I know that assenting isn’t a matter of choice. I have to accept it anyway–but the thing I’ve come to love about Catholicism is that I can attack every part of it with as much questioning and zeal and doubt as I do with this, and I get an answer that satisfies me. I don’t mean to be rebellious and I don’t think that my role is always to sit down and sht up, so I question things regularily because I want to understand everything I can.

To put it one way: The answer to “Why can’t gays marry?” is not “Because the Church has [i:2p0edx5t]always[/i:2p0edx5t] married men and women, silly!” it’s “The purpose of gender and marriage is procreation” and I can accept that so I do. I want to know why God has us do one thing and not another, why He has arranged the world one way and not another. Perhaps my failing is that when I can’t do that, I get upset and over-wrought and, but the thing is, I [i:2p0edx5t]just don’t get it[/i:2p0edx5t]. And I can nod and go along and smile politely if I don’t get it, but I don’t just want a faith where I follow blindly with no deeper appreciation of what I’m believeing. I’ve been trying to reconcile the dogma that women aren’t meant to be priests, and made some strides, and you won’t see my picketing my basilica anytime soon, but I want to understand this and I can’t.

Why is God always masculine? What is the purpose of woman? It seems illogical to me that He would create a human being with a soul and the same longing for Him, but with a lesser function. If the sole purpose of women was to bear children and nothing else, it would be kinder for us to reproduce by splitting in half like amoebas. Therefore, the function of women is not just to reproduce and nothing else. The Church teaches that the function of women is not to be priests or deacons or altar-servers.

So what [i:2p0edx5t]is[/i:2p0edx5t] the purpose of women? Why don’t we reproduce like amoebas do? There’s an official Vatican document that says, “the Church desires that Christian women should become fully aware of the greatness of their mission: today their role is of capital importance both for the renewal and humanization of society and for the rediscovery by believers of the true face of the Church.” What [i:2p0edx5t]is[/i:2p0edx5t] that role? What is appropriate for a woman to do in the Church?

I guess, if I did want anything changed in the Church and it is (as I’ve been told) absolutely totally 100% not on that women should be priests, I’d want the Church to clarify just what the spiritual purpose and vocation of women [i:2p0edx5t]is[/i:2p0edx5t].