Fury at Vatican’s Views on Women

The Vatican has published a document which has triggered an angry response from many opponents. The document accuses feminists of viewing men as women’s enemies, and implies that feminism is to blame for the breakdown of the family and the advent of homosexual marriage.

The document provoked heated debates among many people yesterday, but was also welcomed by many Roman Catholic Church traditionalists.

The document, titled On the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World, took an extremely conservative stance and was drafted by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger with the absolute approval of the Pope.

Ratzinger, who is head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the department which defines orthodoxy), wrote up the 37-page document and stated that it was the subordination of women that had provoked them into “making themselves the adversaries of me...(with) its most immediate and lethal effects in the structure of the family.”

The document urged women to reaffirm their distinctiveness as caretakers by nurturing their "capacity for others," placing the onus on the "irreplaceable role" of women within the family.

He continued saying that efforts to downplay the differences between the sexes had inspired ideologies “which call into question the family, in its natural two-parent structure of mother and father, and make homosexuality virtually equivalent.”

However, even though the Cardinal was restating the traditionalist opinion by opposing the ordination of female clergy, he also called for equal rights in the workplace.

The President of ‘Catholics for Free Choice’, Frances Kissling 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."

However, more traditionalist views were expressed by Malcolm McMahon, the Bishop of Nottingham, who described the report as "welcome and timely".

Surprisingly backing for the document also came from Catholic author and translator Helena Scott who denied that 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."

"Some of it is predictable, but it should not be written off," said Catherine Pepinster, the editor of The Tablet, the British Roman Catholic weekly. She noted that considerable parts of the document were committed to the fair treatment of women at work, unjust sexual discrimination and the promotion of women in society.

The Reverend Thomas Reese, editor of America, the national U.S. Catholic weekly magazine, played down the polemics that had arisen. He said that even Catholic feminists would agree with the Vatican stance supporting women's rights with regard to the workplace, education and social and political position.

"Deep down the Vatican's position is that it would hope that the husband earned enough so that women could stay home and take care of the kids," he said.

Reese said he did not see anything in the letter that should get feminists riled up enough to wage war on the Vatican but that he understood why the choice of language had gotten some people riled up.

"I think that the way that the Vatican has to communicate things sometimes causes more problems than it solves," he said.