Call to Remove Saint Status from Pope John Paul II

Is it time to remove the title "John Paul the Great" from the statues of the late Pope in the grounds of the Catholic Cathedrals of the Archdiocese of Sydney and the Diocese of Parramatta?

A call to remove the status of sainthood from John Paul II has been published in  France. A translation of the French text and the original source are included in this post

 Source

Christian Testimony

The women's rights day of 2019 will be for us, women, Catholic or not, a day of mourning and indignation. We shout our horror by discovering the documentary Religieuses abusées, the other scandal of the Church on the abuse and rape of religious women by priests.

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We lack words to condemn these priests and religious predators and rapists. On the grounds that the nuns gave their lives to "serve", they themselves served, served on the bodies of these women, denying their vows, their word, their dignity - though so often invoked by the Church! - their very person to be human free and responsible for his body. In their clutches, these women have been dispossessed and reduced to a sexual function, a use that is agreed upon, then thrown or "shoved" to another for "profit" With impunityJoin the debate

We indignant ourselves with the system in which these facts are inscribed. No, they are not mere isolated abuses perpetrated by some perverts. It is clear that they are part of this "culture of abuse" denounced by Pope Francis. Yes, it is a system and a culture that denies the body of the other, that of children as well as women. This system is rooted in the male inter-self and is perpetuated by the idolatry in which the function of the priest is held.

But there is worse. There is the concept that the Catholic Church has forged and that she calls "the Woman". We denounce the poverty and indigence and the maneuver of domination that drives this vision. Under the decisive influence of Pope John Paul II, "the Woman" becomes an idea, conceived exclusively by men - single in addition. Its sole vocation, its purpose is to help man through marriage and motherhood or to serve the Church in religious chastity; a vision that is unrelated to the women of flesh, blood, spirit and soul that make up half of the human race and at least two-thirds of practicing Catholics.

We dare to say that the first abuse committed against women is this idealization, this deception which masks the numberless discrimination of women in their own Church. It is on the altar of this woman-idea that the lives of real women are sacrificed.

In the Catholic Church, "the Woman" must respond to a dual vocation "virgin or mother". She is assigned to her sexed body; its "non-use" in the virginity or its "use" in the maternity, without any place being left to the other dimensions of the human being!

We denounce the lie and hypocrisy of this ideology weighing on us. It is this that reveals the abuses on the bodies of the religious women. They have vowed chastity and their word is violated along with the body. When these rapes lead to pregnancy, they are forcibly aborted or their child is cynically abandoned, on the express order of the head of the community. The violence done to their bodies is then at its height since even motherhood, their "other" vocation, is forbidden to them.

Thus, not only do the leaders of the Catholic Church impose on all women their ideology of "the Woman", but - aided by some women acquired in the system - they themselves violate the rules they impose on all.

Our accusation is not about criminals and rapists alone. It aims at the conspiracy of silence that surrounded these monstrous actions. "We wash his dirty clothes with the family," it is said to justify keeping the media and justice at bay. But this dirty linen is simply moved, without ever rubbing laundry or soap. Would one be in an army that manages his BMC (countryside military brothel) as a lesser evil?

On March 8, with the Gospel and the attitude of Jesus himself towards women, we reaffirm the imprescriptible rights of women, who are those of every human being, everywhere and especially in the Church. .

We call for the decanonization of Pope John Paul II, protector of the abusers in the name of the "reason of Church" and principal architect of the ideological construction of "the Woman *", as well as the prohibition of teaching, propagating or to publish the "theology of the body" that he preached during his catechesis on Wednesdays.

Christine Pedotti and Anne Soupa, co-founders of the Skirt Committee.

* John Paul II was the decisive voice that led Pope Paul VI to condemn contraception (encyclical Humanae Vitae ). He then developed a theology of the Woman, always referred to the Virgin Mary, a figure of silence and obedience.