It’s International Women’s Day on 8 March, and among the events that I am most looking forward to – besides The Tablet’s own webinar, Do women have a future in the Catholic Church? – is a panel discussion at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Divinity about how women are written out of Scripture.
The peg is the recent furore over the decision of the bishops’ conference of England and Wales to replace the Bible translation we currently hear at Mass with the English Standard Version: Catholic Edition, a slightly tweaked translation by a team of US Evangelical scholars originally published in 2001 that prefers gender-exclusive language: “brother” instead of “brothers and sisters”, “men” for “humanity”, and so on.
For much of last year, we at The Tablet, along with theologians and Bible scholars, have been entreating our bishops to consult more widely, particularly with women, who would be most bruised by the decision, before settling on the translation to be used in the liturgy. We ran articles, editorials and letters covering both sides of the debate.
04 March 2021, The Tablet
This is not ‘just’ a women’s issue. It’s a question of how we want the Church to work
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User Comments (1)
When I was a younger man, back in the 1960s and 1970s I felt very grateful to be a member of the Church in England as it seemed as if 'We are the Church' was an energising, forward looking perspective we had then. Over time, and certainly more recently, sadly that perspective seems to have almost disappeared. Male clericalism has returned (in tandem with clerical numbers diminishing). So more power to Liz Dodds' elbow!