Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter calls upon the Catholic Church to ordain women as priests as part of an interview discussing religion, faith, and women’s rights with Time magazine reporter Elizabeth Dias in order to promote The Carter Center’s upcoming Mobilizing Faith for Women conference:
I think there’s a slow, very slow, move around the world to give women equal rights in the eyes of God. What has been the case for many centuries is that the great religions, the major religions, have discriminated against women in a very abusive fashion and set an example for the rest of society to treat women as secondary citizens. In a marriage or in the workplace or wherever, they are discriminated against. And I think the great religions have set the example for that, by ordaining, in effect, that women are not equal to men in the eyes of God.
This has been done and still is done by the Catholic Church ever since the third century, when the Catholic Church ordained that a woman cannot be a priest for instance but a man can. A woman can be a nurse or a teacher but she can’t be a priest. This is wrong, I think. As you may or may not know, the Southern Baptist Convention back now about 13 years ago in Orlando, voted that women were inferior and had to be subservient to their husbands, and ordained that a woman could not be a deacon or a pastor or a chaplain or even a teacher in a classroom in some seminaries where men are in the classroom, boys are in the classroom. So my wife and I withdrew from the Southern Baptist Convention primarily because of that.
Read more from the interview here.
Following is a letter sent by Roman Catholic Women Priests thanking President Carter for speaking out.
Dear President Carter,
The women and men of the Roman Catholic Women Priests USA movement thank you for addressing the question of religion “as a source of women’s rights rather than a source of women’s oppression.” We applaud your courage in speaking out against the oppression and denigration of women by religious institutions. We are especially grateful tor your reference to the gender inequity that continues to exist within the Roman Catholic Church.
We pray that the “Mobilizing Faith for Women” conference at the Carter Center will bear much fruit. We pray also for you, as you continue to challenge world-wide systems of injustice in our world.
In solidarity and love,
Roman Catholic Womenpriests Board of Directors
Marellen Mayers, Jennifer O’Malley, Mary Ellen Robertson, Monique Venne.
Roman Catholic Womenpriests (RCWP) is an international movement within the Roman Catholic Church. The mission of Roman Catholic Womenpriests-USA is to prepare, ordain in Apostolic Succession, and support primarily women who are called by the Holy Spirit and their communities to a renewed priestly ministry rooted in justice and faithfulness to the Gospel.