Sir, - I appreciated Cardinal Daly's gentle and careful presentation of a wide context for understanding the strange-sounding statements of some classical Church writers on the subject of women (January 15th). I was not at all unaware of that context. In fact, I am sure the writers quoted would certainly not see their mothers or sisters in the light of those statements. I was simply making the point that one cannot quote the authority of a writer to prove a point until one has evaluated his or her reasoning, since we are dealing with reason, not faith.
The more important point is the need to be aware of cultural conditioning - or religion, faith, the Bible, theology, Church teaching and legislation, indeed of all human experience. Hence the need for interpretation of documents in all of these areas. This does not justify us in making fun of earlier statements judged in the light of our own present culture, but is does suggest that we be careful in our use of them. We may also find that, in spite of cultural change, some former attitudes may still have at least a subconscious influence on current behaviour. This is what many women claim that they experience in a maledominated society and Church. They feel that the Pope was halfapologising when he said. "If objective blame has belonged to ... members of the Church ... I am truly sorry." I assure Cardinal Daly that one of my special joys, as a lifelong Thomist, is the thrill of reaching up to the mind of Aquinas, one of the Church's most outstanding theologians. But Aquinas reflects the culture of his time and Aristotle's biology when he explains (S.T. Ia, q.92.1) that "Only as regards nature in the individual is the female something defective and manque [deficiens et occasionatum, and this last word is translated as manque in the Blackfriars edition of the Summa Theologiae]. For the active power in the seed of the male tends to produce something like itself, perfect in masculinity; but the procreation of a female is the result either of debility of the active power, of some unsuitability of the material, or of some change effected by external influences, like the south wind, for example, which is damp, as we are told by Aristotle. But with reference to nature in the species as a whole, the female is not something manque, but is according to the tendency of nature, and is directed to the work of procreation."
In response to the question of whether woman is subject to man, he continued: "In domestic or civil subjection, the ruler manages his subjects for their advantage and benefit. And this sort of subjection would have obtained even before sin. For the human group would have lacked the benefit of order had some of its members not been governed by others who were wiser. Such is the subjection in which women is by nature subordinate to man, because the power of rational discernment is stronger in man. Nor is inequality among people incompatible with the state of innocence" (i.e. before original sin).
Not a few women claim that this attitude of male superiority is still alive in their experience. The point remains that we need to be aware of cultural conditioning. Even the Bible cannot be a meaningful, living word unless it becomes incarnate, takes flesh in each new culture. - Yours, etc.,
Mount St Mary's, Milltown, Dublin 14.