CULTURE & COSMOS

August 3, 2004 Volume 1, Number 52

Vatican’s Call for Broad Roles for Women Labeled ‘Anti-Feminist’ by Media

A letter published last week by the Vatican celebrates what Pope John
Paul II calls the feminine genius and calls for women to have access to
positions of national leadership. But the document received a largely
negative reception in the mainstream press where it was characterized as
“slamming feminism.”

“Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of
Men and Women in the Church and in the World” was issued by the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and made public on Saturday. As
its title indicates, the letter’s thrust is that women and men have
complementary roles to play in the Church and in society. The letter warns
against a tendency in “new approaches to women’s issues” that make women
and men adversaries in a struggle for power.

The document is critical of the idea, gaining traction in academic and
public policy circles, that there are no differences in nature between the
sexes and that apparent gender differences are the result of social
conditioning. “According to this perspective, human nature in itself does
not possess characteristics in an absolute manner: all persons can and
ought to constitute themselves as they like, since they are free from
every predetermination linked to their essential constitution.”

The 7,000-word letter says that man and woman were created with
differences that are complimentary and that both family and society
benefit from feminine “values.” Chief among such feminine values is what
the document calls the “capacity for the other” which it defines as the
ability to “elicit life, and contribute to the growth and protection of
the other.” While this feminine attribute is closely linked to a woman’s
ability to bear children, the letter stresses that “this does not mean
that women should be considered from the sole perspective of physical
procreation.” The close link between motherhood and female identity does
not require that a woman give physical birth, according to the document.

Women have a special role to play in the life of the family, the letter
says, but her sphere of influence ought not to be limited to that role.
“[W]omen should be present in the world of work and in the organization of
society, and . . . women should have access to positions of responsibility
which allow them to inspire the policies of nations and to promote
innovative solutions to economic and social problems.” The letter calls on
society to not discriminate against those women who want to work
exclusively in the home and to make it possible for those women “who wish
also to engage in other work . . . to do so with an appropriate
work-schedule, and not have to choose between relinquishing their family
life or enduring continual stress.”

Despite its calls for women to be treated equally, headlines from both
the national and international press claimed the letter condemned feminism
and this despite the fact that the word “feminism” never appears in the
text of the document. Many reports, including the Washington Post’s,
claimed that document accused feminism of undermining the traditional
family and paving the way for homosexual “marriage.” In reality it is the
blurring of the differences between the sexes that the letter said was
having this affect. “This theory of the human person, intended to promote
prospects for equality of women through liberation from biological
determinism” calls into question “the family, in its natural two-parent
structure” and makes “homosexuality and heterosexuality virtually
equivalent . . .”

Copyright, 2004 --- Culture of Life Foundation.
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