Rite and Reason: Presented by a first-year undergraduate, the Vatican's recent document on men and women would barely merit a pass. So why bother responding to such logical incontinence? asks Mary Condren
The Jesuit philosopher, Michel de Certeau, once wrote that "in the past, arguments against 'false' gods were used to induce belief in a true God . . . Even though this is logically questionable, it works, and it fools people".
This and other logically problematic strategies permeate the Vatican's latest document, On The Collaboration Of Men And Women In The Church And In The World.
To begin with, it claims of contemporary feminism that "a first tendency is to emphasise strongly conditions of subordination in order to give rise to antagonism: women, in order to be themselves, must make themselves the adversaries of men".
In 35 years of contemporary feminism one would be hard pushed to find such attitudes. Most women begin their theological journey hoping to accompany men on theirs. However, the Vatican has intimidated, fired and silenced those women who merely attempted to initiate dialogue.
Women analyse subordination in order to regain female integrity, damaged by misogynist attitudes and underpinned by centuries of faulty theology. But the Vatican projects on to women precisely the oppositional strategy it uses itself.
The second claim is that "in order to avoid the domination of one sex or the other, their differences tend to be denied". This logical fallacy is termed "faulty use of authority". In other words, it fails to acknowledge disagreements among experts or misrepresents the other's position.
Since the early 1980s, women seldom speak of "feminism", but "feminisms". For strategic reasons (threat of raging female hormones) early campaigns minimised differences between women and men merely to attain equality of treatment and access to human rights.
In the last 25 years gynocentric, psychoanalytic, mujerista, chicana, womanist, two-thirds world and many other approaches to women's issues have emerged. What is now termed "difference feminism" (the attempt to speak respectfully of women across cultural differences) makes it almost impossible to speak of women as a generic category.
The document begins with the statement "The Church, expert in humanity." Any feminist theorist worth her salt would ask: "Whose humanity"? What ideological strategy have you used, or what threat do you invoke enabling you to collapse ethnic, racial and economic differences to such a unilateral definition?
We do not have to look far for the answer, because now we come to the nub of the issue. The document states that feminism's apparent inability to acknowledge differences calls "into question the family, in its natural two-parent structure of mother and father, and makes homosexuality and heterosexuality virtually equivalent, in a new model of polymorphous sexuality".
Since feminist theory does not dispute the fact of multiple differences, this argument is called "an hypothesis contrary to fact".
In addition, it entails the "slippery slope", that is, without justification, to predict that one step will lead to a second, generally undesirable, step. Lastly, it proposes a "false dilemma", that is, it reduces a complex problem into an either/or dichotomy.
First, women's call for acknowledgment of differences leads to the radical respect for love, commitment and integrity across all human relationships, whatever their biological permutations.
Second, the term "polymorphous sexuality" is insulting. As recent writers to this newspaper have noted, relationships call for many qualities: justice, forgiveneness and tolerance among others. Sexual pleasure certainly plays a role, but only in the overall context of commitment and fidelity.
The Vatican repeats insistently that human love is merely a prelude to divine love. Surely, and especially in a contemporary AIDS environment, any human state that promotes love - celibate, religious community, heterosexual or homosexual - is preferable to one that promotes intolerance or hatred, not to mention infidelity, unsafe sex or the civil and legal instability of family units.
None of these life-options enjoys a monopoly on love, or indeed, promiscuity. Surely the biological particularities should be subservient to the ethical and spiritual outcome.
Throughout the document the fuzzy logic continues. One minute we are told that "in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them", and in the next that "the Son of God assumed human nature in its male form" (the argument against women priests).
One minute that sexual subordination is the outcome of original sin, and the next that redemption from sin effected by the Incarnation permanently secured male domination in the church.
Presented by a first-year undergraduate, this essay would barely merit a pass, so why bother responding to such logical incontinence? At forthcoming UN meetings, the potent combination of right-wing fundamentalisms, backed by the veto power of the Vatican state, can generate serious consequences for non-western women struggling to achieve elementary human rights to self-determination.
Likewise, the continued assault on lesbian and homosexual relationships fuels homophobia and endangers those who attempt to live lives of responsible commitment.
Finally, documents such as these give Jesus a bad reputation. If Jesus were here today he would be picketing at the Vatican, crying out: "Not in my name".
Dr Mary Condren is a feminist theorist and theologian and director of the Institute for Feminism and Religion