A rather strange take on the issue of equality between men and women from the most influential Catholic weekly in Croatia.

Priest Ivica Raguž published a theological essay in the latest issue of Glas Koncila (Voice of the Council) Catholic weekly titled “Mary's Obedience and Women Today”, in which he writes that “women’s disobedience is seen in seeking their rights for equality which erases differences, the fact that women do not want to accept that they were created from Adam, and that Adam was not created from them, that they are secondary, while men are primary, and that, due to women’s disobedience, the sin has entered the world”, reports Jutarnji List on August 13, 2016.

“The very first pages of Scripture tell us that the original sin was caused by disobedience. Disobedience is a common sin by both Adam and Eve, but it affects mostly women because the devil originally made humans a good of sin due to woman's disobedience”, says Raguž and continues. “Adam sinned, as it often happens today, due to the sympathy with his wife. Adam felt sorry for his wife Eve, he did not want to leave her alone in her sin, but he wanted to be close to her, even in this sinful pity.”

The disobedience of women manifests itself, according to Raguž, in the fact that they persistently demand equality. “Disobedience here means that women are tempted to build their lives without God, that they do not want to have a ‘head’ (Jesus Christ, the Church, a man) which they should obey. Disobedience is seen in seeking their rights for equality that erases differences.

The disobedience is also demonstrated in what we would call two biblical syndromes of disobedient wives: the Martha syndrome, an activist wife without obedience, without peace, and the Magdalena syndrome, a lazy woman of comfort and pleasures, with excessive concern for herself.”

Finally, the author rightly observes that this his article would “'cause derision among men and women who have drifted away from the Christian faith, because for them this speech about women’s obedience means the return to a patriarchal society and advocates for the subordination of women”.

The article has since became a hit on social networks, but probably not for the reasons that the author would have liked.