The ordination of women in the Catholic Church: a survey of attitudes in Spain

Abstract

This paper examines the correlation between socio-economic factors and attitudes to the ordination of women in the Catholic Church against a background of the existing literature on the perception of the Pastoral Ministry of Christian women. The struggle to find theories of economics that assist in formulating expectations in such research is identified and a part-solution offered through the Sraffian account for innovation.A survey was carried out on 110 postgraduate students at the University of Granada (Spain) in 2006. The results demonstrate that the perception of the Catholic Church as sexist is positively related to the gender, political ideology and family size of those surveyed with discrimination perceived to be more prevalent in non-Christian religions. Respondents with a male image of God had less enlightened attitudes to gender equality and believers took a more conservative approach to gender equality than non-believers. Surprisingly, a conservative attitude to gender equality was correlated with a favourable attitude to the ordination of women.

Clergy, capital, and gender inequality: An assessment of how social and spiritual capital are denied to women priests in the Church of England

“…Future research could focus on the relationship between spiritual capital and institutional work in other religious traditions. Debates around gender equality are present in other churches (e.g., see Franco Martínez et al., 2012; Niemelä, 2007; Stroda, 2008; Todd, 1997), not least in other branches of the Anglican Communion (e.g., see Porter, 2011), and so there is scope for advancing understanding in institutional work and gender inequality in other religious contexts. Future enquiry could also be directed toward an analysis of institutional work that is not born out of intentions to maintain or disrupt institutional cultures.…”

Do we live in a Marxian world?

“…This paper focuses mainly on both the gender and economy dimensions as key to sustainable development. Awareness of femininity is the common substrate of any critical theory of capitalism, because it places the logic of life and sustainability (ethics of care) over the logic of death or unsustainability (performed by "Ideological Troika"): capitalism, Christianity (a Western-centrist vision) and patriarchy (Franco et al 2012b).…”