h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"Pope warns feminists"

"Bishops told to take hard line on issue of gender"

"The Pope will call on leaders of the Roman Catholic church today to attack feminist ideologies which assert that men and women are fundamentally the same."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1273102,00.html



"A woman's place is to wait and listen, says the Vatican"

"The Vatican yesterday depicted what it claimed were women's characteristic traits: 'Listening, welcoming, humility, faithfulness, praise and waiting.'"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/pope/story/0,12272,1273859,00.html



LETTER TO THE BISHOPS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
ON THE COLLABORATION OF MEN AND WOMEN
IN THE CHURCH AND IN THE WORLD

http://www.vis.pcn.net/doc/040731x_en.htm



Any comments?


azahar

He must have been talking to Justin!!!

Alji

Well, the opening gambit, 'The Church, expert in humanity...' is frankly hysterical.

Apart from that, the notion that old men in dresses are well-placed to discuss and pronounce on the proper place and role of women is deeply weird. It's impossible to take them seriously. I'm sure I'm not the first person to develop this opinion. In fact, Virginia Woolf touched on the matter in 'Three Guineas' (1938) - and included a photo of some old codger in full episcopal fancy dress.

*further thoughts may follow if the brain gets more alert*

Ivan.

You forgot to mention that they are CELIBATE old men in dresses.

I think this makes them even less qualified to discuss male/female relationships since they have never experienced what it is like to have a human partner as their only partner in life is God. I am talking about the pope and other Catholics here in case anyone gets defensive about other religions.

cheers
chiefaberach

Well supposedly celibate at least

I must say I found the headline in this article to bear little resemblance to the actual story, it seems far less sensation than the headline makes out.
However, as people say, what some 95 year old senile old goat says about women is hardly relevant to anything.

<>

Except possibly to Catholic women who don't want to live as second class citizens?


az

Well it's a 'leaked extract' so is possibly competely misleading and reading that article it may actually turn out to be a step forward than a step back form what is a complete dinosaur of an organisation anyway.
I wouldn't get too worked up about it until the full document is published and one actualy *knows* what is intended in full.

az had a feeling you'd appear *somewhere* on this thread as soon as I saw the title and If I'd read the paper I d have known who sarted it even befor coming on.

Stay strong sister

blicky! You're going to have everyone thinking I'm a feminist!

In fact, I almost started this thread yesterday and then earlier today was encouraged to do so by a feminist. So, bit of a joint effort.




az

I do think they may be more than a little lefty-bias imparted by the Guardian on this story.

Reading between the lines, all the papacy seem to be saying is that men and women are different and should therefore be suited better to different roles in society. Which is not terribly profound, unless your a 97-year-old celibate man in a dress, of course.

B

The argument in a nutshell is:

Men and women are not the same therefore the way things are is the way they should be and we should keep the way things are foncussed on the differences.

Now B.

If you take that argument and apply it to any age and any group of people held in a lower position and another exploiting its more powerful postion you can make an equally logical claim to denounce any social reform you like.

The working classes are uneducated and the upper classes all have access to university for instance. Under the Popes use of logic that would never have changed.

If we have more in common than seperates us then wont focusing on the differences drive us further apart?

one love

Genetically, we have more in common with lettuce than there are differences. Does this mean that we should promote an equal role in society for salad vegetables?

B

Yeah equal rights for lettuce and other vegetables, animals and even micro organisms! I fact if we were anywhere near to that kind of thinking we might not have hole in the ozone layer disappearing species, destruction of ancient habitats and climate change.

Instead those who have the means and the power to do what they want largely do. Without much thought it seems to the wider consequences.

The Pope faced with a feminist backlash against two thousand years of church endorsed sexual inequality comes out and says "be good girls and dont rock the boat eh?" Then goes back and buries his head in the vatican while ignoring the wider consequences.

Will the ladies listen? I bloody hope not.

Orcus:

The full letter has been published. Az put a link in the first post. Here it is again: http://www.vis.pcn.net/doc/040731x_en.htm

And here is a non-'lefty-biased' report from the Catholic World News service:

http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=31200

"The ideal relationship between man and woman, embodied in Adam and Eve before the Fall, is ruptured by Original Sin, the Vatican document continues. The "Letter to the Bishops" continues with a treatment of the imagery that occurs throughout the Old Testament, in which God's relationship to his Chosen People is frequently compared to that of a jealous husband with an unfaithful spouse."

"Having completed this Biblical analysis, the "Letter to the Bishops" now focuses specifically on the role of women. A woman's nature, the document observes, is defined by her "capacity for the other." "

"It allows her to acquire maturity very quickly, and gives a sense of the seriousness of life and of its responsibilities. A sense and a respect for what is concrete develop in her, opposed to abstractions which are so often fatal for the existence of individuals and society. It is women, in the end, who even in very desperate situations, as attested by history past and present, possess a singular capacity to persevere in adversity, to keep life going even in extreme situations, to hold tenaciously to the future, and finally to remember with tears the value of every human life.12"


Great, so we get to stay at home and weep?



az

"The Pope will call on leaders of the Roman Catholic church today to attack feminist ideologies which assert that men and women are fundamentally the same."

I wonder which ideologies he was meaning.

Putting aside for a moment the problems of saying that feminists believe any one thing (as if they all think the same), I think it's a mistake to say that feminism in general posits that women and men are the same. My understanding is that alot of recent feminism (since the 60s) instead says that biology is not destiny. Meaning yes I may have a womb but that doesn't mean I _have_ to bear children. The follow on from that was that women could do jobs and such that had for awhile been done by men. And that women had the same _rights_ as men (to income, education, reproductive freedom etc).

Personally, I think there are significant differences between women and men especially when looked at collectively. Just the physical ones alone - women are obviously more suited to giving birth and breastfeeding than men are for instance .

One can argue then that certain aspects of childrearing are better done by women. This doesn't mean that _all_ women _should_ do them, or that no men should (in the case of the ones that are physically possible), but there is an obvious advantage to women that want to have children to do these things (eg breastfeeding offers advantages to the child that can't be met in other ways).

So I am always interested in discussions about gender roles and how they can work for individuals and the culture concerned. I think it's important to understand difference while not being determined by it. Mostly I think the West has quite rigid ideas (still) about what women and men are and can do, and that these ideas don't serve us very well.

I'm not likely to take as much notice of the bunch of blokes in frocks either when it comes to women's roles (although I might still read the Vatican link out of interest). The obvious (well to me any way) thing for the Catholic Church to do is to let Catholic women discuss what gender roles mean to them, and to let them publish papers on it. We might then get some relevant and interesting perspectives. Unless of course the Church doesn't trust them.


kea.

One of my problems with Cardinal Ratzinger's diatribe is that it repeats that old lie that women are somehow 'natural' mothers in something other than the simple, biological, uterine sense. This sort of speech usually, as in this case, ignores the fact that men can be just as mothering as women. My objection comes from the fact that Ratzinger's statement bears no relation to my experience of reality.

My experience is this: despite being raised in a church which indoctrinated and tried to guide girls into their 'natural' role of motherhood, and despite the well meaning and thorough education offered to girls to prepare them for this role, a woman I know ended up being pretty much wholly unable to be a mother. Fortunately for the child, the father, despite -- or more likely, because of -- his upbringing in a secular, feminist environment, has been a good, attentive, nurturing parent.

Something that gets to me about these paternalistic church statements about parenting is that they always seem to be directed at motherhood, as though fathers are doing just fine and need no guidence other than 'be a good father'.

To recap, in response to Cardinal Ratzinger's condemnation of feminism as a threat to the family: my experience is that old-school 'motherhood' churches break families, destroy women's spirit and perpetuate a flock of damaged people who cry out for help from the church that brought their ruin. And, my experience of feminism is that it empowers men and women to be parents, to raise healthy and happy children -- in short, feminism builds families.

I've had a lot of computer trouble this morning so this post isn't all I wanted it to be after the third attempt at composing it. I hope it makes sense.

Anhaga, yeah thanks I saw the article myself yesterday and was just going on that. Apologies for not reading the link earlier. Frankly though I don't particularly care what the Pope (and hence the Catholic Church) has to say on anything, it's about as relevant to my life as what the Ayatolla Khomeni had to say in the past.

The fact that the Catholic Church has once again demostrated that it is about as up to date with modern life as the Brontosaurus is , what a surprise...not.

I mainly posted on this thread when I was the comment on catholic priests being celibate . There's a few court cases going down that can testify to the reality of that issue now isn't there.
When the Catholic church can prove it's not condoing paedophilia and rape then I will worry about its stance on feminism.

As regards which ideologies are under attack here, as I suggested elsewhere the Judith Butler line (biological differences aside, everything else about gender is entirely socially constructed, learnt through performance rather than inherited from birth) seems to me the specific target. In which case, the quote Azahar gave is fascinating: "A woman's nature, the document observes, is defined by her "capacity for the other." " The 'capacity for the other' could have come straight out of Butler: adopting the language of the ideology you're attacking - again, very sneaky

So the idea that 'as if all feminists think the same' is probably the way the Vatican will defend this: "Well, of course we're not talking about all feminism, just nasty 'out there' feminism."

>>The obvious (well to me any way) thing for the Catholic Church to do is to let Catholic women discuss what gender roles mean to them, and to let them publish papers on it. We might then get some relevant and interesting perspectives. Unless of course the Church doesn't trust them.<<

Such groups do exist and have become a great deal more influential over the last thirty years (well, they could hardly not have done). And the Church encourages them to discuss. But it won't ever offer an endorsement of what they say if it's incompatible with Genesis - it's not really a question of trust so much as it is of legitimacy. Four and half centuries after the reformation, the Catholic Church hasn't budged one inch on clerical celibacy, it's never going to approve of homosexuality, its views on women will similarly always favour consistency over the capacity for change.

Hah! I can't even imagine what effect or meaning this will have on catholics in developing countries.

Frankly one is frankly glad not to belong to any religion as they all seem to be biased against my sex.

Incog.