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The Vatican hit a Trifecta this week, after a rough month, with the affirmation of a survey done by a 97 year old priest that men and women sin differently. Men are more lustful. Women are more prideful. NB: Pride is considered the worst of the Seven Deadly Sinslifting the excommunication of a priest who had been being too conservative on liturgical issues. (The British-born Richard Williamson, is the same bishop who has also made many denials of the Nazi Holocaust, even saying that "there were no gas chambers.") Even the German government cried out at that.
Next, our Speaker of the House, Pelosi visits the Pope, and the Vatican said that they raised the issue of Catholic politicians and abortion again. Pelosi said they talked about other things.
So the blogosphere was well tuned up to be humming about this most recent issue, the survey.
First, who is this priest that did the study? And who is affirming it?
The priest is Fr Roberto Busa, a 95-year-old Jesuit scholar, and one of the pioneers in the usage of computers for linguistic and literary analysis, especially of St Thomas Aquinas. The affirming priest is Dominican Father Wojciech Giertych, the personal theologian to the Pope, and an Aquinas scholar.
No less than The Catholic News reports Giertych as saying:
The priest said personal experience seemed to confirm these theories.
"In convents, women religious are often envious of each other over little things, but when the church bell rings, everyone goes to the chapel to sing vespers," he said.
"Monks, however, aren't often interested in each other and, therefore, aren't jealous, but when the church bell rings, few take part in common prayer," he said.
He said St. Thomas Aquinas taught that pride is humanity's greatest enemy because it leads a person to believe he or she is self-sufficient and "hinders a person from having a relationship with God."
Lust and "the sins against chastity are less dangerous because they are accompanied by a strong sense of humiliation and, as such, can be an occasion to return to God," said Father Giertych.
OK, by now we all need to take a deep breath, pause and review.
Breathe.
Pause.
Review.
We don't know much about the actual survey. We do know that the Bible never mentions the Seven Deadly Sins, but they were listed by Pope Gregory I in 590AD.
The Vatican affirms that, according to this survey, women are prone to worse sins than men.
They do not say how big the study was, under what conditions it was made. They do not say if the study was of laypeople or of priests and nuns, or of all mixed. They do not say what they classified as a "sin of pride" and a "sin of lust". (For those of you who may not have experienced a Catholic confessional, people do not generally say "I committed the sin of pride." They are more likely to say that they got angry, or took God's name in vain, or had impure thoughts, etc.")
There is no suggestion of how they collected the data. Was it confession-specific? (i.e. Did a variety of confessors fill out data forms while the confession was happening or soon after that listed everything confessed?)
Or, was the data collected as anecdotal? (i.e. Did they ask priests how they would rank the Seven Deadly Sins by sex? Were they asking impressions or getting facts?)
Oh, and did any women have a chance to analyze the results of whatever data was at hand?
The Vatican has said that they affirm the results.
But what does that mean? Is there some recently surfaced need to affirm the differences between men and women? Is this heralding a return to more Aquinian theology?
Aquinas is often credited for establishing the groundwork philosophically for the forbidding of female ordination in the Catholic Church. Will this be another brick in that wall?
It puzzles me. Why would the Roman Catholic church want to make these points now?
(Lest anyone think I am aiming at the RCC, it was my birth-church, and I am thankful for that, although I have departed its ranks. I am equally capable of being mystified by the official statements of any church body. Organized religion, despite its charm, often has me shaking my head. THIS study, however, is one step short of turning
