Phoenix diocese to monitor talk about ‘God Mother’

The Catholic Diocese of Phoenix has informed author-poet Edwina Gateley that they intend to tape her talks during a nuns retreat in June at the Franciscan Renewal Center in Paradise Valley to monitor whether her remarks conform to Catholic teachings.

“We don’t necessarily believe we are obligated to provide forums for people who may use that forum as a license to attack what we stand for,” diocese spokesman Jim Dwyer said. “We aren’t saying she would. We don’t know.”

Gateley, a British-born lay missionary, writes and speaks often of a “God Mother,” and her writings have been critical of church male hierarchy. She points out that St. Augustine pronounced women “not made in the image of God” and that St. Thomas Aquinas said the “woman is an incomplete being, a misbegotten male.”

Gately founded the Volunteer Missionary Movement in 1969 with some 1,500 missionaries across the world. In 1983, she founded Genesis House in Chicago for women involved in prostitution. She tells how she met resistance when she sought permission from the Catholic hierarchy to recruit missionaries from all religions for a God who is “black and white, male and female, gay and straight.” Among Gateley’s 10 books are “A Warm Moist Salty God” and “Growing in God.”

She is also a proponent of "womyn's ordination" and a regular, it seems, at the annual Mahony "Dissent Fest"...