In Sacrament meeting today, one of the speakers brought up the idea that women are inherently spiritual and men have the priesthood so they can be as spiritual as women.<\/p>\n
As a man, I find this idea personally offensive. The idea holds that without the priesthood I cannot be compassionate, empathetic or charitable. More specifically, it holds that I cannot be inherently like that.<\/p>\n
This flies in the face of reality where I have seen many men who are more spiritual than many women. Naturally, the opposite is true, but it is independent of gender.<\/p>\n
The ability to be compassionate, empathetic or charitable is given to all persons and those who do not have it can learn it.<\/p>\n
Holding the priesthood does not make us any more compassionate, empathetic or charitable. It may provide us with more opportunities to use those qualities, but it doesn’t give us those qualities.<\/p>\n
Where do ideas like this come from? Is it an effort to rationalise away the decision in the previous century to remove the women’s authority to exercise her priesthood? If so, is it justifiable at the expense of making men feel spiritually worthless?<\/p>\n
Perhaps there’s another reason. The idea doesn’t make sense to me, but maybe someone out there can clarify things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"