Jesus includes women, Roman Catholic leaders exclude women

Even in the third millennium CE the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church are not interested in the rule of Human Rights law within their Church. When the Roman Catholic Church tried to bring about necessary reforms at the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), the Church leaders failed to recognize equal dignity, freedom and rights for all faithful women, men and queer. Jesus had tried to realize a just and inclusive community. Two thousand years later, humanity had learned to destroy itself, but not to live together in justice and peace. At the Second Vatican Council there were no Catholic laywomen, men or queer participating in the development of the Decree concerning the pastoral office of bishops in the Church, that is the profile of their leaders. There were no Catholic laywomen, men or queer allowed to vote at the Second Vatican Council either. Sadly, we must assess that this tradition of exclusion of lay men, women and queer dates to the first synods of the Church. After the emancipatory and liberating work of Jesus Christ concerning the apostolate of women, in the second and third century CE the male Christians increasingly ignored the emancipatory and liberating empowerment of the Holy Spirit and turned to a misogynist women discriminating and excluding practice and theology. Women did not participate at the synods and councils of bishops, and male bishops at the synods increasingly lost the agency to integrate sexuality and spirituality for the development of a flourishing body living the life of the Holy Spirit according to the law of the Spirit that is love.

In 325 CE, in the so-called Arabic canons that are attributed to the Council of Nice, canon four decrees on the celibacy of bishops, presbyters and deacons. “We decree that bishops shall not live with women; nor shall a presbyter who is a widower; neither shall they escort them; nor be familiar with them, nor gaze upon them persistently. And the same decree is made regarding every celibate priest, and the same concerning such deacons as have no wives. And this is to be the case whether the woman be beautiful or ugly, whether a young girl or beyond the age of puberty, whether great in birth, or an orphan taken out of charity under pretext of bringing her up. For the devil with such arms slays religious, bishops, presbyters, and deacons, and incites them to the fires of desire. But if she be an old woman, and of advanced age, or a sister, or mother, or aunt, or grandmother, it is permitted to live with these because such persons are free from all suspicion of scandal” (“Canons of the Council of Nicea. The Captions of the Arabic Canons Attributed to the Council of Nicea (325 AD).” 2019. Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research).

Especially questions of sexuality and gender relations were not constructively confronted by open dialogue and discussion in the Christian communities following the first century CE. Women got excluded and exposed to discriminating and sexist practices of oppression. The Didascalia, a pastoral treatise composed in the third century CE, teaches that women should not explain complicated doctrine to outsiders, that women, especially widows, should not teach, and that widows should stay at home (“The Didascalia Apostolorum. Collection of pseudo-apostolic church laws, North Syria; 3rd cent. AD.” 2019b. Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research). At the same time there are still points that testify the liberating self-consciousness of emancipated Christians. The Didascalia teaches also that suitable women should be ordained as deaconesses. That deaconesses should instruct women converts. That deacons and deaconesses are to care for people. That deacons and deaconesses should work closely with the bishop. That Rabbinical rules of “uncleanness” should be abandoned by Christians. That the Holy Spirit remains with a woman during her monthly period, that giving in to Rabbinical taboos and rules opens the way for the wrong spirit; that the normal fluids of sex and intercourse in marriage are clean, and that men should not reject women during their monthly periods (ibid.). At the same time Dionysius, the Archbishop of Alexandria, writes with a spirit of exclusion in a letter “Menstruous women ought not to come to the Holy Table, or touch the Holy of Holies, nor to churches, but pray elsewhere” (“The Canons of Dionysius.” 2019. Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research). Jesus refused religious gender separation as Matthew, Mark and Luke testify.

Matthew 9, 20–22 constitutes for the exegetic expert Ulrich Luz a miracle of saving and healing (Luz, Ulrich. 2007. Das Evangelium nach Matthäus (Mt 8–17). Evangelisch-Katholischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament I/2. 72. Zürich, Düsseldorf: Benzinger):

“(20) Then suddenly from behind him came a woman, who had been suffering from a hemorrhage for twelve years, and she touched the fringe of his cloak, (21) for she was thinking, ‘If only I can touch his cloak I shall be saved’. (22) Jesus turned round and saw her; and he said to her, ‘Courage, my daughter, your faith has saved you’. And from that moment the woman was saved” (Matthew 9, 20-22).

Jesus publicly transgressed the law of separating men and women because of menstruation or women’s diseases. Hemorrhage and sickness is not an obstacle for touching Jesus. Jesus heals and the woman gets saved and healed by touching him. Matthew 9, 22, Mark 5, 35 and Luke 8, 48 all use the indicative perfect active “faith has saved you”. The use of the perfect tense indicates that her faith in Jesus Christ has saved the woman before she had even touched him.

Today, we take the menstruation and hemorrhage for real. In the late antiquity the fathers of the Old Church, as the medieval theologians too, saw in the woman who had been suffering from a hemorrhage for twelve years a symbol for the pagans (Luz 2007, 55).

For Eusebius of Caesarea (approximately 260–340 CE) it was unconceivable that the woman who transgresses the law of Leviticus 15, 25 be a Jew. According to Eusebius, she was a pagan. Tertullian accepted that the woman was Jewish. Touching Jesus is an act of faith. It is the faith in the incarnation of Go’d (Bovon, Francois. 1989. Das Evangelium nach Lukas. Lk 1,1–9,50. Evangelisch-Katholischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament III/1. 449. Neukirchen-Vluyin: Neukirchener Verlag).

Jesus healed her and this was the legitimation to evangelize the pagans. Modern exegetes deal with menstruation and disease following modern medicine. Modern science understands the ovulation cycles thanks to the microscopes that were at disposition at the end of the nineteenth century. Menstruation and alarming vaginal bleeding are empirical facts and cannot simply serve as symbols for idolatry or similar religious interpretations.

The woman who wants to get healed by Jesus is very active and courageous. By touching Jesus, she transgresses Jewish law. She suffers, she takes her body seriously and does not accept to be imprisoned in a state of impurity, she does not accept her isolation from men, she insists on getting healed. Tannehill observes that Luke narrates healings of women and men, “women are placed alongside men in sayings and stories, for this pattern of doubling shows that women share in what Jesus brings and women’s experience is an equal means of access to Jesus’ message” (T Tannehill, Robert C. 1991. The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts. A Literary Interpretation. Volume one: The Gospel according to Luke. 135-36 Philadelphia: Fortress Press). In Luke 13, 10-17, Jesus defends and heals a woman despite Sabbath restrictions, he calls her a “daughter of Abraham” (Luke 13, 16) affirming her “dignity as one who rightly shares in the promises of Israel (Tannehill 1991, 136). In Luke 14, 1–6, Jesus heals a man (ibid. 135). Luke often presents women as oppressed and degraded persons whose cause should be defended as the widows in Luke 2, 37; 4, 25-26; 7, 12; 18, 3-5; 20, 47; 21, 2-3 (ibid. 136). The point of the story of the healing of the woman with the flow of blood is her courage of violating religious taboos by touching Jesus without permission and Jesus’ empathic reaction praising her faith and sending her in peace (ibid.). Two thousand years ago, these verses from the Gospel testify the struggle of women for creating self-identity, realizing their integrity and claiming their dignity. These verses make socially visible what social violence and identity anxieties still try to repress that is the burdensome labor of accepting oneself as fighting for one’s integrity. The woman knows herself, and she knows that to be true to her own self she must violate some rules. She is not transgressing norms; she is not accepting the discriminating determination of being impure because of bleeding. Touching the cloth of Jesus, the healing and Jesus relating to her, make visible shame and structures of power that try to suppress women to this day.

Yes, “shame and guilt are affective companions of a negative appraisal of one’s own self” (Aichhorn, Wolfgang, and Helmut Kronberger. 2012. “The Nature of Emotions. A Psychological Perspective.” In Yearbook 2011. Emotions from Ben Sira to Paul, edited by Renate Egger-Wenzel and Jeremy Corley, 515–25. 523. Berlin: De Gruyter). Yet, the feeling of guilt because of a presumed violation of rules and norms transforms to self-esteem and self-worth, when these rules and norms are identified as unjust social power structures that result from a women oppressing male ideology. The healing of the woman identifies the unjust social power structure as discriminating gender separation.

In Leviticus 15, 24 we read: “If a man lies down with his woman during her menstruation, he gets unclean”. The three synoptic authors take it for granted that Jesus does not get unclean. “Menstruation” in Hebrew can be used synonymously for “impurity”. For Jesus this use is not the case and getting touched by the woman does not make Jesus violate Go’d’s law. There is only empathy and giving his power (Greek: dynamis) to the sick woman. There is no association menstruation—unclean hemorrhage—sinner, as we find in the speech of Yahweh to the prophet in Ezekiel 36, 17:

“Son of man, the members of the House of Israel used to live in their own territory, but they defiled it by their conduct and actions; to me their conduct was unclean as a woman’s menstruation.”

The woman suffering from hemorrhages touches the edge of Jesus’ garment. This border or hem of his cloak also means tassel. We find the touching of the tassel of the hem of Jesus’ cloak by the woman in Luke 8, 44 and Matthew 9, 20. Mark speaks in 5, 27 only of the touching of the cloak but in 6, 56 we read of Jesus: “And wherever he went, to village or town or farm, they laid down the sick in the open spaces, begged him to let them touch even the fringe of his cloak. And all those who touched him were saved.” The tense used is indicative imperfect passive, “they were saved”. In Greek grammar, the use of the imperfect indicates a continuous activity, which pictures Jesus saving the sick as a permanent and constant action of his life. Mark tells in this verse of the many people who always surround Jesus.

The function of the tassel is described in Numbers 15, 37-40:

“Yahweh spoke to Moses and said (37) ‘Speak to the Israelites and tell them, for all generations to come, to put tassels on the hems of their clothes and work a violet thread into the tassel at the hem. (39) You will thus have a tassel, and the sight of it will remind you of all Yahweh’s orders and how you are to put them into practice, and not follow the dictates of your own heart and eyes, which have led you to be unfaithful. (40) This will remind you of all my orders; put them into practice, and you will be consecrated to your God. (41) I, Yahweh, your God, have brought you out of Egypt, to be your God, I, Yahweh your God.’” By touching Jesus’ tassel, the woman reminds Jesus and the entire crowd around him that the tassel’s function is to remind of all the orders of Go’d. The tassels are to remind all not to follow the dictates of their own heart and eyes. In the story of the woman suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years, the tassels of Jesus’ cloak remind us of the orders of Go’d to life a life of the Holy Spirit and according to the law of the Holy Spirit that is love. Jesus encourages us to stop the discrimination and oppression of women in the name of religious taboos and to heal and save and bring peace. Matthew and Luke use the picture of the clothes of Jesus to insist on the power of the law of the Spirit that Jesus embodies and that the woman who stands up fighting for her bodily integrity claims. The courage and determination of that woman is greater than her fear and trembling for breaking and having broken the religious taboo of gender separation.

Matthew and Luke use the picture of touching the clothes to proclaim their message of liberation by the law of the Holy Spirit. John Paul II uses his supreme pontifical power to secure that the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church sticks to the law of celibacy and the Church does not break that taboo. John Paul II tries to establish unity within the increasingly individualist and pluralist clergy by enforcing a dress code. It is his dress that immediately renders perceptible the identity of the priest in public and his belonging to God and to the Church and not his belonging to Go’d, his family and the faithful. The Directory for the Ministry and Life of Priests that was approved by Pope John Paul II on January 31, 1994, claims in article 66 “a cleric's failure to use this proper ecclesiastical attire could manifest a weak sense of his identity as one consecrated to God” (Sanchez 1994). The priest’s white-collar also signals: Do not touch me, I am a Catholic celibate priest. Jesus is not afraid of getting touched; he can relate to the woman and secure their dignity. The picture of Jesus’ clothing encourages the adherence to the Spirit of Go’d. The fruit of this faith in Go’d is healing and salvation and not compliance with a dress code. Nobody since 1994 got appointed bishop if he had not complied with John Paul II’s dress code before. I have the impression that many priests in the Roman Catholic Church too eagerly follow the dress code in public and I hope they do not compensate thereby the lack of personal assessment of their priestly identity. The faithful who has been baptized “has been clothed in Christ” (Galatians 3, 27) and not in a white collar.

At the end of his unfinished manuscript on the laity, the theological expert for the bishops at the Second Vatican Council Karl Rahner introduced a historic critique of social classes and patriarchal structures in the Church (Sauer 1999, 290). He limits the function of the hierarchy to the task of creating unity of faith and coordinating the different charisma in the church. He insists that in the modern world the lay women and men are very well qualified to take over and realize much of the traditional activities of hierarchy in the Church. Rahner remembers the first centuries of the church. A well lettered and well-prepared clergy, the educated elite of that time, administered the goods of the church economically, culturally and often politically. Only the social class of the clergy knew about the condition of the people and was able to secure their well-being. Rahner describes the clergy as being part of the elite and leading class of the civil profane society and not only a spiritual elite. Rahner insists that the Church in the twentieth century does no longer need the clergy as a social class of its own. It is an illusion of the clergy and the hierarchy to pretend to know everything and better than the lay. The lay men and women possess not only expert knowledge in profane things, but they also possess authentic spiritual agency (ibid.).

Rahner insists that all members of the church, laity and clergy are necessary for the salvation of the world, and all represent this salvation. The church is immediately and, in every member, influenced by Go’d and his immediate vocation and destination. For this reason, the lay are not only passive receivers of the orders and of the grace of the hierarchy and the priests. Rahner points at the fact that the hierarchy does not possess all the principles and does not know with security the concrete circumstances of the men and women in the world. Therefore, the lay people are essential for the church because they take responsibility in the world. Further grace has not only a sacramental character and there exist immediate charismas (ibid.). We must conclude that we find also with Rahner the ambiguity of esteeming the laity and at the same time ensuring the doctrinal and pastoral direction of the laity by the priests and the hierarchy. Rahner was not ready to affirm the equal dignity, freedom and rights of all women, men and queer in the Roman Catholic Church according to the law of the Holy Spirit. Thanks to Go’d there are women theologians like Susan Mathew who point at Galatians 5, 22 where Paul shows the community of sisters and brothers the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and trustfulness (Mathew 2013, 153).

We must never forget that the law of the Spirit starts with the faith of the individual woman, man and queer. Paul writes in the letter to the Galatians: “For all of you are the children of God, through faith, in Christ Jesus, since every one of you that has been baptized has been clothed in Christ” (Galatians 3, 26-27). The faith in Jesus Christ is the foundation of the principal equality of dignity, freedom and rights of all women, men and queer Christians and non-Christians alike (Galations 6, 10). Paul affirms in the following verse: “There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither slave nor freeman, there can be neither male nor female – four you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3, 28).

Looking at the equality of all baptized women, men and queer, we must bear in mind that this kind of equality is principally not an equality of juridical distribution of the right of full participation of women, men and queer at the mission of the Church. Individual equality of dignity, freedom and rights of all women, men and queer, is realized through the burdensome labor of accepting oneself, “to know thyself, to be to thine own self true”, by making visible shame and structures of power (Martín Alcoff, Linda. 2006. Visible Identities. Race, Gender, and the Self. 8. Oxford New York: Oxford University Press). Not only in the Catholic world, but also all over the world of mass media and internet publications, female self-knowledge and the public sharing of that knowledge are characterized as “in some way shameful” (Sykes, Rachel. 2017. “Who Gets to Speak and Why? Oversharing in Contemporary North American Women’s Writing.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 43 (1): 151–174. 158). Despite this ongoing discrimination and suppression of women’s creativity, women theologians make visible unjust social structures and women oppressing male ideology.

In 2018, Coblentz and Jacobs assess that the critique of sexism in the church has persisted as a major concern in the US Catholic feminist theology for the last fifty years (ibid. 557–58). Female theologians deconstructed oppression as enforced passive obedience in exchange for promises of heavenly rewards; they deconstructed the ideology of the women’s vocation as self-less surrender of their individual realization for the fulfillment of the needs of others that is of husbands and children (547–50). Catholic women feminist ethicists reinterpreted moral doctrine itself in ways that promote women’s embodied experience and well-being (ibid. 552). Catholic feminist theologians encourage women to take leadership roles and exercise their legitimate authority. They empower women to give language to their spirituality of integration of spirit and body; to exchange the destructive feelings of shame, ascriptions of uncleanness and silence, of self-hatred and self-rejection for the assessment of self-worth and self-love, for reclaiming female power and the likeness of women to the divine for their life-giving embodied existences. Catholic feminist theologians advocate for a Church that acknowledges the full humanity, goodness and bodily integrity of women (ibid.).

It is important to listen again to the insight of Linda Martín Alcoff (2006) and accept this insight in the Roman Catholic Church. This insight concerns the social struggle for dignity, recognition of oppressed minorities, women or queer, and redistribution concerning labor, wages, welfare rights, just as the struggle for equal rights of all baptized in the Catholic Church. We cannot realize social transformation by claiming an unselfconscious universalism, but by realizing the right of full participation of all and by keeping in mind that “maintaining unity requires a careful attending to differences” (ibid. 26–27). Internalizations of self-hatred and inferiority cannot be solved through redistribution but only through the recognition and social realization of the status as a full partner in social interaction as a ruling value in society (ibid. 32–33). The social realization of dignity with the help of speech-acts, that is with the mutual interaction of a speaker and a listener, is claimed by and agreed to by feminist philosophers, including Martín Alcoff (ibid. 60) and I claim the social realization of dignity by speech-acts in the Roman Catholic Church.

There is no writing of the Church fathers and there is no theologian writing on the Christian faith and addressing Christian communities, that does not implore the Christians to care for the unity of their communities and the Church. Again, we must listen to Linda Martín Alcoff who assesses that “maintaining unity requires a careful attending to differences” (ibid. 27). Women, men and queer are not only different personalities. The individual woman, man and queer is the only person able to identify, assess and care for her or his personal integrity. For two thousand years, Christian women, men and queer have concentrated on complying with Jesus’ commandment of loving Go’d and loving the other. The third millennium calls for realizing the whole commandment of Jesus.

Jesus answered the scribe who questioned him “Which is the first of all the commandments?” saying “This is the first: Listen, Israel, the Lord our God is the one, only Lord, and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: You must love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these” (Mark 12, 28-31). Matthew 22, 37-40 testifies the same question by a Pharisee and the same answer of Jesus. In Luke 10, 25-28, a lawyer asks the same question aiming at eternal life. Jesus makes him answer again according to Deuteronomy 6, 5 and Leviticus 19, 18. Jesus does not reply concerning the eternal life of the lawyer but concerning his whole life: “You have answered right, do this and life is yours” (Luke 10, 28). Jesus says do this and you will live. In other words, if you do not live now, life is not yours. If you do not realize love now, you will not live. Saint Jerome joins in his commentary on Galatians 6, 10 Jesus supreme commandment of love and the claim of its range of validity for all women, men and queer on this earth (Jerome, Saint. 2010. Commentary on Galatians. The Fathers of the Church. A new Translation. 260. Editorial director David G. Hunter. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press):

“The blessed John the Evangelist lived in Ephesus until extreme old age. His disciples could barely carry him to church, and he could not muster the voice to speak many words. During individual gatherings he usually said nothing but ‘Little children, love one another’ (1 John 3, 11 and 18). The disciples and brothers in attendance, annoyed because they always heard the same words, finally said, ‘Teacher why do you always say this?’ He replied with a line worthy of John: ‘Because it is the Lord’s commandment and if it alone is kept, it is sufficient’. He said this because of the Apostle’s present mandate: ‘Let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the household of faith’ (Galatians 6, 10).”

I am convinced that in the third millennium CE the law of the Holy Spirit calls for realizing the supreme commandment of Jesus that is the threefold commandment of love (Matthew 22, 37-40; Mark 12, 29-31; Luke 10, 25-28) for realizing peace and justice on earth.

Almost fifty years after the historian’s assessment of the challenges of our nuclear age, his analysis is still valid (Toynbee, Arnold. 1976. Mankind and Mother Earth – A narrative history of the world. London: Oxford University Press). There is the possibility that for the first time, Neolithic women, men and queer with nuclear power and industrialism’s toxic wastes are extinguishing themselves and the whole biosphere. Nuclear war could wipe humans off the face of our planet, but I doubt that a nuclear war will destroy all life of the biosphere. Humankind can destroy itself and much of the biosphere but not the entire biosphere. With a look at the universe, I invite to meditate that the destructive powers and capabilities of humankind as its constructive powers and capabilities are limited. The earth is a very, very tiny planet compared with the observable size, magnitude and dimensions of the universe. If humankind is capable of destroying humankind, in the nuclear age humankind is not empowered to destroy the universe. The earth’s diameter is 12,742 kilometers. The radius of the observable universe is 13.8 billion light years, one light year equaling 9.3 trillion kilometers. The relation of the earth’s diameter to the radius of the observable universe is one to one quintillion, which is one to one followed by eighteen zeros. In this relation, the earth looks small, almost insignificantly small compared with the whole universe. The universe follows laws of physics that enable life on earth. In the nuclear age, humankind for the first time in its history has to take responsibility for sustaining the biosphere or risking destroying its biological conditions for living and humankind has to enhance social skills for sustaining justice and peace.

Looking back on the history of humankind in 1973 in London, Arnold Toynbee concludes that only the building of a government that concerns all communities on earth will be able to make an end to the sickness of wars and barbarism (Toynbee 1976, 589–597). The reader of Toynbee’s history doubts the near realization of this claim of a historian. Toynbee gets very clear: The development of the social skills of empathy, respect and love of men and women did not grow with men and women’s technical capacities. It sounds like mankind will not learn to walk the way of peace but continues to destruct the fact to wonder about, that is the fact that mankind exists at all.

Toynbee starts out wondering about the existence of the biosphere, the possibilities for life on a small grain of sand like a planet called earth, which is to be found in a universe that extends to limits unknown and unseen. Life possibilities are bound to very strict and sustainable variables of this universe and all of these are given. Sumerian civilization took form in the Uruk period in the fourth Millennium BCE. The Sumerian culture was the first on this planet to organize agriculture on the construction of irrigation systems between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, giving testimony of their life by leaving written messages in the sands of the following centuries. This was in the third millennium before Christ and Egypt was soon to follow. Similar cultures in India and China came relatively late. And from the steps of Eurasia for most of the history of the last five thousand years, streams of nomads kept alive in Europe the changing rhythms of settlers getting conquered but passing their culture on to the invading nomads. In Greek-Roman antiquity, the inhabited part of the world was called “oikumene”. Looking in 1973 on the oikumene, Toynbee reasons that for the first time Neolithic men and women with nuclear power and industrialism’s toxic wastes can extinguish themselves. Mankind has left the Neolithic Age for the Anthropocene (see my Posting “Anthropocene”).

Toynbee is describing the unsolved social problems of mankind after having dominated the environment. This improvement comes from many external sources, including improved standards of living, education, public health, sanitation, medicine, housing, and nutrition. What remains to be studied from a Human Rights perspective of the dignity of all men and women is the fact that many women, men and queer on this planet do not fully participate in these substantial environmental improvements of the industrial age.

The technological achievements of the fourth millennium BC needed and produced specialists - miners, blacksmiths, engineers — for the planning and organization of big public projects like drainage and irrigation systems. The contribution to the surplus in food production was more significant than the contribution of the mass of unskilled laborers. An unequal distribution of the profit therefore seems inevitable and probably justified. Differences by time grew to intolerable gaps that passed on to the next generation by heredity. Social injustices and war were the consequences. These two original sicknesses of civilization keep plaguing men and women till our days. Toynbee continues: Apparently there are few men and women who would recognize today that the system of nation states that we had known for the last five thousand years was not capable of satisfying the political demands of the people. The globalized society of mankind asks for a different solution for political organization. The nation state can lead wars but is incapable of assuring peace on earth. Today’s nation states are not able to secure peace, to stop men and women from polluting the biosphere, or to maintain her irreplaceable indispensable and irreparable resources. This manifests as the political anarchy in a world that technically and economically is already globalized. Technologically, for about one hundred years, we would be able to build a world-wide political organization of the world’s villages. Technological progress considerably augmented mankind’s richness and power during the last two hundred years. For the last two hundred years, industrialization and the invention and use of the machine created the industrialized capitalists, who seem to follow the exploitation of their working men and women with a hitherto unknown appetite for money and reckless ambitions lacking any consideration of the dignity of all women, men and queer. These European and North American capitalists excelled in stealing the precious inventions of the humble inventors to make profit, money and richness. The development of the social skills of empathy, respect and love of men and women did not grow with men and women’s technical capacities. Since the rise of civilization, there is a discrepancy between technological progress and the social behavior of men and women. Technological progress considerably augmented mankind’s richness and power during the last two hundred years. Yet to bridge and master the gap between the physical possibilities to do the evil and the bad with the ethical faculty to overcome the bad presents an almost hopeless task. Looking back on this history in 1973 in London, Toynbee concludes that only the building of a government that concerns all communities on earth will be able to put an end to the sickness of wars and barbarism. Standing on the shoulders of Toynbee in 2019, we must complete his analysis with the fact that the five thousand years period of his analysis of human culture and history is dominated by the social structure of the patriarchate, that is by the domination of women and queer by men. I hope that the third millennium CE will see the end of the suppression of women and queer by men. There is no peace without justice. There is no justice without the rule of Human Rights law. There is no justice without the realization of the equal dignity, freedom and rights of all women, men and queer.