Teen, Taliban and Other Women Today Here and Abroad

Taliban orders sliced the nose and ears of an 18-year-old Afghan woman for fleeing her husband's home.

Innocent women and children caught in the fray of battles brewing in countries everywhere it seems these days. Violence put upon them everywhere.

But, by those who know better and won't lift a finger? A pope who could change the status of women with the mark of his pen. By men who could ban together to unite for women's rights?

Second class citizens? Are women?

What gives?

It has always been this way, in the story of females, you say?

What's in this for you, you ask?

If one human being is singled out for torture, could it happen to anyone?

Yes.

My heart ached today as my mind turned to thoughts of the way women are treated.

Why?

Power and domination have always kept women down.

In my own Catholic community, I regret that only males may apply to lead parishes in worship.

And, it sounds often that marriage is second to ordination after baptism, of course.
If my parents weren't married for longer than fifty years in fidelity and commitment to each other and the seven of us siblings, this writer wouldn't have been ordained 35 years ago.

Women.

I wonder today.

Why?

What would it be like for me to be excluded?

I have no idea of the pain poking within the feminine who are tortured like Aisha of Afghanistan who arrived in California the other day for surgery to fix her severed limbs.

What is it like for young girls to be abducted like the high school lifeguard, Molly Bish, who was murdered in West Warren, MA., more than a decade ago?

All of the trafficking of youngsters pulls at my heartstrings also these days. And, the children who are abused at home by parents or pastors or other predators.

A fledgling Feudal system will finally bring down exclusionary postures toward women in my Church, I pray God. Banning them from ordination, or elevating women to higher posts in church settings would have stemmed the scandalous sexual abuse crisis, I'm sure.

After all, mothers and women are protectors of those they carried nine months. No man can appreciate that like a mom can.

Any system of brutality and exclusionary practices that box out gals and other women, have to go.

What are we afraid of?

Why won't we treat ALL human beings in and outside of the womb with the dignity God gave each of us?

Do economics drive this discrimination, horror, torture? What drives it? Why?

Aisha, my four sisters, Sister Mary Gonzaga, Eleanor Josaitis, Rosa Parks, the murdered in El Salvador, Haiti's most vulnerable, put a human face on our plate.

Will I work to outlaw absolutes that put a line and wall on women? Will I?