Via Katha Pollitt on Twitter – an Italian priest explains things to women.
Italian media reported that parish priest Piero Corsi fixed a text to the bulletin board of his church in the northern village of San Terenzo di Lerici, which said women should engage in “healthy self criticism” over the issue of femicide, or men murdering women.
Healthy self-criticism! Good thinking. It is a just world, so if a women is murdered, it has to be because she did something so bad that it deserves murder. (There is that whole pesky “sanctity of life” thing, so you would think a Catholic priest wouldn’t write a text saying that anything deserves murder, but maybe that’s just before birth. I’m not a theologian, so I’m not sure.) So what are these bad things that women should be healthily criticizing themselves for?
“Let’s ask ourselves. Is it possible that men have all gone mad at one stroke? We don’t think so,” said the text, which was reproduced in several newspapers.
“The core of the problem is in the fact that women are more and more provocative, they yield to arrogance, they believe they can do everything themselves and they end up exacerbating tensions,” it said.
“How often do we see girls and even mature women walking on the streets in provocative and tight clothing?”
“Babies left to themselves, dirty houses, cold meals and fast food at home, soiled clothes. So if a family ends up in a mess and turns into crime (a form of violence which should be condemned and punished firmly) often the responsibility is shared,” it said.
Oh. Women are arrogant. They walk on the street. Something something dirty something cold something fast something soiled. So men murder them. What can you expect?
It’s probably just a small thing though, right? Not many women are that cold and soiled and arrogant and murdered.
A third of women in Italy had reported being victim of serious domestic violence, a UN report citing data from Italian statistics agency ISTAT said.
It said that as many as 127 women had been murdered by men in 2010, often as a result of “honor, men’s unemployment and jealousy by the perpetrator”.
And fast food, and women walking on the street.
People are annoyed with the priest, but he doesn’t mind.
“After everything that’s happened, which has certainly been well beyond what I intended or expected, I think there’s need for calm, rest and silence to respond with the serenity and harmony required to carry on,” he said.
For him. He’s a guy, so he’s allowed to be arrogant. Women who are arrogant – well they need to be murdered, obviously.
Of course rape and murder of women has only been happening in recent times. Women were never raped or murdered before they became all uppity and showed so much skin…
One of the most fascinating aspects of priests is their inability to hear the tripe they spit out.
… honor …
How dare you criticize this bold interfaith outreach effort to his Muslim brethren!?!
Buy a ticket to Italy and go make him a sammidge!
It might be a good thing for all the relativists and Caretakers of Offended Muslim Sensibilities to see that honor killing is not just ‘part of their ancient culture.’ That misogynist patriarchies really do tend to resemble each other.
Also: good point that nobody is pursuing their ‘natural’ feeling by stringing up priests from the nearest lamp-post.
If only women and other minorities weren’t so uppity, they wouldn’t be murdered and discriminated against!
Wonder if he’s got a similarly enlightened theory as to why children end up getting raped by priests.
This is so typical of the church – which has tried in other circumstances to reflect back guilt on those who are on the receiving end of the perpetrator. Think child clerical abuse. In this case, Instead of reminding would-be perpetrators of would-be crimes, the church decides instead that WOMEN “should engage in “healthy self criticism”. What should one expect from the parish priest, Piero Corsi, who is part of a male-dominated hierarchical church. I’m sure that he’d not be as quick to ‘fix a text to the bulletin board of his church in the northern village of San Terenzo di Lerici,’ saying that MEN “should engage in “healthy self criticism” over the issue of femicide, or men murdering women.”
@ FresnoBob
“Wonder if he’s got a similarly enlightened theory as to why children end up getting raped by priests.”
Corsi doesn’t, but Bernando Álvarez does: “Bishop of Tenerife blames child abuse on the children”
http://www.typicallyspanish.com/news/publish/article_14332.shtml.
I used Corsi and Álvarez to post a message to a Catholic priest from the Ottawa Citizen’s “Ask the Religion Experts” panel:
http://canadianatheist.com/2012/12/29/another-year-over-and-a-new-one-just-begun/
I know some “skeptics” Piero Corsi could bond with on the subject of uppity women bringin’ it on themselves.
In the Australian SBS report that PZ linked to, there was this:
(italics added.)
Do tell, signora.