L to R, Re, Pope Benedict, Sobrinho
Asked whether the man who began raping an innocent little girl when she was six years old, who forcibly impregnated her with twins when she was nine, would be excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church along with those who helped to save her life — her mother, the doctors who performed an abortion — Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho responded that the accused stepfather would not be expelled from the church. Although the man allegedly committed “a heinous crime,” Sobrinho said, “the abortion — the elimination of an innocent life — was more serious”.
A senior Vatican cleric, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, head of the Catholic church’s Congregation for Bishops, backed him up: “Excommunication for those who carried out the abortion is just… Life must always be protected, the attack on the Brazilian church is unjustified.”
Life must always be protected. All life but the lives of girls. All but the lives of women.
I was not excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church. I was excommunicated 15 years ago in July from a religious community whose male heirarchy was and is every bit as hateful and deadly. I survived it. I remain excommunicated to this day, and I am proud of it. I wear my excommunication like the badge of courage it is. I wear it like a medal of valor. Those excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church for daring to save the life of this child are heroes to me and to all girls and women. May they wear their medals of excommunication proudly as well.
As for you archibishops, you priests, you up there, Ratzinger, historically a woman-hater extraordinaire, and proud of it, and yet you were made Pope (maybe that’s why you were made Pope), and as for you patriarchs from my old world: In the name of Mary, Mary Magdalene, Dana and Maat; in the name and by the power of the Gorgons, the Muses, the Furies, the Vanir, the Valkyrie, Freyja: your arrogance, your hubris, your rapes, your murders, your batterings are your sorry, sorry undoing. So long as there is no justice for women, none of you will have peace. You are brought low. You are brought down. You have brought it on yourselves.
Heart
