Sojourners magazine's website recently posted an article titled "The real tradition of women and church leadership" claiming that the early Church ordained women. Our contributing editor William Tighe analyzes it with his gimlet eye in Women's Ordination and Fantasy History, published on the weblog Pontifications.
You will want to read some of the comments, especially number three, contributed by someone who calls herself "Radicalfeministpoet." After abusing Bill in various ways, she declares:
In short, it doesn’t really matter if Theodora was a bishopessa, or whether Pope Joan was “really” just the pope’s mama. These images speak a powerful reality that transcends petty squabbles over their mere existence. What’s important is the message they images project: the enduring fact that womyn deserve to be ordained.
You will also want to look at comments 46 and 47, the author's response to Bill's critique and Bill's response to her.
It is probably worth noting that Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners, is, I am pretty sure, married to an Episcopal priestess.
Having spent too much time reading Fr. Kimel's comboxes, I'm pretty confident that RadicalFeministPoet is a regular with a very dry wit and a talent for parody. If you re-read her 'abuse' of Mr. Tighe in that light, I think you'll find more irony than seriousness. Comments on her posts by other regulars bear that out. Personally I find her posts hilariously on-target.
Posted by: sharon d. | February 12, 2006 at 06:55 AM
Ditto Sharon D. as to the likelihood of "pro-womyn" parody from the fluent, loose-cannon-communicator, RFP at the indispensable Pontifications. She has been impossible to pinpoint with Google-map accuracy on the orthodoxy landscape, but she's clearly wry about Womyn-Speak, most likely an academia-exposure derived allergy displaying her own gimlet eye and mastery of diction.
(If you take a look at the alluded-to Joan Armatriding, specially the video, its plodding PC would be catnip for parody by a very deft word-dancer.) And these paragraphs almost certainly end in "tells":
[The Creation Story] teaches far greater truths: that there is order in the world, that creation is good, that men are stupid enough to eat whatever you put in front of their noses.
[Noah's] story teaches us of the importance of cherishing animal life, of recycling, of the abiding love God has for all Her creatures and (in the words of Joan Armatrading) of mixing some water with the wine.
Even the echt-serious take-no-prisoners co-pontificator Michael Liccione is on board here: "Bill: You’re spot on, of course. But I think RFP is really agreeing with you. "
When finished with RFP, please muster in Dublin for a demo at the lodgings of one Jonathan Swift. The placards will read Callously Indifferent to Irish Infants.
:-) :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)Posted by: dilys | February 12, 2006 at 07:59 AM
If you two are right, the writer is an extraordinarily good parodist. The respondents to Bill's item seem divided on whether she (or he) is. My one hesitation in agreeing with you about the clues or "tells" you produce is that (given where I have lived) I've known many people who would have written that entire post perfectly seriously. Even the comment about men eating is the kind of attempt at a joke one of them might make, as a way of trying to say "I'm not a fanatic."
In other words, it's hard to parody things that seem to be parodies already, and harder still to get credit for the parody.
Posted by: David Mills | February 12, 2006 at 10:52 AM
It is tough to do good parody on the internet. I have tried to do the sort of parody "radicalfeministpoet" does (though I have not a fraction of the talent) and have found that no matter how preposterous I make my parody someone will ALWAYS take it seriously.
But I just have to say, as a devoted pontifications reader for years, having read many (perhaps all) of RFP's posts in the past, I have not the slightest doubt. This is parody.
Posted by: Matthias | February 12, 2006 at 09:52 PM
Although I took RFP's comment seriously, and responded con brio, I've come round to thinking that it is parody.
In her occasional comments at Pontifications over the past year, she has "disclosed" in passing (or perhaps just invented it) that she lives mostly in or near Canterbury (UK), and perhaps has a position at the University of Kent there, and that she travels not infrequently to San Diego, where she seems to be on friendls terms with an Episcopalian Philosophy Professor named Harriet Barber or Barbour.
If she is indeed a parodist of the feminist style, she is a superb one, not least because she leaves readers guessing, as we are, about whether she is one or not.
Posted by: William Tighe | February 13, 2006 at 07:22 AM
If I were to bet, I'd bet RFP is a parodist, but I wouldn't bet all that much. I think I detect hints of jocularity in her work that don't comport with her putative role--she doesn't seem angry enough--but I'm far from certain.
Some years ago there was an essay floating around the Internet, supposedly by a serious rock critic (yeah, I know), giving very elaborate furrowed-brow favorable reviews of several albums widely considered unlistenable. The only one I remember is Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music. A friend pointed it out to me as a great parody, but I was never entirely convinced that it was.
Posted by: Maclin Horton | February 14, 2006 at 02:09 PM