The Church's response to women's emancipation over the 20th century
From the end of the 19th century, in industrialised countries ruled by a liberal parliamentary government, the subaltern position of women has been called into question. Several factors accounts for this trend: 1- the growing access of women to education and paid employment, which positioned them as partners in both the familial and national economies and had the corollary of effect of 2- evolving feminist movements. By the end of the 19th century a feminine or feminist theology was being developed. It undertook a re-interpretation of the Bible offering fresh readings, and questioning the place of women in the Church hierarchy.
Informations[1]These changes have, to some extent, been , noted and approved by the Magesterium of the Catholic Church as stated in the Pastoral Constitution[2] Gaudium et spes (1965). The Catholic Church's misogynistic legacy bound up in Sinning Eve was dropped in favour of the promotion of women. It does not follow that such notions as equality between men women were endorsed. Women's “own nature” was pressed into service to argue the complementarity of the sexes and “equality in alterity”. The vocation and mission of women were firmly restricted to a specific domain. In his 1988 apostolic letter[3] Mulieris dignitatem, John-Paul II itemises the vocation and mission of women: lmaternity and virginity , wherefore he restates their exclusion from the priesthood. This argument pertains to essentialist thinking that looks on people according to their differences in nature according to sex, “race”, culture, etc.
In the 1990s the apology and dissemination by the Holy See of gender essentialist theories became a lot more insistent and were loaded with political implications. The Catholic Church Magisterium was in fact busy promoting it to international instances. Three factors can be put forward to explain this move:
The 1989 fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc gave rise to a new world order. This reconfiguration allowed for a more forceful pressure to be brought to bear on governments and international instances. The more so since John-Paul II instigated a strategy of involvement in international relations born out notably by his world-oriented politics and travels.
In most industrialised countries, as sociologist Danièle Hervieu-Léger noted, a “radical and irreversible” transformation had taken place which questioned the sacred nature of heterosexual marriage, blood filiation and the obligation of reproduction for women, attended by an increase in the number of stepfamilies. Many states sanctioned these changes and legislated in consequence. At the same time, they had to address the issue of homo-parental families which would lead in France to the Pacte civil de solidarité (1999). The Netherlands would be the first country to legalise same-sex marriage in 2001, Canada would follow suit in 2004.
The mainstreaming, initiated in US universities, of Gender Studies that “denaturalise” the difference between men and women.
Since the Second World War The United Nations' international conferences have been the arena where issues of equality between men and women in common law and of so-called “reproduction rights” have been debated. The September 1994 International Conference on Population and Development organised by the United Nations in Cairo got much papal attention. Joining forces with some of Islam's representatives, the Holy See succeeded in inserting some reservations into the text of the Program of Action. The Pope notably insisted that abortion be in no way considered a mode of contraception and objected to any formula that could be construed as an incentive to legislate abortion. A few months later, the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing under the aegis of the UN set the scene for robust semantic debates about the suitability of the term gender “equity” in preference to “equality” in the context of rights to health education, economy and politics.
Such pronouncements come backed up with a theological arsenal, the production of weighty arguments against what some theologians choose to call “gender ideology” or “gender theory”. What they do condemn is in effect the “Gender Studies” field in which, through the experimenting and questioning of a vastly diverse – and hardly consensual – methodology, academics grapple with the nature of gender relations.
The most significant fight back is undoubtedly the Lexicon of ambiguous and controversial terms on family, life, and ethical issues (2005), a mighty (1000 pages) tome, driven by the Vatican's Council for the Family, issued first in Italian, then, two years later in French, then in English and other languages. Against “radical feminism”, the theologians contributing to the text insist on separate feminine and masculine identities stressing both what is prescribed in Scripture and human nature, that is to say anatomy. In 2011, in his address to the Bundestag, Pope Benedict XVI[4] reasserted the categorical imperative represented by “nature” ». In this perspective respecting nature means, for women, refusing all forms of contraception (baring continence) and focussing on their strictly feminine missions, from which priesthood is irrevocably excluded. For men as for women, it also means the non-transgression of the biological determinations imposed by their bodies, be it transitioning or having homosexual intercourse.
The mobilisation on “gender issues” has in the past few years spread all over Europe. It is manifest in demonstrations, media campaigns, symposiums. It centrally brought militants together to oppose gay marriage (and homo-parental adoption) as well as state education's efforts to introduce some teaching addressing gender issues. The galvanising appeal of these two causes can notably be explained by their reliance on a fear of social familial and sexual anomie. It does not follow from the large Catholic representation among the demonstrators that the initiatives came from ecclesiastic authorities. However some did succeed in bringing together many associations and individuals to the extent that the success of these mobilisations could be perceived as the triumph of a Church defender of inherited values.
A closer look, which supposes reading and listening to what self-acknowledged Catholic men and women have to say outside these public arenas, suggests that the faithful's adhesion to the “anti-gender” discourse is however far from unanimous. This observation calls for an audit of the risks and opportunities this issue presents the Church authorities with.
Cohésion and community. In debates around ethical matters, the Catholics – along with members of other faiths – are invited in a consultant capacity. On such questions, they mostly manage to produce a coherent and cogent discourse in which the faithful can recognise themselves. As such, anti-gender battles could act as coalescing agent of “the” Catholic community brought together by a shared enemy and a common cause. This overlooks the fact that there is no Catholic community. The Catholics may share a faith but they remain plural. They don't all support papal or anti-gender discourses. Over and above the clergy who distanced themselves from the movements, some social, political, professional and sexual categories, as well as some groups sharing specific religious sensibilities proved highly critical: gay people, catholic female theologians – unsurprisingly – but also those whom historian Anthony Favier calls the “Church's silent ones” among whom women increasingly discomforted by the prohibition that excludes them from sacerdotal roles – the more so since they are the mainstay of lay pastoral ministry[5] .
The texts. Christian female theologians have been busy questioning the Church tradition, praxis and scripture. They reassess the texts, images and mind-set with a view to expose patriarchally-driven positions but also to highlight the role that women play in early Christian evangelisation. Many of those thinkers have in their sights the integration of women within the clergy and the religious authorities. Indeed their approach is highly subversive. It threatens the very foundations on which the Holy See builds its argumentation: the force of continuity and tradition. Besides, when it comes to sexual dimorphism in liturgy, this discourse runs counter to the principle of lay participation in liturgy, regardless of sex, a principle upheld by the Second Vatican Council.
The relation to other faiths. Both sides of the argument are inspired by the influence of other faiths. Catholic theologians draw much inspirations from Protestant feminists, mostly from the US. Conversely the Holy See is attentive to the irredentist Orthodox position on the issue of female ministry. Now, one of the Holy See's major diplomatic endeavours these days is a rapprochement with that church.
