Donna Schaper

I got snookered by a fake news story from the Pope. “Vatican says Pope will ordain women as priests.” I was deceived by an infomercial on late night TV. “Thin thighs in thirty days.” One of these was…

I used to be angry, now I am apoplectic. I also used to be fraulein and now I am a frau. I used to be a mademoiselle and now I am madame, a señorita and now a señora. In other words, I am a mature woman whose human rights are vanishing before her very eyes. For a long time, I have become habituated to freedom, confusing myself, apparently, with a human being—or even a man. I don’t like it when Congress treats me like a girl by hacking away at abortion rights and talking about eliminating funds for family planning.

Thursday morning a dozen occupiers addressed forty or so clergy. We clergy were all somewhat skeptical of the demand for public space. You could hear the ministerial, rabbinical hrumph, hrumph in the room. (Most of us had never occupied Zucotti Park and a downward trend in temperature wasn’t going to improve on that.) But the occupiers edged toward the theological as they articulated a need for communal, inspirational, face-to-face contact in which they could “appear” to one another.