It doesn’t matter how many people I listen to, speaking optimistically about the elevation of the new Pope Leo to the papal throne. There is still one glaring fact that speaks louder than any words. Women were completely excluded from the process.

I knew in advance, of course, that this was the inevitable scene. This is how Popes have been elected for a long, long time. But there is something about the stark reality of it being played out in front of you that is chilling. As pictures of the conclave gathering were broadcast around the world, they felt like dispatches from a different planet.

What’s going on here? Why are all of these people wearing red skull caps, capes and sashes?  On the face of it, the collective of Cardinals looked like the kind of cult that would frequently be decried as dangerous or malign in the average tabloid newspaper. There was something dystopian about the imagery, that seemed to open up a portal into the essential weirdness of the institutional Roman Catholic Church. The only surprise, perhaps, was that they weren’t being forced to wear ‘skorts’.

However, the Cardinals’ garish garb is not the real issue here.

CELIBATE MALE PRIESTHOOD

Rather, it is that every single one of these characters, in all their fancy regalia and pomp, is a man. On this occasion, two Cardinals cried off and so a total of 133 cast their ballots, with not even the hint of a woman among them.

Or to approach it from a different angle: over half the population of the world (and of Roman Catholics) were – and have been for as long as almost anyone can remember – excluded, disenfranchised, silenced.

I have heard the process of electing Leo described as ‘democratic’. Well, there is a vote. And to be elected, a candidate needs to have the support of two-thirds of the electorate. But that does not make it a democratic decision.

How can it be ‘democratic’ when it is the embodiment of an extreme form of discrimination against women: that is, total exclusion? The message is clear: the Church is telling women – again – that it doesn’t matter what any of them think or feel. It is a deeply insulting snub and, by any measure, objectionable in the extreme.

Pope Leo XIV

It is not as if women have not declared an interest in being involved. Nor is it that the aggressively discriminatory nature of the refusal by the hierarchy, and by a succession of Popes, to allow women to become priests – and therefore, further down the line bishops and cardinals – has not been pointed out to the Vatican, or indeed to members of the local hierarchies and the clergy.

The cardinals are well aware that many women who still adhere to the Catholic religion see this exclusion from ‘holy orders’ as fundamentally unjust and wrong. It comes down to a very simple truth. The suggestion that there is any aspect of the functions carried out by priests of which a woman is incapable is ludicrous.

In reality, it would not be hard for the Roman Catholic Church to become more genuinely inclusive. Copious examples exist in other Christian sub-groups, where women have been empowered to become members of the clergy, equal in standing – and in responsibility – to their male counterparts.

But the Roman Catholic Church is stuck in a time-warp. It relegates women to roles that are entirely subservient. It remains a bastion of male privilege; a centre of patriarchal supremacism and condescension. In a way, an occasion like this is important, in that you can see it all in glaring technicolour. The patriarchy is alive and well, and finding its true level revelling in the trappings of wealth in the Vatican city.

I don’t doubt that some of these Cardinals are nice people and mean well. But that is neither here nor there. Because there is no one, among them, with the guts to stand up properly for the 51%.

Which is why looking at the spectacle made my flesh crawl. This is meant to be an important decision. But, honestly, seeing the 133 men making it together, and no women at all in the frame, made me despair. Can they not see how stupid and wrong it looks – and how stupid and wrong it actually is? Is it just that they don’t care? That they are afraid of women? Or that they believe in their hearts that, really, only men are capable of deciding who should be Pope?

I heard an Irish bishop on the news dancing around the topic and trying to soft-soap the official shut-out of women. He avoided giving a straight answer. But he did defend the status quo, saying that there was something uniquely valuable in the celibate male priesthood.

This, apparently, is why only men can be priests. Why only men can be bishops or cardinals. And why only men are capable of deciding who should lead the flock.

It is all downright nonsense, a relic of a world that should have been left behind once the Suffragettes started agitating for the vote for women – and it should be treated as such.

BASTIONS OF MALE PRIVILEGE

Which begs a deeper question that has always bothered me: what is the real story with women who insist on remaining part of the Church, despite the fact that they are treated as – at best – second class citizens in it, and by it? It really is like turkeys voting for Christmas, offering a blanket invitation to men in general to follow the Church’s lead by treating women with disdain.

There is no logic whatsoever to it. But worse still it is an insidious factor in the generally discriminatory treatment of women at almost every level of society in Ireland and elsewhere.

In many ways, life here has moved on. Only 34% of weddings in Ireland in 2023 involved Catholic ceremonies. 40% of all marriages were non-religious. The figures show that it really isn’t that hard to take an objective view of what religion is all about, or to recognise the damage that it does to people.

Women often wonder aloud, or in print, why they have always been so badly discriminated against in civil society. And they want to know why anti-woman prejudices are flourishing afresh in so many places across the world. In part at least, the answer is that religion was hugely important in spreading the idea that women were, and indeed are, lesser beings. People were indoctrinated to that effect – and, in all sorts of unpleasant ways, it stuck.

This is true of all of the religions of Abraham – that is, the various sects and branches of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. There is no need to go into arcane detail in relation to female rabbis in the Jewish religion or imams in Islam, but they do exist in small numbers, depending on the territory. There are also women clergy in many Protestant faiths: Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Anglican, Episcopalian, Pentacostalist, and Church of Ireland. There are female priests in Hinduism. And so on.

Historically, all of these religions were bastions of male privilege, power and exceptionalism. Some have responded to the campaign for gender equality better than others. There are huge differences across the world even within religions. Canada is at the forefront of the campaign to introduce female imams, and to free them to lead congregations of men and women – but that idea would get short shrift in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia.

But the main monolith that is unmoving on the issue is the Roman Catholic Church, along with Orthodox Churches (and Seventh Day Adventists).

So why do women stick around and accept the inferior role set out for them by the Catholic Church?

It can hardly be that they all believe fervently in the doctrine of trans-substantiation. Or in the theory of the immaculate conception – which is that Mary, said to be the mother of Jesus, is different to everyone else in human history, because she was born without original sin. Or in the infallibility of the Pope. Or in the story that Mary became pregnant as a result of being magically impregnated by the Holy Spirit?

SO MUCH HYPOCRITICAL BADNESS

Asked to explain what they truly believe, a huge number of nominal Catholics will admit that they are not convinced about any of these things. Do they really believe that the individual we imagine as Jesus Christ was crucified, died and was then resurrected, sailing off up to heaven after three days? Many Catholics in Ireland will tell you that it is a bit far-fetched.

A lot of people seem surprised that the gospels were written – if that is the correct word – between 70 and 120 years after the death of the man from Nazareth.  How accurate or reliable can they be? The truthful answer has to be that they are not very reliable at all.

So why – when they really believe so little of what the religion is supposed to be about – do people insist on calling themselves Catholic? The institution of the Church has been responsible for so much hypocritical badness and sometimes – in our own direct experience here in Ireland – plain evil, that the obvious thing to do is run a mile.

And that is particularly true for women. I hear the former President of Ireland Mary McAleese on occasion engaging in what is clearly an ageist assault on the members of the Vatican hierarchy and I think: how dumb is this?  This is the Roman Catholic Church. They have always seen gay people fucking as a sin. They have always treated women as inferior. They have facilitated sex abuse and then covered it up. They have committed atrocities in mother and baby homes. They have stolen Irish babies and sold them to Americans.

So why, exactly, as a woman, do you want to have hand, act or part in any of this?

I hope that, as an American, the new Pope, Robert Francis Prevost, can use his offices to embarrass Donald Trump into ending Israel’s campaign of genocide in Gaza.  If he can do that quickly, he will have justified his mission. But it won’t make the deep-rooted anti-women structures and assumptions of Catholicism any more palatable...

HEED THE WARNING SIGNS

On a related matter, have you ever heard anything quite as absurd as the requirement imposed by The Camogie Association that inter-county teams would have to wear what are called ‘skorts’? Here again, we have an organisation that has behaved as if it doesn’t give a damn about what ordinary women – even those who play the game – think or feel.

For the uninitiated, ‘skorts’ are an unholy amalgam of skirts and shorts. The general view among players is that they are uncomfortable and restrictive. But the last time it was discussed at Congress by the Camogie Association (which is closely linked with the GAA, but acts as a ‘separate organisation’), a sizeable majority of delegates voted in favour of insisting that players would wear the dreaded apparel.

There is an element of propriety involved here, an outdated sense that “Gorls look better in skorts!” There is an element too of snobbishness. “We don’t want the team looking like any oul’ shower.” But women wear shorts in soccer and in Gaelic football and no one bats an eyelid. Surely at a minimum, that should have remained an option. Instead it was ‘skorts’ for all, come hell or high water.

Well, the water has been getting very high indeed over the past few weeks.

There comes a time when those who are being treated like they don’t matter have no option but to take a stand, or their dignity and sense of self-worth will be gone forever. Back in 2017, the Irish women’s international soccer team had to do it, threatening to refuse to play a match against Slovakia in Dublin. They had been treated abysmally – forced to share tracksuits with underage teams; required to change out of them in airport toilets; amateurs hadn’t been compensated for work lost; the match fees for the professionals were tokenistic.

From now on, they insisted, they’d have to be consulted on key decisions. Amateurishness on the part of the FAI would no longer be tolerated. It worked, with the result that Irish women footballers will never be trampled on again.

Well, The Camogie Association would do well to heed the warning signs. The Cork and Waterford teams that had been due to play in the Munster Final decided to take a stand, saying that both teams were going to wear shorts. That game was cancelled and an emergency meeting has been called for May 22, to discuss a possible change to the ‘skorts’ rule, with the President of the Association Brian Molloy – “Why a man?” lots of people have asked – saying that he supports the idea of teams or players having a choice about what to wear.

But it is still unclear if the delegates from the county boards will have been sufficiently moved to change the ‘skorts only’ decision made back in 2024.

Unlike the Conclave in the Vatican, The Camogie Association should make a point of listening to the women involved. And then they should act in the best interests of the players – and by extension of the game.