The pope on Eve

- John Roddam Spencer Stanhope

I didn't post anything for International Women's Day but I thought I'd comment when I saw in the Tablet news that the pope had mentioned Eve yesterday . ...

“[Jesus] does not dialogue with Satan, as Eve did in the earthly paradise,” the Pope said at his noonday Angelus on Sunday yesterday. “Jesus knows well that you cannot dialogue with Satan because he’s so astute. For this reason Jesus, instead of dialoguing with him like Eve did, chooses to take refuge in the Word of God and responds with the power of the Word,” the Pope said, reflecting on the Gospel passage about the devil’s temptation of Jesus in the desert.

I'm not sure if the pope actually believes that Eve and Adam existed historically as described in Genesis (people as disparate as Andrew Sullivan and Cardinal Pell agree they didn't), or if he sees them as metaphorical, but his choice to use the "first woman" as an example of badness made me depressed. This is but the latest of the disappointing things he's said about women.