NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Should Never Write on the Catholic Faith For the New York Times Ever Again

Update- Micheal Winters tears into this piece of "journalism today" See Nicholas Kristof, Meet Pope Symmachus

OH BOY!!! In the New York Times today we have a real horrific piece. See A Church Mary Can Love Now in other areas where "respected people" comment they are expected to have perhaps some basic understanding of the subject or at least know the terms. We as a general matter do not have Movie critic doing a Op-Ed on lets the Salt II Treaty.

However as to religion it seems people can say anything thing even if there is so many embarrassing errors that would generally get a reprimand.

Lets start (the bolding is our mine). Please note this is the PAPER OF RECORD

A Church Mary Can Love
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: April 17, 2010
I heard a joke the other day about a pious soul who dies, goes to heaven, and gains an audience with the Virgin Mary. The visitor asks Mary why, for all her blessings, she always appears in paintings as a bit sad, a bit wistful: Is everything O.K.?

Mary reassures her visitor: “Oh, everything’s great. No problems. It’s just ... it’s just that we had always wanted a daughter.”

That story comes to mind as the Vatican wrestles with the consequences of a patriarchal premodern mind-set: scandal, cover-up and the clumsiest self-defense since Watergate. That’s what happens with old boys’ clubs.

It wasn’t inevitable that the Catholic Church would grow so addicted to male domination, celibacy and rigid hierarchies. Jesus himself focused on the needy rather than dogma, and went out of his way to engage women and treat them with respect.

The first-century church was inclusive and democratic, even including a proto-feminist wing and texts. The Gospel of Philip, a Gnostic text from the third century, declares of Mary Magdalene: “She is the one the Savior loved more than all the disciples.” Likewise, the Gospel of Mary (from the early second century) suggests that Jesus entrusted Mary Magdalene to instruct the disciples on his religious teachings.

St. Paul refers in Romans 16 to a first-century woman named Junia as prominent among the early apostles, and to a woman named Phoebe who served as a deacon. The Apostle Junia became a Christian before St. Paul did (chauvinist translators have sometimes rendered her name masculine, with no scholarly basis).

Yet over the ensuing centuries, the church reverted to strong patriarchal attitudes, while also becoming increasingly uncomfortable with sexuality. The shift may have come with the move from house churches, where women were naturally accepted, to more public gatherings.

The upshot is that proto-feminist texts were not included when the Bible was compiled (and were mostly lost until modern times). Tertullian, an early Christian leader, denounced women as “the gateway to the devil,” while a contemporary account reports that the great Origen of Alexandria took his piety a step further and castrated himself.

The Catholic Church still seems stuck today in that patriarchal rut. The same faith that was so pioneering that it had Junia as a female apostle way back in the first century can’t even have a woman as the lowliest parish priest. Female deacons, permitted for centuries, are banned today.

That old boys’ club in the Vatican became as self-absorbed as other old boys’ clubs, like Lehman Brothers, with similar results. And that is the reason the Vatican is floundering today.

Ok lets stop here for a second. Does NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF know anything about Gnosticism that he seems to think is a great thing and the Church needs to endorse? I find it odd that journalist would be all for a group that proclaimed they alone had a "secret knowledge" of the truth.

The Gospel of Philip (which is not a Gospel at all as we would term it) seems to be modeled on the teachings of Valentinus .

We learn:
Valentinus produced a variety of writings, but only fragments survive, largely those embedded in refuted quotations in the works of his opponents, not enough to reconstruct his system except in broad outline.[2] His doctrine is known to us only in the developed and modified form given to it by his disciples.[2] He taught that there were three kinds of people, the spiritual, psychical, and material; and that only those of a spiritual nature (his own followers) received the gnosis (knowledge) that allowed them to return to the divine Pleroma, while those of a psychic nature (ordinary Christians) would attain a lesser form of salvation, and that those of a material nature (pagans and Jews) were doomed to perish.[3][2].

Well what is the problem with that :) lol.

I wonder why the Church was hesitant about accepting that. Is now the position of the New York Times that they wish the Church to adopt a "Gospel" that talks how pagans and Jews will perish. Why not!!! if you wish to be consistent. You can't just take the things you like and throw the other things out.

However what is the biggest glaring problem with why the Church did not include these writings? Well as his article points out all these "Gospels" came way way way after the Apostolic age. Further does he have any idea what the Canon of the Bible is and why certain writings are in it. I mean under his standard why not just add a book by Pope Benedict or Billy Graham into the Bible. Does he understand that even Church Fathers writings that are considered very Orthodox were not included in the Bible for a reason? If a high school student wrote the above in a paper "What is the Bible" I suspect the teacher would give him a F.

Does he know what a Deaconess was or is even? It appears not from his writings.

That old boys’ club in the Vatican became as self-absorbed as other old boys’ clubs, like Lehman Brothers, with similar results. And that is the reason the Vatican is floundering today.
But there’s more to the picture than that. In my travels around the world, I encounter two Catholic Churches.

One is the rigid all-male Vatican hierarchy that seems out of touch when it bans condoms even among married couples where one partner is H.I.V.-positive. To me at least, this church — obsessed with dogma and rules and distracted from social justice — is a modern echo of the Pharisees whom Jesus criticized.

Yet there’s another Catholic Church as well, one I admire intensely. This is the grass-roots Catholic Church that does far more good in the world than it ever gets credit for. This is the church that supports extraordinary aid organizations like Catholic Relief Services and Caritas, saving lives every day, and that operates superb schools that provide needy children an escalator out of poverty.

This is the church of the nuns and priests in Congo, toiling in obscurity to feed and educate children. This is the church of the Brazilian priest fighting AIDS who told me that if he were pope, he would build a condom factory in the Vatican to save lives.

This is the church of the Maryknoll Sisters in Central America and the Cabrini Sisters in Africa. There’s a stereotype of nuns as stodgy Victorian traditionalists. I learned otherwise while hanging on for my life in a passenger seat as an American nun with a lead foot drove her jeep over ruts and through a creek in Swaziland to visit AIDS orphans. After a number of encounters like that, I’ve come to believe that the very coolest people in the world today may be nuns.
So when you read about the scandals, remember that the Vatican is not the same as the Catholic Church. Ordinary lepers, prostitutes and slum-dwellers may never see a cardinal, but they daily encounter a truly noble Catholic Church in the form of priests, nuns and lay workers toiling to make a difference.

It’s high time for the Vatican to take inspiration from that sublime — even divine — side of the Catholic Church, from those church workers whose magnificence lies not in their vestments, but in their selflessness. They’re enough to make the Virgin Mary smile

Yet there’s another Catholic Church as well, one I admire intensely. This is the grass-roots Catholic Church that does far more good in the world than it ever gets credit for. This is the church that supports extraordinary aid organizations like Catholic Relief Services and Caritas, saving lives every day, and that operates superb schools that provide needy children an escalator out of poverty.
This is the church of the nuns and priests in Congo, toiling in obscurity to feed and educate children. This is the church of the Brazilian priest fighting AIDS who told me that if he were pope, he would build a condom factory in the Vatican to save lives.

This is the church of the Maryknoll Sisters in Central America and the Cabrini Sisters in Africa. There’s a stereotype of nuns as stodgy Victorian traditionalists. I learned otherwise while hanging on for my life in a passenger seat as an American nun with a lead foot drove her jeep over ruts and through a creek in Swaziland to visit AIDS orphans. After a number of encounters like that, I’ve come to believe that the very coolest people in the world today may be nuns.
So when you read about the scandals, remember that the Vatican is not the same as the Catholic Church. Ordinary lepers, prostitutes and slum-dwellers may never see a cardinal, but they daily encounter a truly noble Catholic Church in the form of priests, nuns and lay workers toiling to make a difference.
It’s high time for the Vatican to take inspiration from that sublime — even divine — side of the Catholic Church, from those church workers whose magnificence lies not in their vestments, but in their selflessness. They’re enough to make the Virgin Mary smile.

Now one wonders what he is basing the idea that the "covering up of scandal" is somehow related to just being male. Nothing in my life experience has seem to show this.

As to sexual abuse we live in one of the most EQUAL times known in history as to the sexes. Yet the abuse continues in society as a whole. I wonder what the children that were abused by their mothers think of this piece.

The last part of not a very good veiled attempt to make US versus the mean ole Vatican. The fault of the Vatican was it was not involved enough not too little. However please not the author of this piece fails to note the Social Justice of the Popse (which the Times Like), the Pope's ground breaking recent document on this(which the Times Liked), the fact that the Church supports Health Care(which the The Times Liked), or the Vatican AKA the Pope this very weekend is engaging the topic of immigration (Which the Times likes), or the Vatican has been in the lead in talking about Debt of Third World Nations(which the Times Liked) and also the problem of sex trafficking (which the Times Liked), and also an advocate of Peace (which the Times Liked). This now all disappears we are left with the bad ole Holy See of NO if we are to believe this piece.