable.
We cannot hold people to the same standard of perfect as God. When we see suffering and evil and wrongdoing, any thinking person SHOULD come away with questions like “if there is a god, why is there evil in the world? Does that mean he doesn’t care, supports evil, or isn’t powerful enough to stop it?” But when we put the full weight of responsibility of perfection on people to uphold Holiness… that’s what the old law did, that’s what the old religious teachers did who Jesus condemned… he came to give us life and to fulfill that law because we’re unable to.
Idk, just one man’s perspective 😊
So many great things here!! So many little 'jabs-it's great. So many of these points you could write their own piece on!! Thank you for making this for us!
Brilliant
Incredible. Thank you
I really enjoyed this read, interesting and whitty. Well done!
Entertaining, fascinating, shocking, infuriating. This is the right use of provocative language!
Such an important hypocrisy to highlight! Thank you for including further reading recommendations.
This is so deliciously hilariously written. And well researched. I feel like Fleabag and hot priest should have a special episode where they read this post and talk about it.
This is my first impression of you and I am wholly impressed. Your writing is so clever and smooth, first. Second, I felt very validated reading this having grown up in the Catholic Church harbouring my own suspicions. Not only this, but it was a place that made me feel very wrong about my identity before I even fully knew what my identity was. So thank you. Will be checking out those sources and the rest of your work.
I'm not only Catholic, I'm wildly, unapologetically Catholic. That said, I read with an open mind. It goes without saying that I disagree with you on many points but I'm not here to argue. There are points we agree on, too. Anyone who abuses another person for any reason must be punished, full stop. There is still a ton of corruption in my church though I will continually state there are many, many good priests who love and guide and minister to people in need every day. I also have to point out that the most respected, admired, and venerated woman in history is Mary, not only because she was Jesus' mom, but because she stood up, against all odds, and said yes.
Really appreciate your tone. You clearly care, and I respect anyone who can hold devotion and still admit there’s corruption. I don’t write to mock belief. I write to point at contradiction. Because that's the real heart of my piece. The Catholic Church is full of them. It preaches celibacy while closeting half its hierarchy. It talks about protecting the innocent while covering up systemic abuse (see Ferns Report, Ryan Report, Spotlight, Royal Commission — this isn’t fringe conspiracy, it’s public record). And it calls itself pro-woman while excluding women from sacramental leadership entirely.
On Mary — she’s held up as the most “respected” woman in Church history, but that respect is conditional. Her worth is tied to virginity, obedience, and silence. She says “yes” and becomes holy. But any woman who says “no,” who leads, questions, or takes authority? Historically punished, excommunicated, or erased. That isn’t empowerment. That’s a template for submission.
Even the women in scripture who did lead get rewritten. Junia is literally called an apostle in Romans 16:7, but was mistranslated as “Junias” (a male name) for centuries to erase her role. Phoebe is named as a deacon in Romans 16:1. Prisca (Acts 18) taught theology alongside her husband. Mary Magdalene was the first witness to the resurrection and called “apostle to the apostles” in early tradition — but was reduced to a repentant sex worker in later doctrine with no scriptural basis. That edit wasn’t accidental. It was institutional.
And modern examples? Catholic women today still cannot be priests, bishops, or deacons. In 2012, the Vatican launched an investigation into the LCWR (a group of U.S. nuns) for “radical feminism” which meant speaking about women’s ordination and reproductive justice. These are women running hospitals, schools, crisis centres. But when they ask for power in the Church? Suddenly they’re a problem.
So yes, Mary said yes. But the Church has spent two millennia punishing women who speak in full sentences.
Thanks again for engaging with sincerity. This is what makes space for real reckoning.
Of course, you're right about a lot of this. The misogyny of the early church is unmistakable. (Yes, I know it continues in many, many places.) I think the treatment of Mary Magdalen, which is only now being corrected, is preposterous. This is true of other significant women in the Bible and in church history. This is one of the reasons I started writing my book that I'm releasing here. The idea that most of the world believes Mary was suspected of adultery is stupid and cruel. The truth is so much more beautiful.
When I subscribed to your stack, I knew we disagreed on many topics but I still really like the way you write. As someone I know recently said, "You ain't getting rid of me that easily."
I really appreciate this response. Honestly, it’s rare to have someone stay in the room, acknowledge historical harm, and not instantly get defensive.
I want to say too, I don’t have an issue with faith. Truly. Faith can be powerful, comforting, transformative. What I do have an issue with is when institutions use faith to rewrite the narrative - to justify harm, exclude voices, and retroactively call it holy. That’s the tension I keep coming back to. It’s not belief I’m critiquing. It’s the way belief has been repackaged into a hierarchy that protects itself.
And with women? That rewriting is everywhere. Mary Magdalene wasn’t the only one rebranded to serve a patriarchal script. Look at: Junia, Phoebe, Prisca, Deborah, Huldah, Miriam, the women at the well in the Gospel of John, Lydia, etc. (I was Catholic growing up so I know it all well). These aren’t footnotes. These are foundational figures. But how many pulpits teach them as such?
So yes, it’s good that Mary Magdalene’s story is being reclaimed. But it’s not enough. It’s not just about correcting the footnotes. It’s about questioning why the edits happened in the first place, and who they served.
And again, I really do appreciate that you’re still here, still engaging. I don’t expect everyone to agree with everything I write. I just hope people notice where the silence is, and who put it there.
Thanks again for being in the conversation.
this is hilarious and im in love with you
Exmormon here! Same shame and coverup happening in our churches too. This was a brilliant piece. Loved every word.
this and the yassification of jesus
🙌🙌🙌
this was fucking sensational. you had me laughing out loud from the first paragraph. you also—side note—sound like a mad bitch (i'm australian; that's a compliment) and i back a woman with a brain who can sprinkle this much sass and humour into complex subjects and still come across (to me) as respectful in the undertones (respectful-adjacent?)