Schooling Father Danny

Are Catholic priests trained to disdain women? Seems like it

In the bingo game of life, I did not have telling off a priest on my card. And yet, I did it. 

I am not sure it made any difference, but I had to take one for the team.

You see, during a recent Mass at school, Father Danny gave a sermon (or was it a homily? I Googled it and still don’t know for sure, and I’m Catholic) in which he discussed life purpose for a second. But really, the sermon/homily was about Brett Kavanaugh.

Don’t get your hopes up: Father Danny is 100% pro Brett. He recounted a story wherein he visited the (creepy, hyper Catholic DC-area) boys’ prep school that Brett Kavanaugh attended, and, while there, ate a delicious luncheon.

During lunch, many priests and muckety-mucks took the opportunity to assure Father Danny that all the stories that had been circulating over the past several years about dear Brett (you know–the alcoholism, the massive debts, the possible wife beating, the waving his penis in a girl’s face, and the rapey talk) were bald-faced lies. 

Brett, you see, is and was a perfect angel, and he was always meant for the Supreme Court because he has had it in his sights his entire, beatific life. Making the SCOTUS is Brett’s purpose, and God is clearly on the side of the innocent, humble, cherubic Brett Kavanaugh. 

Everyone who said otherwise was spreading sinful lies, Father Danny assured us. By “everyone,” I knew he meant women.

My back seized up. I looked around the auditorium. Almost every other woman my age wore a quietly horrified expression. 

The auditorium was also half-filled with female students, but they were oblivious. Kids don’t watch the news, and they are absolutely ignorant of news from six or seven years ago, when they were in elementary school.

I, on the other hand, grew up watching the news, but I wasn’t usually allowed to watch TV, so the nightly news was the only screen time I got. Twenty-five minutes after dinner with Peter Jennings.

Father Danny finished the Mass, and as soon as it was over, I asked a colleague, Did you hear that? Can you believe he said that?

This, as I was told, was not the first time Father Danny gave a sermon/homily in which he indirectly insulted women and was inappropriately political. But I decided it would–if I had anything to do with it–be the last.

No, I didn’t report Father Danny or file a complaint. I invited him into my classroom for tea and a gentle feminist beat-down.

In Mass the other day, you mentioned Brett Kavanaugh, I began. Kavanaugh is a politically sensitive subject, to be sure, but something else bothered me.

Father Danny raised his eyebrows.

The whole women are always lying part really disturbed me, I explained. I don’t know if that’s what you meant to convey, but I can tell you that it’s what women heard.

I couldn’t sleep the night after your Mass, I said, because I kept thinking about how women have been disbelieved since the beginning of time. Men always brush off any assault, abuse, or rape as the woman making it up.

So when you talked about Brett Kavanaugh, what the women in our school heard is that our entire gender should never be believed if we dare to come forward and report rape or sexual assault.

I felt that Father Danny needed some context. Did you know that, statistically, 80% of rapes are never reported? I asked him. And do you know why women largely do not bother to report rape? Because they are never believed. Because they have their reputations destroyed if they dare to speak up. 

I think that your comments during Mass about Brett Kavanaugh and women lying went over the heads of the girls in the school, I added, but they didn’t go over my head, nor the heads of the other women who work here.

More explanation was obviously necessary because Father Danny looked absolutely lost.

In the case of Kavanaugh, I said, the one woman whose testimony we got to see came forward 30-something years later. Does someone emerge from the shadows after several decades with a lie? No, in my opinion, her lifetime of Brett Kavanaugh-induced trauma is what made her come forward and risk the inevitable public trashing she would receive.

She said, if you remember, that Kavanaugh almost raped her, and she believed he would kill her.

I added: Christine Blasey Ford had to go into hiding with her family because of death threats she received after her Kavanaugh testimony. The lies were all on Kavanaugh’s side, not hers. 

There were also 4,500 “tips” about Kavanaugh that came in, but the FBI ignored all of them and never investigated. Not because Brett Kavanaugh is an angel. No, this was all politics. This was a politically-motivated installation of a SCOTUS justice.

Could all these people who came forward with tips have been lying? It’s not even mathematically possible. It makes no sense

Father Danny looked confused; he was just sitting there staring at me, his mouth agape, like an idiot. I could tell that Father was not as deep in the political weeds as I am; he did not seem to be aware of Leonard Leo, the Catholic political architect and kingmaker.

Okay, I’ve beat this drum too long. I just wanted you to know how women felt during that Mass, I said. We parted ways after some inane chit-chat (during which Father Danny exhibited his ignorance of Shabbos customs—but that’s another story).

Father Danny is a very Extra priest. He is not that old (although he acts ancient) and always wears long black robes and performatively paces up and down the halls praying with a little black book. From what I can tell, he is a throw-back, old school, probably long trained (by the Bible) to believe that women are both inferior and bad.

As he left my rom, he told me I gave him a lot to think about. But did I? 

I guess we shall see what the next sermon/homily brings.