'Patronising' or a document which marks the Pope ' as a born-again feminist'? Fionola Meredith reports on diverse reactions to the Vatican's statement on women
Nobody loves a feminist. In the popular imagination they seem to rank alongside traffic wardens and wasps as tedious irritants best avoided. Although right-wing US politician Pat Robertson took it all a teensy bit too far with his hysterical claim that "feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practise witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians", there's no doubt he gave voice to a collective social mistrust of the sisterhood.
And now it seems the Catholic Church is putting the boot in too. A statement of official doctrine just published by the Vatican, "Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World" attacks the "radical feminist" thinking which claims that, in order to empower themselves, women must be "adversaries of men" resulting in "lethal effects on the structure of the family". Written by the Pope's top theologian, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the department defining church orthodoxy) the 37-page document is the Vatican's most high-level pronouncement on gender issues since the Pope's 1995 "Letter to Women".
In contrast to the perceived confrontational attitude of feminism, with its selfish "for ourselves" agenda, the Vatican offers an alternative reading of women's characteristic traits, among which are "listening, welcoming, humility, faithfulness, praise and waiting". According to the letter, these virtues of the Virgin Mary are found "with particular intensity and naturalness" in women.
Why? Well, it's all to do with women's amazing ability to give birth. The Vatican claims that "women preserve the deep intuition of the goodness in their lives of those actions that elicit life, and contribute to the growth and protection [of others]. This intuition is linked to women's physical capacity to give life. Whether lived out or remaining potential, this capacity is a reality that structures the female personality in a profound way."
Despite the document's support for equality in the workplace, and for a greater role for women in the governance of the Church - it's not a coincidence that an Italian nun has just been given a job for the first time at a senior level inside the Vatican's own foreign ministry - there's still no sign of a relaxation of the ban on women priests.
Unsurprisingly, the Vatican statement has been greeted with incredulity and contempt by feminists around the world. Erin Pizzey, founder of the international women's refuge movement, declaredL: "I don't think the Catholic Church - whose own priests and bishops cannot marry - is in a position to make such statements. It is one of the most emotionally illiterate organisations I know, and they need to put their own house in order first"; Emma Bonino, a former European commissioner and current member of the European parliament, commented: "To be fair to the Catholic Church, no religion is a great friend of women. They pay you a lot of compliments but they ask you to stay in your place."
But the most fascinating reactions have come from women within the Catholic Church itself. Some are outraged by Ratzinger's words. Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice - a US-based organisation which campaigns for women's reproductive rights - said: "Such observations could only have been made by men who have no significant relationships with women and no knowledge of the enormous positive changes the women's rights movement has meant for both men and women."
Soline Vatinel of the Irish organisation BASIC (Brothers and Sisters in Christ), which aims to end the "sin of sexism" that excludes women from ordination in the Catholic Church, shares Kissling's sense of frustration. "I'm 48 now," she says, "and I've been reading Vatican statements about women since I was 18. This is just the latest in a long line of condescending, patronising documents by a regime which practises sexual apartheid. Ratzinger identifies the special, valuable qualities which I possess as a woman. Do these make me unsuitable to be a priest? These men have an over-inflated idea of their own importance; they think they can define who women are. But what knowledge has Ratzinger got of women? The only difference now is that the Vatican is beginning to realise that its control and power is being challenged, and it's on the defensive."
But Vatinel's despair is tempered by humour: "You just have to laugh at all this. These men take themselves far too seriously!"
Tina Beattie, senior lecturer in Christian Studies at Roehampton University in London agrees that a finely-tuned ear for absurdity can be a valuable way for women to deal with anachronistic practices within the Church: "What other institution today would produce a document about women, written by one group of men addressed to another (the bishops), without quoting or referring to any woman's ideas? Given that the letter is titled 'On the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World', its lack of collaboration with women is slightly ludicrous. But I suspect that many of us who remain in more or less good faith with Holy Mother Church when so many have left, do so because we have a well-developed sense of the ludicrous and have learned to live with her quaint idiosyncrasies."
But many women within the Catholic faith have spoken out in strong support of the Vatican statement. With characteristic verve, Cristina Odone, deputy editor of the New Statesman magazine and a devout Catholic, described the letter as "a historic U-turn ... the document that will mark the Pope as a born-again feminist. . a wonderfully moving testament." (Whether the Pontiff will be keen to embrace a role which casts him as a weird hybrid of Billy Graham and Germaine Greer is another story.)
And Catholic author and translator Helena Scott denied the document was anti-women: "Specific differences between men and women need to be understood and valued, not made the subject of conflict. This document stresses equality and difference. Just as women need male values so men need female values."
This is a view which resonates with Martin Long, director of the Catholic Communications Office in Dublin. Against the chorus of allegations of conservatism which have greeted the publication of the Vatican letter, he is keen to emphasise the progressive nature of the document. "It is radical in the sense that it challenges head-on the implicit and explicit discrimination against women which continues to exist and says it is wrong. This document is timely because it is emphatic about the vital role for women in the Church - historically, currently and in the future."
But Catherine Pepinster, editor of the Catholic weekly, the Tablet, points out that the "more familiar prejudices" of the Vatican come shining through in its continued resistance to the notion of women priests.
Much of the feminist criticism of the statement has centred on the Vatican's apparent romanticisation of women's essentially self-giving, humble, passive tendencies. In particular, Ratzinger's praise for the peculiarly female quality of "waiting" (for a bus? a man? a life?) has caused dismay. Just how passive can you get?
Beattie believes that such sexual stereotypes are only to be expected when an all-male enclave pronounces on the psychology and nature of women. But she draws illuminating parallels between the two seemingly polarised approaches to gender. She believes that "common to both Catholic orthodoxy and much feminist theory is the idea that women are, whether by nature or nurture, more orientated towards relationships of care, and that women have a more intuitive affinity with nature because our bodies bleed, birth and feed".
But Germaine Greer counters that those who see a rapprochement between feminism and the papacy "have got to be more concerned for their faith than for their sanity". She believes that for Ratzinger, "there can be no blurring of the essential contrast, man=hammer, woman=anvil. Woman can only exist within a male context, carrying out male-defined functions, for which she should be praised and rewarded".
It seems that the celibate septuagenarians and octogenarians at the Vatican have held up an idealised image of femininity in which few women recognise themselves.