International Women's Day

And why in the world would we need such a thing?

I could reel off statistics that show that among the poorest of the poor, women are almost invariably poorer still; I could point out horrific abuses perpetrated against women today in the name of religion, including Christianity; I could argue that women are oppressed socially, economically, theologically, and psychologically even in cultures where they themselves feel just fine, not knowing anything different.

Or I could quote one of today's "leading Christian thinkers," a man named Dr. Leon J. Podles who is an editor of Touchstone magazine and an expert in Old Icelandic, not to mention a fierce defender of patriarchy. In his book "The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity (Spence Publications, 1999)," he lets fly with this:

"The holy is a masculine category . . . A masculine God is both fully transcendent and fully immanent through love. Such an immanence through love is possible only to a being who is transcendent and separate from creation, that is, masculine."

Of course there's context here; none of it helps Dr. Podles, however, to appear anything other than batty. Batty intellectuals have, unfortunately, inspired legions of men over millennia, and the havoc they wreak upon women isn't confined to plush, leather-chaired dens filled with pseudo-intellectuals smoking pipes.

Male and female, in the image of God, they were made . . . and something's gone terribly wrong.