Passive-aggressive Pope Francis

Humor is used as a way to shame and silence people so that they fail to question or challenge the underlying meanings embedded in the oh-so-innocent joke [but] It’s important to call people out on offensive jokes ...
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In a recent interview, Pope Francis jokes 'woman was from a rib' as he avoids vow to reform church, the Pope commented on women ...

In his first interview with a female journalist since his election to the spiritual leadership of the world's 1.2 billion baptised Catholics, Pope Francis dodged a string of questions about whether he intended raising the status of women in his church ....

when his interviewer, the Vatican correspondent of the Rome daily Il Messaggero, Franca Giansoldati, asked him whether he could detect an underlying misogyny in the Catholic church, Francis replied: "The fact is that woman was taken from a rib." Giansoldati wrote that he then laughed "heartily" before saying: "I'm joking. That was a joke."

The 77-year-old pontiff went on: "The issue of women needs to be gone into in more depth, otherwise you can't understand the church itself." But did he envisage, say, appointing a woman to head a Vatican department? "Well," replied the pope cryptically. "Priests often end up under the sway of their housekeepers." ....

At NCR, Phyllis Zagano wrote about the interview ...

[...] I cannot believe that a world-class person like Francis, who seems so much in touch with individuals and their suffering, is capable of making remarks such as these. Yet I know he lives in a society where the ordinary needs of clerics are often taken care of by unmarried women or religious sisters who cook, clean, do laundry, order supplies and serve as receptionists, often on nights and weekends. Just like Mom ....

When you catch some priests or bishops making similar comments, they chuckle, "Oh, no, ha ha, just joking." Other clerics, the ones who buy their own groceries and cook their own chicken, may smile wanly and say nothing when such wisecracks fly past. Only a very few will man up to the fact that these words hurled in jest have insulted a woman, thereby all women, thereby half the body of Christ. That, after all, is the bottom line. The men who think like this just don't get it. Will they ever? How can the church move forward when the "we" is all male, all the time, and women are the "they" to be both ridiculed and theologized about?

What I find especially depressing is that most people are so grateful for the positives about Francis, that they are willing to ignore his attitudes about women.

Some articles about Francis and women from the past ....

- Pope Francis, women and 'chauvinism with skirts'

- Francis talks about women and the faith

- Pope wants 'capillary and incisive' role for women in church

- Francis shoots down women cardinals

- Is calling for women cardinals an act of clericalism?

- We are at a crossroads for women in the church