As I wrote in A Shocking & Unnatural Incident, Elizabeth Cady Stanton was no fan of organized religion. She felt all religions held women down. She even took apart the Bible explaining how many passages were demeaning to women and attempted to justify unfair and often brutal treatment of wives, daughters, sisters, nieces and mothers.

If alive today I know Stanton would voice her support for octogenarian
Jennifer Sleeman, a resident of Clonakilty, County Cork, who asks people to support a one-day boycott of Sunday Mass because she believes the church treats women unfairly–in a word, as second class citizens.

“I do feel that I have right on my side–I do not feel that it is just me. I have felt that a lot of women are angry,” she explains.

Sleeman argues a one-day boycott Sept. 26 will drum home to church officials the true degree of anger over the treatment of women and prompt long-overdue reforms.

Women are protesting here and women are protesting there, she says, but if all women protest in mass with their feet (and their wallets!) the church would pay attention.

Sleeman, who turns 81 Sept. 23, says she’s especially concerned about the Vatican’s stubborn refusal to ordain female priests. This at a time when Catholic churches are closing for lack of priests, parishes are sharing priests, and seminaries are begging for recruits.

Most shocking to me is the Vatican labeling women priests a most serious crime against canon law and equating women priests with sexual abuse of children by priests (all of them male) See http://www.romancatholicwomenpriests.org/. They said this with a straight face?

It might be against canon law, but canon law was written by men, not God.