Nuns on the run: Why is the Pope targeting women?
by Susan Toepfer
The True/Slant
Bumpy Ride
September 22, 2009

It is a story worthy of a Dan Brown thriller, replete with secret ceremonies, powerful adversaries and hidden motives. Yet this high-level plot is playing out in real time, right under our noses, and it all begins with a modern-day inquisition into the lives of nuns.

Nuns, as even non-Catholics know (and I am not Catholic, though my husband and children are), haven't been quite the same since the '60s, when they started shedding their habits for street clothes and venturing out more self-assuredly into the world. Nuns, as you might also have noticed, have severely decreased in number since then. The dwindling religious who remain have not only often fled traditional communities but have expanded their interests to such contemporary concerns as saving the environment and rescuing sex slaves.

That, apparently, is enough to make this current, most conservative of Popes, send in his troops:
In response to this new breed, the Vatican has launched two wide-ranging investigations into the lifestyles of American nuns. Both look to be moves on the part of the male hierarchy to rein in nuns who are perceived as having become distressingly independent.

The first is an unprecedented "Apostolic Visitation" being carried out by a Rome-based American, Mother Mary Clare Millea. Her charge is to "look into the quality of life" of nuns who engage in any fashion with the larger society. (Cloistered contemplative orders are not under scrutiny.) She recently told The New York Times that the inquiry is "an opportunity for us to re-evaluate ourselves, to make our reality known and also to be challenged to live authentically who we say we are."

Mother Mary has further explained that each community of sisters will be evaluated in terms of its "living in fidelity" to church norms, which include "the soundness of doctrine held and taught" by the sisters. It is reasonable to wonder, as some of the sisters themselves apparently do, about the real objective of the process.

This concern is heightened by a second investigation into the Leadership Council of Women Religious, an umbrella group that represents 95% of nuns in the USA. It's being conducted, with possible disciplinary implications, by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a Vatican office headed by American Cardinal William Levada. He cites the nuns' collective failure to comply with instructions to conform to church doctrine issued them in 2001 by his predecessor, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI). Geared toward ferreting out individuals and groups who challenge church teaching on certain issues - the male-only priesthood, homosexuality, and the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church as a way to salvation are specifically singled out - it portends a chilling effect on possibilities for genuine dialogue.

At the same time, the Vatican has declared June 2009-June 2010 the "Year for Priests," celebrating the men's vocation. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which is not directly involved in either of the Vatican investigations, has embraced the idea. And the way the bishops' conference is approaching it is further symptomatic of a persistent blind spot the hierarchy has about women in general, and women religious in particular.

My friend Karol Jackowski is one of those very modern nuns. A member of the Sisters of the Holy Cross for 33 years, in 1997 she joined the Sisters for Christian Community-a self-governing, independent group not subject to Vatican oversight, but recognized by the Vatican as an alternate form of Catholic sisterhood. She is also the author of Forever and Ever, Amen, a memoir about her early years in the convent, as well as The Silence We Keep: A Nun's View of the Catholic Priest Scandal.

Sister Karol, along with many in all religious orders, and feminists of all religions, is deeply concerned about the forthcoming investigation. "Instead of focusing on widespread corruption in the priesthood as the source of the steady decline in Roman Catholicism in Europe and the United States," she says, "the Vatican is blaming and attempting to wipe out the feminist spirituality that is now so deeply rooted in the Catholic sisterhood.

"What happened in the sisterhood over the past 40 years," Jackowski continues, " is no different than what's happened to the majority of American Catholics who have grown much more independent in their thinking and decision-making, and no longer accept all Catholic teachings as infallibly true. Many of us are an active part of the majority who believe women are divinely called to priesthood as much as men, who accept homosexuality also as a God-given gift, who protect women's reproductive rights and support Catholics for Free Choice, and who believe there are as many paths to God as there are people on earth."

Consilia Karli, another member of the Sisters for Christian Community, belonged to the Immaculate Heart of Mary from 1959 to 1975. "When many of us entered the order, it was the only alternative to staying home and raising a family," she says. "But with the changes in the '60s and '70s, there were a lot more options for women-religious women, too. My community wasn't moving forward with the times. The I.H.M. were a teaching community and they were closing inner city schools. I didn't want to sacrifice my life to affluent children. If I left, I could work in the parish ministry, prison ministry and other social services.

"It was a difficult decision," she remembers. "It took me five years. But in the end, I left to save my soul."

She was not alone: Around the U.S., there were progressive communities of women religious who were on parallel paths regarding their roles in the world. And yet, Karli says, "It is the women religious who opted to work for change within their traditional communities, or who vested years of loyalty and service in the Church, who are now being scrutinized as if they were directly to blame for the fact that the numbers of women religious has declined.

"These women don't deserve investigation from the Vatican. What they deserve is long overdue recognition and affirmation. "

Neither Consilia Karli nor Karol Jackowski (both women shy away from being addressed as Sister) will be affected by the Apostolic Visitation. "American nuns are under attack, but only the canonical religious," Karli points out. "They can't touch me. But in solidarity, I feel I must speak out."

So does no less an advocate for women than Gloria Steinem. "Any unfair treatment of females is a feminist issue," she says, "and it's hard to imagine a more unfair, authoritarian or calculated one than the Vatican is imposing on U.S. Catholic nuns. Using the same procedure it so belatedly imposed on priests who sexually assaulted children, the Vatican is investigating nuns who supported social justice.

"Only the nuns can decide how to respond," Steinem concludes, " but maybe it's time for collection plates to be passed for the nuns and not the Catholic hierarchy."

Indeed, the Apostolic Visitation may well backfire for the Vatican and prove a boon to such "renegade" religious as Bridget Meehan, a former Immaculate Heart of Mary nun who is now at the forefront of the Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement, and actively challenges conventional Church teachings on her website, Bridget Mary's Blog. In 2006, Meehan was ordained as a priest by three female bishops, two of whom had been ordained secretly by a male bishop in full communion with the Pope who has apostolic succession. Earlier this year, she was ordained a bishop, along with three other women in the U.S., to foster the growth of the movement. "Our main job description, " she says, "is to ordain those called by their local communities to serve in a Church that is priest-short and in need of the gifts of women."

And how do you address a female priest? A female bishop? Sister Meehan? Mother Meehan? "We don't get into rank. Call me Bridget Mary," she says. "We need to get away from the drop-down divisiveness of the Church hierarchy, to transform the structure."

According to Meehan, the first seven female Roman Catholic priests were ordained in June, 2002 on the Danube. Immediately, these women were excommunicated by the Vatican. Then, she says, a male Roman Catholic bishop "who is in communion with the Pope but who is a passionate advocate of women's rights" ordained two of these women, Gisela Forster from Germany and Christine Mayr-Lumetberger from Austria, bishops. "He agreed to ordain women in the presence of witnesses but in secrecy, to avoid retribution by the Vatican."

Meehan, however, believes the Vatican is well aware of the ceremony: "They have never denied a Roman Catholic bishop with apostolic succession was involved. Therefore, our ordinations are valid, but against the man-made rules of the Church."

Today, there are 100 women ordained as Roman Catholic priests, or on their way to becoming priests. Moreover, some surveys conclude that as many as 70% of Catholics favor the ordination of women. "This is a worldwide movement for justice for women in religion," Meehan says. "The Vatican is concerned because the movement is growing so quickly. They are worried that more bishops will become involved."

That, she believes, is the real motive for the Apostolic Visitation. "The number one issue on their agenda, in investigating nuns, is women's ordination. Roman Catholic Womenpriests are the big threat. What if the nuns come onboard in great numbers? That would be a revolution that would change the face of the Church.

"This Pope is going back to Trent, to pre-Vatican II," Meehan says. "He's carving a stark choice between a rule-based religion and a love-based religion."

It hasn't hurt the Womenpriests movement that The DaVinci Code was a runaway bestseller. "Dan Brown provoked such interest in the subject," Meehan says. "More people now know about Mary Magdalene, who was the ‘Apostle to the Apostles,' the first person to see Christ resurrected.

"Jesus related to women as equals," she continues, adding that her movement supports married priests ("most of our womenpriests are married") as well as gays and lesbians. "We want an inclusive Church that does not make anyone feel like a second class citizen. All are welcome at the table. That is Jesus' example. The people Jesus challenged were the hypocrites, religious leaders who burdened the people with excessive regulations that did not lead them to worship God in spirit and in truth."

Is it possible that Meehan and her community might break off from Rome to form another Church? The very idea makes the Bishop bristle. "We're not leaving the Church," she says. "We're leading the Church. We want to change an unjust law that discriminates against women."

http://trueslant.com/susantoepfer/2009/09/22/nuns-on-the-run-why-is-the-pope-targeting-women/

Not your parents' Sisters
American nuns have evolved from habit-wearing disciples into, often, street-clothes- wearing social activists. And based on two pending inquiries, the Vatican might have had enough.
By Mary Zeiss Stange
USA Today

How do you know a Roman Catholic nun when you see one? It used to be easy. They wore long black habits and veils with confining headgear, traveled in pairs, were teachers or nurses, and lived quietly in convents. There was a timelessness about them: the essentials of their way of living had remained unaltered for centuries.

Then came the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), with its mandate to bring the church — nuns and all — into the 20th century. Shortly thereafter, the Dominican Sisters at my school, St. Mary's in Rutherford, N.J., took the plunge and modernized their garb. But otherwise, they still conformed to the traditional model, living in community and teaching primary and secondary school.

Their change of habits was but a baby step toward much broader subsequent changes for Catholic nuns. And the church's current response to these changes suggests how resolutely clueless the hierarchy remains when it comes to what these religious women are up to, and how the changes in the realities of their dedicated lives mirror changes for women in American society at large.

Those sisters who taught me might scarcely recognize their order now. The Caldwell Dominicans of New Jersey still do some teaching, and some live communally. But they wear street clothes, and they are more likely than not to have advanced or professional degrees. The order's primary energies are devoted to social justice issues such as human trafficking, corporate greed and environmental strategies for saving the planet.

These are not your parents' Sisters of St. Dominic. Yet they typify the kinds of changes that have occurred in many of the roughly 400 orders of Catholic religious women in the USA. Sisters account for less than 5% of teachers in Catholic schools today, while many nuns are engaged in a broad spectrum of occupations, often oriented toward social and economic activism.

Two inquiries In response to this new breed, the Vatican has launched two wide-ranging investigations into the lifestyles of American nuns. Both look to be moves on the part of the male hierarchy to rein in nuns who are perceived as having become distressingly independent.

The first is an unprecedented "Apostolic Visitation" being carried out by a Rome-based American, Mother Mary Clare Millea. Her charge is to "look into the quality of life" of nuns who engage in any fashion with the larger society. (Cloistered contemplative orders are not under scrutiny.) She recently told The New York Times that the inquiry is "an opportunity for us to re-evaluate ourselves, to make our reality known and also to be challenged to live authentically who we say we are."

Mother Mary has further explained that each community of sisters will be evaluated in terms of its "living in fidelity" to church norms, which include "the soundness of doctrine held and taught" by the sisters. It is reasonable to wonder, as some of the sisters themselves apparently do, about the real objective of the process.

This concern is heightened by a second investigation into the Leadership Council of Women Religious, an umbrella group that represents 95% of nuns in the USA. It's being conducted, with possible disciplinary implications, by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a Vatican office headed by American Cardinal William Levada. He cites the nuns' collective failure to comply with instructions to conform to church doctrine issued them in 2001 by his predecessor, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI). Geared toward ferreting out individuals and groups who challenge church teaching on certain issues — the male-only priesthood, homosexuality, and the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church as a way to salvation are specifically singled out — it portends a chilling effect on possibilities for genuine dialogue.

At the same time, the Vatican has declared June 2009-June 2010 the "Year for Priests," celebrating the men's vocation. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which is not directly involved in either of the Vatican investigations, has embraced the idea. And the way the bishops' conference is approaching it is further symptomatic of a persistent blind spot the hierarchy has about women in general, and women religious in particular.

The bishops' website devoted to the Year for Priests features monthly essays "by renowned women of faith" about the important function of priests in their lives. (Articles by anti-abortion activist Vicki Thorne and San Diego Zoo CFO Paula Brock have appeared thus far.) I asked Father David Toups, who oversees the site, about the absence of essays by "renowned men of faith."

"This was intentionally done," he replied, "so as to highlight the role of renowned women and their support of the priesthood." Toups explained that "there is a special role in the support of priests by women of great faith and devotion. This has been so since the time of the early church."

Indeed it has. I asked how he would respond, then, to criticism that the church conventionally casts women in the role of "support personnel." Men and women play different but "complementary" roles, he ventured: "We are meant to complement each other in our own particular ministries."

'An ecclesiastical workforce' Father Toups' words are surely well-intentioned. But "complementary" is the age-old rationale for the subordination of women in the church. Sister Sandra Schneiders, professor emerita at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley in California, puts her finger on the problem for nuns confronting the hierarchy: "They think of us as an ecclesiastical workforce. Whereas we are religious, we're living the life of total dedication to Christ, and out of that flows a profound concern for the good of all humanity. So our vision of our lives, and their vision of us as a workforce, are just not on the same planet."

There is a deep contradiction between enlisting "women of faith" to applaud a male-only priesthood, while simultaneously interrogating the spiritual soundness of religious women who have dedicated their lives to serving humanity in Christ's name.

The Vatican's investigations might well turn up some isolated instances of doctrinal abuse or excess among American nuns. And the Year for Priests might prove a positive way to focus attention on religious vocations. But both are profoundly shortsighted in terms of the shifting contours of the American social — and particularly Catholic — landscape.

There is no going back. Today's American sisters, arguably for the first time in history, are making the most of their God-given talents. They are creatively expanding the meaning of service to God, church and society in ways unimaginable to their forebears. For that they deserve celebration, not censure.

Mary Zeiss Stange is a professor of women's studies and religion at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/08/column-not-your-parents-sisters.html

ORIGINAL: Sophie

Groundbreaking gender policy for Indian Catholic women
cathnews.com
September 08, 2009



The Women's Commission of the South Indian Kerala Catholic Bishops Council (KCBC) has released a gender policy, reportedly a first by an Indian church, to promote gender equality and uplift the status of women. "Women should be given responsible positions and made part of decision making bodies of church," the commission's Executive Secretary Beena Sebastian told the Press Trust of India. "The policy should be implemented in all church run organisations, including educational institutions, university and colleges," she said. The agency quotes her saying that no other church in the country has set out such a policy. The policy aims for violence free homes and workplaces, equal participation of women in all social activities as well as a change in the mindsets of men and women to promote gender justice within families, society and in the Church, the Express Buzz website reported.

The primary areas identified for the implementation of the plan include education, church activities, politics, health, financial independence, science and technology and the tribal communities.

It includes suggestions to ensure just wages for women employees and proper allowances for the women employed in Church run institutions, as well as equal pay for equal work and land and property rights for women.

http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=16302

If the Catholic Bishops Conference of India will really announce this policy, it is very encouraging indeed!



It certainly reflects what most educated Catholic women in India – and especially religious women – will want to happen.

The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us.

Dorothy Day

Does anyone know off hand the passage where the man has a debt and the guy forgives him and then the man that was forgiven later demands a debt owed by someone else and then the guy that forgave that man is like 'ok now you have to pay it all, you were shown mercy and you did not show it in return' sometimes I think that is how the clash with women in the Church goes, we both owe each other so much, and yet nobody wants to pay and as soon as one forgives, the other is grateful, and then there is another harm, then the other is sorry again, but then its like, well why couldn't you just let it be? It is just this huge circle that never ends! How do we break it? The roles are constantly switching, we are the one in debt, we are the loaner, and it just goes back and forth and it just seems sometimes that until someone steps up and goes beyond all of it, we will always have this sense of being owed. The Church thinks we owe them, we think the Church owes us, and it's just like, who is going to put it aside? It's so funny because I think both are like, 'no we are the one's that forgave!!!!!!!' but really, neither one of us has completely. Because it seems we are both like 'I can't really forgive you, until you do this, so I know you are sorry and have good intentions.' I use to think that forgiveness was just putting it out of your mind, maybe it is to some extent, but then if something triggers the pain, and it all surges back, did you ever really forgive or just suppress? Did you ever say sorry or just stop attacking? I am really excited to hopefully be starting a new chapter in my life so I do not think about this so much, but I don't want to just forget about it, I mean, so often it is 'out of sight out of mind' even in adulthood. The problem disappears to us if we can avoid it, and then somebody else has to deal with it, I hope I am never that way with this issue, I don't want anyone else to ever deal with the sexist views of the Church. I want them corrected. I think they are making slow progress though, allowing women to participate more, and I don't want to ever misdirect anger at the Church, they are accountable for what they are accountable, not every little other thing just by association.

African nuns tell Vatican they want more influence
By NICOLE WINFIELD (AP) –
Associated Press
October 9, 2009

VATICAN CITY — African nuns told a Vatican meeting Friday they want more of a say in running the Catholic Church on the continent, saying they have special talents and shouldn't be left to clean churches and mend vestments.

Women also have an important role to play in forging reconciliation in Africa's many tribal and ethnic conflicts — the main focus of the 3-week-long Vatican meeting on Africa, said Sister Pauline Odia Bukasa of Congo.

"We, your mothers and religious sisters, ask you — our fathers and bishops in this church-family — to promote the dignity of women," she said, requesting in particular greater emphasis on educating young girls.

Sister Felicia Harry of Ghana was more blunt, saying African nuns didn't want to usurp priests' powers but wanted to be part of the church's decision-making process.

"As well as teach catechism to children, decorate parish churches, clean, mend and sew vestments, we religious women in Africa would like to be part of various parish councils," she said, according to a summary of her remarks to the closed meeting.

The role of women in the church has been a recurring topic of discussion among the 300 prelates at the meeting, which is hearing testimony from bishops around the continent about their particular problems and advice from colleagues and Vatican officials on how to deal with them.

Ghana Bishop Matthew Kwasi Gyamfi said the Vatican needed to address a particular issue that many African priests face concerning polygamous marriages: A woman who married a man who then took other wives isn't allowed to receive certain sacraments because she is in a marriage that the church cannot bless.

He said when the women have walked away from such marriages without the consent of their husbands, "the church has been cited for injustice, insecurity, breaking up families, fomenting disunity and destroying social cohesion," he told the synod in asking for some special exemptions from Rome so such women can participate fully in the sacramental life of the church.

In addition to the role of women, the synod has addressed issues that are increasingly of concern to the broader church: how to deal with the rapid spread of Islam and Pentecostal churches, which are increasingly drawing away many Catholics.

Bishop Alfred Adewale Martins of Nigeria said it seemed the aggressive proselytizing of many neo-Pentecostal communities "aims at bringing down the Catholic Church both in her influence as well as in the number of her faithful."

"This intention is captured in the way some of them refer to the Catholic Church as the dead church," he said, urging the Vatican to reach out in particular to young professional Africans who are increasingly targeted by the new churches.

While such problems are universal, a purely African problem has also been raised: tribal and ethnic conflicts within the African church hierarchy.

Bishop Albert Vanbuel of the Central African Republic said recent months have seen increasingly bitter divisions between priests, bishops and laymen fueled by tribal and ethnic divisions.

"Our church is called on to show a witness ... of reconciliation, justice and peace, and above all of communion," he said.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jpI1bL-AIzW8aIF-W_AKrb7pop6wD9B7LMTG0

Cross Examination
Why Is Rome Investigating U.S. Nuns?
by Sister X
Commonweal
Volume CXXXVI, Number 17
October 9, 2009

I have been a religious sister for more than thirty years, part of a community that has been active in this country for over a century, and whose work centers on teaching and health care. Our order belongs to an umbrella organization, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), which represents 95 percent of U.S. Catholic women’s congregations.

Thanks to recent Vatican actions, the LCWR has garnered a few headlines. In February the Vatican announced it would conduct a three-year “visitation” to assess the “quality of life” of American sisters. A month later, the president of LCWR received a letter from Cardinal William Levada, formerly archbishop of San Francisco and now head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), informing her that there would also be an investigation, or “doctrinal assessment,” of the Leadership Conference itself. Certain problems, Levada explained, needed to be addressed. As it turns out, these have to do with the LCWR’s alleged failure to express sufficiently rigorous doctrinal compliance with several recent church documents. Evidently, the Vatican is concerned that the LCWR has not been forthcoming about the magisterium’s teachings regarding the ordination of women, the relation of the Catholic Church to non-Christian religions, and the “intrinsically disordered” nature of homosexual acts.

. . .

Read complete article, click here: http://www.womenpriests.org/circles/fb.asp?m=34314

Asia-Oceania women religious must ‘break boundaries’
cathnews Asia
October 15, 2009

Addressing the AMOR XV gathering of women religious leaders in East Asia and Oceania, Singaporean Infant Jesus Sister Maria Lau, has challenged participants to “to break out of their boundaries - and move beyond them.”

Introducing the nine-day conference held near Bangkok, Sr Lau encouraged the women to base their actions on the radical example of Jesus who broke through boundaries of his time, and in particular the way he dealt with women, NCR Online reports.

“[Jesus] gave women security and space to come forward,” she explained.

“Jesus broke through boundaries. The moment we identify a boundary around us we need to move beyond it. We need to do as Jesus did.” Her point was that many boundaries are false boundaries set up in one’s mind and often stemming from false perception or ego.

Sr Lau went on to cite a host of social challenges facing the world. She offered as examples the injustices of globalization, the destructive effects of commercialism and materialism, and the threat of global warming, as just a few of the many issues the world faces today.

One religious, living in rural Borneo, urged more attention to the plight of those in rural Borneo where the hunter-gatherer Penan tribe is battling to stop the destruction of its last remaining forests, and way of life.

“Forests are being cleared for logging, robbing the Penan tribe of its means of survival.”

She said the ongoing vast deforestation in Borneo, while remote from the attention of most lives, is critical for the planet’s survival. “When our forests are gone, that’s it for the planet,” she said.
.
Dr Sumon Nakchalerm, a Thai medical doctor, outlined the devastating and growing effect of drug use in Thailand today, saying that some 600,000 are addicted and that 200,000 out of 300,000 in Thai prisons today are in for drug related offenses

She spoke of the work being done to rescue children from foreign pedophiles in Thailand and the challenge of sex trafficking. She spoke about the tens of thousands of Thai men who are migrating for low-skilled contract work in Taiwan, South Korea, Israel, the United States and the Gulf states.

I had assumed that the Earth[Christ], the spirit of the Earth[Christ], noticed exceptions -
those who wantonly damage it and those who do not. But the Earth [Christ] is wise. It [He]
has given itself [himself] into the keeping of all [for all], and all are therefore accountable [no one therefore can be excluded from Love].

Alice Walker, Living by the Word.

Alice Walker didn't include the words in brackets. I meant to show by analogy how her words apply to Christ and Love.

Dear friends,

After a several month hiatis, I am slowly climbing back into the CIRCLES saddle. There have been a few transitions happening ... one of them being that I am currently pursuing a Master's Degree in canon law. The schedule is a bit hectic but I look forward to getting back in the groove. I am looking forward once again to the help the CIRCLES community provides in keeping pace with the signs of the times in our Church.

I look forward to continuing the journey together!


with love and blessings,

~Sophie~

Dear friends,

This news report came across the wire yesterday:

"Another issue raised often during the synod was the need to defend the
dignity of women and to promote their role in church and society.

"The synod fathers condemn all acts of violence against women," including
"the battering of wives, the disinheritance of daughters, the oppression of
widows in the name of tradition, forced marriages, female genital mutilation,
trafficking in women and several other abuses such as sex slavery and sex
tourism," said one of the propositions.

Synod members promised to promote the education of girls and women,
open shelters for those who are abused and bring women into church
decision-making structures. They also asked that a special commission on
women in the church be established within the Pontifical Council for the Family."

The question remains: how much will the Vatican take the recommendations to heart? Read the entire story from Cindy Wooden, click here: http://www.womenpriests.org/circles/fb.asp?m=34355

with love and blessings,

~Sophie~

Celebrity atheists expose their hypocrisy
by DVIR ABRAMOVICH
The Sydney Morning Herald
October 26, 2009

The fundamentalism of the crop of celebrity atheists such as Christopher Hitchens betrays their cause, says Dvir Abramovich. A flurry of books bashing religion are making best-seller lists and grabbing a lot of attention — so much so that anti-religion publications seem to have become a lucrative genre all their own.

Works such as Christopher Hitchens' God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, Sam Harris' End of Faith, Michel Onfray's The Atheist Manifesto: The Case Against Christianity, Judaism, and Islam and Daniel Dennet's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon are bare-knuckled, no-holds barred tracts that sometimes resemble the declarations of fundamentalists who are absolutely convinced of their truth.

Hitchens and Dawkins, who are the leaders of the New Atheism movement, have received the most media spotlight and are driving the growth of this industry. Hitchens presented recently at Sydney's Festival of Dangerous Ideas and appeared on ABC TV's Q & A program. And Dawkins will headline next year's Atheist Convention in Melbourne.

These atheists are angry that religion has not gone away and is thriving in various parts of the world. After all, calling other peoples' belief a delusion is not exactly respectful. Indeed, distinguished doctor and broadcaster Lord Winston found Dawkins' attitude to religious faith patronising, insulting and counterproductive, noting that it "portrays science in a bad light".

Hitchens and Dawkins build a straw man — they select the worst offences that have been done in the name of religion to prove that religion is a dangerous force and a kind of virus that infects the mind. At one point Hitchens writes, "Religious belief is not merely false but also actually harmful. But I think it is a mistake to condescend to those who claim 'faith'."

Employing a new name, Dawkins says atheists should refer to themselves as "brights" labelling the devout as "dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads" while Hitchens describes the religious mind as "literal and limited".

According to Hitchens (who discovered two years ago that he is Jewish by way of his mother) the Jews could have been the "carriers of philosophy instead of arid monotheism". What about Spinoza, Wittgenstein, Isaiah Berlin, Derrida, Maimonides, Emmanuel Levinas, Martin Buber, Karl Popper, Walter Benjamin and Ayn Rand to name only a few. Does it seem like Judaism is bereft of philosophers? He writes of kosher dietary laws: "In microcosm, this apparently trivial fetish shows how religion and faith and superstition distort our whole picture of the world."

So, the bottom line for these atheists is this: we are free to believe in whatever as long as it's not God.

For Hitchens and co, religion does little good and secularism hardly any evil. Never mind that tyrants devoid of religion such as Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Mao and Pol Pot perpetrated the worst atrocities in history. As H. Allen Orr, professor of biology at the University of Rochester, observed, the 20th century was an experiment in secularism that produced secular evil, responsible for the unprecedented murder of more than 100 million.

Dawkins is mute on the terrors unleashed by science and technology, used by genocidal regimes such as Hitler's Germany, in a century that proved to be the worst tyranny mankind has ever seen. And what about weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear and biological bombs developed by scientists?

Does that mean that all atheists and scientists are evil? Of course not. The point is that fanatics can be found in both religion and atheism.

How can anyone argue that not a single human benefit has resulted from religious faith? There are millions who every day selflessly dedicate their lives to helping others all in the name of religious belief. The cruelty and viciousness of the past and the abuse of religion in the present cannot extinguish the solidarity and good-heartedness of people of faith.

Most would agree with the words of former atheist, Oxford University professor of historical theology Alister McGrath, who said: "There are some forms of religion that are pathological, that damage people. For every one of these atrocities, which must cause all of us deep concern, there are 10,000 unreported acts of kindness, generosity, and so forth arising from religious commitment."

True religious values are grounded in notions of community, charity, mercy and peace. All too often today we focus on individualism, greed and instant gratification.

Anyone wishing to discredit theology should at least know some. The God Delusion contains very little examination of Jewish theology and dismisses the finest minds of Western thinkers and theologians who have written on sublime theological questions as "infantile".

Hitchens cites the Binding of Isaac and "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" injunction as brutish and stupid. Yet, scholars have interpreted the binding as ending child sacrifice and the injunction as a caution against excessive vengeance. Hitchens says that the God of Moses never refers to compassion and human friendship, overlooking "love your neighbour as yourself".

For his part, Dawkins is clearly out of his depth when it comes to Jewish teachings and ethics. He claims, for instance, that "love thy neighbour" meant only "love another Jew". He apparently is not aware that in the same chapter, Jews are commanded to love the stranger that lives in their land as they would themselves. When Jesus, himself a Jew, was asked "Who is my neighbour" he did not refer to other Jews, but to a Samaritan, considered at that time as heretical and unclean.

Above all, for Dawkins and his contemporaries, billions of people across the globe have accepted stupid and harmful ideas.

Yet that iconic scientist Einstein, believed that God represented a great mind that sustained the laws of nature. We know for sure that he was not stupid or delusional. He famously remarked, "God doesn't play with the universe" and noted, when referring to the extraordinary intricacies of the universe: "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science." Einstein believed that a humble, open-ended religious attitude to the cosmos was preferable to a completely non-religious approach.

Consider also that in A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking ends his brilliant book (which sold more than 8 million copies) with the following: "If we discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable by everyone, not just by a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we should know the mind of God."

Dawkins and Hitchens assume all believers accept the Bible literally, which in the case of the majority of Jews and other co-religionists, has never been true. Theologians have often questioned institutional religion and have criticised the use of rigid orthodoxy and demagoguery to instill fear and obedience. In fact, most who embrace religious faith at the same time also exercise a healthy dose of skepticism and do not defend the way religion is often manipulated and distorted. Very few follow religion blindly.

The telescope and the microscope that Hitchens says has made religion redundant, does not answer for us why we are here and what is the purpose of human existence. Atoms and black holes leave little space for expounding on the measure of man, sin, holiness, dignity and the human spirit, sorrow, beauty, love, alienation and mortality.

Dr Owen Anderson, professor of philosophy at Arizona State University, says the problem with the argument promoted by Hitchens and Dawkins when he asks: "Can all reality be explained as atoms in motion? Is belief in something besides atoms mere superstition?"

Tina Beatie in her book The New Atheists: The Twilight of Reason and the War of Religion maintains that atheists are engaged in religious belief themselves because naturalists as authors such as Dawkins and Hitchens use their own beliefs to invest their life with meaning. Ironic, isn't it?

Lord Winston agrees: "Think there is a body of scientific opinion from my scientific colleagues who seem to believe that science is the absolute truth and that religious and spiritual values are to be discounted.

"Some people, both scientists and religious people, deal with uncertainty by being certain. That is dangerous in the fundamentalists and it is dangerous in the fundamentalist scientists."

One has to concede that a something inexplicably mysterious took place at the birth of the universe. I read that several years ago, astronomers working with NASA concluded that time began 13.7 billion years ago, a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. At that instant, the universe expanded from "submicroscopic to astronomical size in the blink of an eye". The great mystery is why it would want to do that. Thomas Nagel, the philosopher notes that even if we accept evolution and that the necessary seed material was present at the time of the Big Bang, there is no scientific theory as to why the material existed in the first place, and how did such material come into existence.

All we have done is to keep pushing the great question one step back. World-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking put it best, "Why does the universe go to the bother of existing?"

Many would identify with the father who's compelled to believe in the divine when he notices the beauty and perfection of his daughter's ears. Hitchens mocks him, pointing out that ears always need a clean out, are mass-produced and cats have lovelier ears. A moment of pure love is missed.

Dawkins claims that religion is a form of child abuse since parents teach their kids to believe in certain religious creeds. Is it fair to compare real child abuse with parents instilling in their children religious morals and codes?

Dawkins and Hitchens celebrate art over religion, forgetting that the wonder and mystery of the universe and God's role in it have provided inspiration for countless artists. Michelangelo's Creation of Adam paintings at the Sistine Chapel is only one such example.

Dawkins remarks that the human brain is a "design nightmare". Well, since we use that organ to contemplate these and other complex subjects, it can't be that badly designed.

In his introduction to The God Delusion Dawkins states: "If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put if down."

I wonder for how many readers this is true.

Dr Dvir Abramovich, the Jan Randa Senior Lecturer in Jewish Studies is director of the Centre for Jewish History and Culture at The University of Melbourne. He is editor of the Australian Journal of Jewish Studies and President of the Australian Association of Jewish Studies. He is co-editor of the book Testifying to the Holocaust published in 2008.

Source: theage.com.au

Misogynist? Homophobic? We’ve got the church for you!
By Jamie L Manson
The National Catholic Reporter
Oct 22, 2009

On Friday, Oct. 16 the most e-mailed article on The New York Times Web site was the story of Pat Bond’s fight to receive financial support for the terminally ill son that she conceived with a Franciscan priest over 20 years ago.

Four days later, the eighth most e-mailed Times article told of the Pope’s new initiative to welcome larger numbers of Anglican priests and seminarians, regardless of marital status, into the Roman Catholic clergy.

The Pontiff is putting this plan into practice in an attempt to offer a spiritual home to those who have either left or are considering leaving the Anglican Communion because of their opposition to the ordination of women and openly-gay priests as well as the blessing of same-sex unions.

Ms. Bond, who was impregnated and abandoned by a Catholic priest, cannot get funding for her son’s brain cancer treatments. The priest receives little disciplining from his superiors. She is told by the Franciscan order, who never encouraged the priest to leave the ministry, that they have already gone “far beyond what the law would require,” in their financial support. They also reminded her that, by speaking publicly, she is in jeopardy of paying a penalty because she is in violation of a confidentiality agreement that she signed years ago.

Married Anglican priests and seminarians are provided with their own sacred structure, called "personal ordinariates," to enhance their spiritual care and guidance. They earned this special privilege by being vociferously misogynist and homophobic.

A woman is punished by Catholic superiors for her relationship with a priest, while married Anglican priests who are anti-woman and anti-gay are welcomed more fully into the Catholic clerical fold.

This week the Catholic church seems to have reached another low point in its perennial war on sex. However, in this latest twist of events, one form of sexual activity has been legitimized: married sex between male Anglican priests and their spouses who have reached qualifying levels of misogyny and homophobia.

Ironically, it was Gene Robinson -- whose courageous assent to the bishop’s seat in the Episcopal church first elicited the Anglican firestorm and threat of schism over the ordination of out gays and lesbians -- who first showed me that the relationship between misogyny and homophobia runs deep. Several years ago I heard him offer a lecture at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. At one point in his talk, he addressed his sorrow at the lack of support that some gay men have for women in their own fight for fair and equal treatment in the church. He asked the audience, “When will we gay men realize that the reason the church hates us is because they hated women first? The hatred of gay men is rooted in the original hatred of women and the feminine.”

These new developments at the Vatican might be slightly more digestible if studies proved that the Catholic church is being led by a primarily heterosexual, celibate clergy. Unfortunately, they prove the contrary.

According to the Times article on Ms. Bond, “A landmark study in 1990 by the scholar A. W. Richard Sipe, a former Benedictine, found that 20 percent of Catholic priests were involved in continuing sexual relationships with women, and an additional 8 percent to 10 percent had occasional heterosexual relationships.”

Fr. Donald Cozzens, an author, psychologist, and former Catholic seminary president, estimates in his book, The Changing Face of the Priesthood, that 50 percent of Roman Catholic priests have a homosexual orientation. He adds, “Beyond these estimates, of course, are priests who remain confused about their orientation and men who have so successfully denied their orientation, that in spite of predominately same-sex erotic fantasies, they insist that they are heterosexual.”

Given these statistics, one must wonder if these latest conflicts over sexuality are just further evidence of church authorities’ conflicts over their own sexual desires and activities. Is this latest move yet another desperate attempt to maintain a closed, closeted, clerical “old boys network,” where no man is threatened with the possibility of having to speak openly and honestly about sexuality, desire, and relationships of integrity?

Some church leaders might have us believe that the lesbian and gay issue is the only real sexuality “crisis” facing the church. But it is important to remember that this is but one petition in an increasingly long prayer list: contraception, abortion, pedophilia, sexual abuse, and perhaps the most egregiously overlooked sexual issue, the mistreatment and exclusion of women.

The intensity of alarm over same-sex relations and their polarizing, if not schismatic, power may be evidence that the root cause of all of this concern is deeper than homosexuality. The cause of this controversy may very well be rooted in the church’s struggle with sexuality itself -- a struggle that, allegorically at least, was born in the Genesis narrative of Adam and Eve.

While many have interpreted the Adam and Eve story as a chronicle of birth, life and death, a closer reading also reveals that it is an account of the beginning of our shame towards our sexuality. Before taking the fruit, the man and the woman are said to be naked and unashamed. After realizing their nakedness, they hide from God, mistakenly convinced that God, too, will be embarrassed by their exposed genitals. When God realizes that they are hiding because they are ashamed of their nakedness, God is angry and, with a heavy heart, makes Adam and Eve clothes and expels them from the garden. Shame was not the response that God wanted us to have to our nakedness and our sexuality.

In its treatment of Pat Bond and its overtures to conservative Anglican priests, the church has exacerbated the culture of shame that has long compelled Catholics to hide from their sexualities. Unfortunately for misogynist and homophobic church authorities, most Western Catholic and mainline Protestants have come to understand another great biblical truth: by their fruits you shall know them.

In its latest moves, the church has only further alienated itself from those who are seeking healthy, life-giving, and honest expressions of their sexuality rather than the harmful, secretive affairs that estrange us from ourselves, from one another, and from God. The new generations of Catholics will not have inherited the church’s reign of sexual guilt that marked those who grew up Catholic 40 or more years ago. Until the church authorities begin to deal with our human, God-given sexuality in ways that propel us towards growth and greater wholeness, the relevance of the Vatican’s teaching authority will only continue to dwindle within the generations to come.

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Jamie Manson received her master of divinity degree from Yale Divinity School. She currently serves as director of Social Justice Ministries at Jan Hus Presbyterian Church, working primarily with New York City’s homeless and poor populations. She is a member of the national board of the Women’s Ordination Conference.

http://ncronline.org/blogs/young-voices/misogynist-homophobic-we’ve-got-church-you

ORIGINAL: Sophie


All we have done is to keep pushing the great question one step back. World-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking put it best, "Why does the universe go to the bother of existing?"

 
Why does the universe go to the bother of existing?   Because it can.
 
Science can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God.
 

On this day October 28 in 1965: Nostra Aetate, "Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions" of the Second Vatican Council, is promulgated by Pope Paul VI. The Declaration was passed by a vote of 2,221 to 88 of the assembled bishops.

Korean women church leadership well behind wider society
Request to bishops for 30 percent women quotas on parish councils goes unanswered
By Thomas C. Fox
The National Catholic Reporter
October 28, 2009

Sacred Heart Sister Kim Sook-hee is the executive secretary of the women’s committee of the Korean Catholic bishops’ conference. She is a member of the executive committee of AMOR XV. I interviewed her during the AMOR XV conference held Samphran, Thailand Oct.13- 21.

The following text draws on that interview and some of her recent writings.

By Sister Kim Sook-hee
The National Catholic Reporter

Like many other Asian countries, Korea has been strongly influenced by Confucianism and its values. The social system was hierarchical and women's status was traditionally rather low.

However, with improved education of women in modern society, the feminist movement has grown. A growing number of women now stand out in every walk of life. A society that used to be non-favorable toward women has changed greatly.

The rapid economic growth in Korea, beginning in the early 1970s, brought about enormous changes in many areas. First, women confined to family work began economic activities. In the beginning, women were involved mainly as workers in textile factories, or in simple activities such as assembling machine parts.

With recent economic growth, women have had more opportunities for higher education, professional activities and high positions in the government and parliament. More women than ever before are now CEOs, lawyers, accountants, consultants and medical doctors. These changes were possible not only because of higher education, but also because of newly established laws regarding gender equality and favorable gender policies.

Women's active participation in various areas, such as in the political, economic, social and cultural spheres, naturally has led to the extension of their rights. A women's ministry was established in the government cabinet, and Korea has had a woman prime minister. However, compared with other OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries, Korean women still participate in the political area rather inactively.

There are still many issues to work on in Korean society. There are many discriminatory practices against women -- preference for a baby boy, inequity in wages between men and women, division of roles in the workplace, unequal promotion opportunities, sexual harassment, domestic violence against women, unequal child-rearing practices.Meanwhile, according to the statistics of the Korean Catholic Church, women comprise 70 percent of all active church faithful. Women are much more actively involved in the church.

However, the Korean bishops’ women's committee statistics show that the proportion of women in decision-making positions in parishes and the church is remarkably small. This is because the proportion of women in parish pastoral councils is very small. Moreover, decisions are made mainly by priests and male council members. Women are still subordinate and passive.

In the 1990s, however, with the influence of democratization in society, church women established a stronger voice in resisting undemocratic and inequitable practices in the church.

Some radical women established groups, arguing that conservative church leaders were not aware of rapid changes in women's consciousness and could not cope with changing times. These groups searched for dignity and identity in the church. They included the Korean Catholic Women's Community for a New World and the Association of Korean Catholic Feminist Theology. Both are under the Association of Major Superiors of Women Religious in Korea.

Pope John Paul II said in Mulieris Dignitatem: "The hour is coming, in fact has come, when the vocation of women is being acknowledged in its fullness; the hour in which women acquire in the world an influence, an effect and a power never hitherto achieved" (Article 1).

Although the beautiful vision of John Paul II in which women and men complement each other has not yet come, there have been small but gradual and significant changes in the Korean church.

In response to repeated requests from women's groups, and on the recommendation of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences (FABC), the Committee for Women was established under the Korean bishops’ Committee for the Lay Apostolate, at long last, in the fall of 2000.

The women's committee has conducted research, seminars and symposiums on significant church issues such as research on the consciousness of the faithful regarding women, a 2006 symposium on the future orientation of pastoral approaches to women, and a 2008 seminar on maximizing professional women's potential within the church.

As Pope John Paul II proclaimed, this is the moment when Korean Church women should not remain passive but move beyond the church to work toward protecting the dignity and rights of women, until the late pope's beautiful vision in Mulieris Dignitatem is fully realized.

For this, the male-centered local church system should be changed. It is possible by strengthening the above-mentioned women's groups, especially the Korean bishops’ women's committee.

For the first time since its launching, the committee's executive secretary changed from a priest to a woman religious. That is a small but very significant change. We, the Catholic women in the country, should take this small advancement as an opportunity to gradually raise the subcommittee to an independent committee.

As Korean society gradually moves toward sexual equality, especially in governmental policies, the church also needs to raise the proportion of women in its decision-making bodies.

The women's committee has thus asked the Korean bishops to guarantee that 30 percent of parish pastoral council members are women. But, so far, they have ignored this request.

I want to emphasize the importance of developing leadership programs for women. The first step is to have an accurate picture of the present reality by identifying the gender of the various office holders, like catechists and parish district leaders, in the Church's annual statistical report.

Then, the Church needs to develop areas like counseling, social work and education, where professional women can use their talents.

So the Church needs to invest more in the formation of women leaders. While more women are beginning to exercise "their gentle leadership" in society, the church has put much more emphasis on the formation of male leadership such as seminarians and priests.

http://ncronline.org/news/women-religious/korean-women-church-leadership-well-behind-wider-society

Not counting women and children
by Nicole Sotelo
Young Voices
The National Catholic Reporter
October 29, 2009

Sosan's husband tried to electrocute her. He tried to poison her. She escaped to one of the six shelters in Afghanistan. But in a country where women are not allowed to live without a male, she could not leave the shelter until she married again, according to a recent United Nations report. Shelters are full and the rise in domestic violence cases is not solely due to cultural beliefs and governmental policies but is also tied to U.S. aggression.

While violence against women has always been part of war lore, it wasn't until the second-half of the last century that people began collecting statistics on the topic. The studies reveal a gruesome pattern: violence from the battlefield boils over into violence in the home due to post-traumatic stress disorder and the learned violence of war. If there was already violence in the home, it often escalates during internal or international conflict.

A United Nations report this year noted that the presence of war in Afghanistan was one of the contributors to the rise in violence against women. The United Nations Development Fund for Women notes that 87 percent of women in the country experience domestic abuse, regardless of employment, education level or marital status.

This trend toward rising interpersonal violence during wartime, however, is not limited to Afghanistan.

A study done by the Iraq Psychologists Association found that of 2,500 families interviewed, 91 percent of children faced more aggression at home than before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Of these, nearly 38 percent were reported to have had severe hematomas after beatings by their parents.

In 2006, the U.N. reported 27,000 reported rapes in just one region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Multiply that by the rest of the country and the number of years the fighting has endured and you are left gasping at the possible statistics.

The numbers are equally shocking in the United States. Soldiers who come home from fighting abroad bring the war with them. Whether it is Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan, the battlefields change from forests or desserts to United States' bedrooms. The Miles Foundation reports that military families in the United States have a two to five times higher domestic violence rate than the general population.

While certain rapes have begun to be counted by international bodies as war crimes, interpersonal violence remains largely unaccounted in official wartime statistics, despite the fact that war and increased interpersonal violence are intricately related. We are more likely to count the man who was hurt in the streets, but not the woman wounded behind closed doors, despite the fact that both are war-induced tragedies.

For example, this month the Iraqi Human Rights Ministry released a report that shows 85,694 of its country's people were killed from 2004 and 2008 as a result of the U.S.-led invasion and 147,195 were wounded during the same period. Other estimates have arrived at much higher numbers.

All of the estimates, however, fail to take into account the women, children and sometimes men whose lives are lost as a result of war-induced domestic and interpersonal violence. It can be difficult to obtain these numbers, but it must be tried. When something isn't counted, it often becomes invisible.

We have our own version of this in Christianity. We have often failed to take account of women and children. In the Gospel of Matthew it twice states that food blessed by Jesus fed 4,000 and 5,000 men, "not counting women and children." Additionally, until recent years, the lives of women as ministers, deacons, priests and bishops in the early church had been written out of church histories. When we write women and children out of history or scripture or wartime statistics, we not only forget them, but we also often fail to take actions that would address their situations. Out of sight, out of mind.

October marks Domestic Violence Awareness month, a time for reminding ourselves of the existence of interpersonal violence and recommitting ourselves to peace in the home and in the nations. Whether the crimes are committed in the streets or behind a home's closed doors, isn't it time that we begin counting the women and children who are victims of war?

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Nicole Sotelo is the author of Women Healing from Abuse: Meditations for Finding Peace, published by Paulist Press, and coordinates www.WomenHealing.com. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School, she currently works at Call To Action.

http://ncronline.org/blogs/young-voices/not-counting-women-and-children

We have our own version of this in Christianity. We have often failed to take account of women and children. In the Gospel of Matthew it twice states that food blessed by Jesus fed 4,000 and 5,000 men, "not counting women and children." Additionally, until recent years, the lives of women as ministers, deacons, priests and bishops in the early church had been written out of church histories. When we write women and children out of history or scripture or wartime statistics, we not only forget them, but we also often fail to take actions that would address their situations. Out of sight, out of mind.

Dear friends,

As Nicole Sotelo points out, until recently we have known little about the lives of women church leaders in the early church. Gradually written out of church histories, some people now deny their service to the Church was ever a fact. However literary research and archeological investigations are helping women's stories re-emerge. We now know the actual names and some of the stories of more than 108 ordained women deacons of the tens of thousands of women who served as ordained deacons especially in the Greek-speaking part of the Catholic Church during the first millenium of Christianity.

Learn more about them, see here: http://www.womenpriests.org/deacons/deac_lists.asp

with love and blessings,

~Sophie~

BOOK EVALUATES IMPACT OF "MULIERIS DIGNITATEM"
Considers Key for Promoting Women
zenit.org
October 30, 209

ROME, OCT. 30, 2009 (Zenit.org).- A genuine promotion of woman must understand femininity as an anthropological characteristic, not a cultural imposition, explains a new book from the Vatican Publishing House.

The Pontifical Council for the Laity announced the publication of the 405-page book, "Woman and Man, The Totality of the Humanum."

The initial version was published in Italian; Spanish, English and French translations are forthcoming.

The book contains the addresses delivered at an international conference that reflected on this theme, held Feb. 7-9, 2008, in Rome. The conference commemorated the 20th anniversary of the publication of Pope John Paul II's apostolic letter "Mulieris Dignitatem."

The volume seeks to show that a genuine promotion of woman must include an understanding of the feminine as an anthropological characteristic and not as a cultural imposition. It seeks to illustrate the reciprocity between man and woman as an indispensable element in understanding and promoting the totality of the human being.

"Woman and Man, the Totality of the Humanum" includes the Feb. 9, 2008, address from Benedict XVI to participants in the conference.

"A renewed anthropological study is certainly necessary based on the great Christian tradition, which incorporates new scientific advances and, given today's cultural sensitivity, in this way contributes to deepening not only the feminine identity but also the masculine, which is often the object of partial and ideological reflections. Faced with cultural and political trends that seek to eliminate, or at least cloud and confuse, the sexual differences inscribed in human nature, considering them a cultural construct, it is necessary to recall God's design that created the human being masculine and feminine, with a unity and at the same time an original difference and complimentary. Human nature and the cultural dimension are integrated in an ample and complex process that constitutes the formation on one's own identity, where both dimensions, that of the feminine and that of the masculine, correspond to and complete each other," the Holy Father affirmed in that address.

The book also has a preface from Cardinal Stanislaw Rylko, president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity.

The volume evaluates progress over the past 20 years in the area of the promotion of woman.

It also includes a reflection on the new cultural paradigms, as well as the difficulties that women face in living their identity and helping, in fruitful reciprocity with man, the building up of the Church and society.

The book points out how women must place their gifts at the service of the apostolate and the family, as well as of the world of work and culture, incorporating all the riches of the feminine "genius," enlightened by progress in holiness.

Among the texts contained in this volume are "Evaluation of the Perspective of Reflection on Woman 20 Years after 'Mulieris Dignitatem,'" by Cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera; "Woman and Man, Created for One Another," by Paola Bignardi; and "The Reduction of Femininity to Object of Consumption," by Helen Alvaré.

http://www.zenit.org/article-27394?l=english