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Kari Elisabeth Børresen
Ch.24 in Facilitating Freedom of Religion or
Belief, ed. Tore Lindholm e.a., Derk Book, the Hague, 2001.
I. Introduction
This summary article is based on my research, undertaken
since 1961, concerning formative Christian anthropology. Conflicts between
normative religion and women's rights are already well analyzed concerning
Islam,(1) but rather unexplored concerning traditional Christianity. Here the
case of Roman Catholicism is highly significant, since the Catholic Church,
according to 1999 Vatican statistics, is the world's largest branch of
Christianity, comprising 17.4 % of the global population, or 1.038 billion
human beings.
The Roman Catholic Church has a privileged status at the
United Nations and wields a corresponding international influence. Since 1964,
the nonterritorial administrative body of the Catholic Church, the Holy See,
enjoys the status of a Non Member State Permanent Observer.(2) Representing the
Pope's spiritual and temporal government through his Roman Curia, the Holy See
participates in UN conferences with full voting rights whereas other religious
entities can only operate as nongovernmental organizations. In consequence, the
Holy See has become a leading actor on the international stage in opposing
women's human right to control their own fertility.(3)
Acting in accord with Muslim states against female
reproductive autonomy at the UN conferences on Human Bights (Vienna 1993),
Population (Cairo 1994), and Women (Beijing 1995), the Holy See has invoked a
corresponding androcentric sexology, also advocated by so-called Evangelical
Protestantism.(4) Reproductive autonomy is an indispensable condition for
women's sociocultural equivalence with men and, therefore, a fundamental human
right.(5) In order to clarify the rationale of this retrograde alliance, it is
essential to analyze traditional Christian doctrine. Contemporary Catholic
theology and anthropology are still based on androcentric paradigms, formulated
from the Graeco-Roman Late Antiquity through the European Middle Ages. It
follows that institutional Roman Catholicism refuses women's right to
reproductive autonomy (Humanae vitae 1968} and negates women's cultic
capability (Ordinatio sacerdotalis 1994).
II. The Gender of Religion
Following the collapse of Marxism and the enhanced
visibility of Islam, the impact of religion as a fundamental sociocultural
factor has become evident. In consequence, sociological gender roles are shaped
by theological gender models and vice versa.(6) So-called higher religions
define fully human status in terms of possessing a potential cultic capability,
that is a capability to mediate between the Godhead and humanity. This
prerogative is mostly reserved for men and based on male religious experience.
No historically known society has abolished women's subordinate status by way
of recognizing Goddesses and priestesses.(7) Female autonomy is, in fact, alien
to all major religious systems. In Hinduism and Buddhism, women are placed
between men and beasts through successive reincarnations and the wheel of
rebirth. The same ontologicai gender hierarchy appears in the creation myth of
Plato's Timaeus (41e—42d). Here, immortal souls are initially set
in heavenly stars, to be incarnated as human beings in male bodies, and then
reincarnated as women or animals according to the moral quality of previous
existence.
III. One God and Two Sexes
In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the monotheistic
Godhead is described as manlike or metasexual. Human Godlikeness is
correspondingly defined as male or asexual. Given the interaction between the
concept of divinity and the definition of humanity, this fundamental
incompatibility of Godhead and femaleness is negotiated by shifting
inculturated exegesis of Biblical texts. Traditional Christian anthropology
builds on two contrasting axioms: Female subordination is established by God's
creative order and is, therefore, normative in this world. Human equivalence in
the sense of women's parity with men results from Christ's redemption, to be
fully realized only in the coming world.(8) During two millennia of Church
history, the resulting incoherence between creational gender hierarchy and
eschatological gender equality is being gradually overcome by attributing fully
human Godlikeness to women as well.(9) This doctrinal process is elaborated in
three main stages:
A. Based on literal exegesis of Biblical texts, early
Christian anthropology excludes women from being created in God's image (Gen.
l:26-27a; 2:7; 1 Cor. 11:7). Nevertheless, women can achieve salvational
equality with Godlike men through incorporation into Christ's perfect maleness
(Gal. 3:28; Col. 3:10-11; Eph, 4:13). Consequently, Christian women are
"becoming male" by ascetic renunciation of female sexuality.(10)
B. Based on combined Stoic and Platonic anthropology,
ancient Graeco-Roman Church Fathers redefine human Godlikeness in terms of the
sexless soul's rational capacity, which is also found in women. Initiated in
the third century by Clement of Alexandria and further elaborated by Augustine
(died 430), this new exegesis allows backdating women's imago Dei from
redemption to creation, in spite of non-Godlike femaleness (sexual
differentiation in Gen. 1:27b disconnected from fertility blessing in Gen. 1:28
and linkedto image-text in Gen. 1:26-27a). The second stage became normative in
medieval theology, whereas the first stage persistedin medieval Canon
Law.
C. Anticipated by medieval Northern-European Church Mothers, like
Hildegard von Bingen (died 1179) and Julian of Norwich (died after 1416), who
used female metaphors describing God; the third doctrinal stage considers both
women and men to be created in God's image qua female or male human beings(11).
This holistic definition was explicitly formulated by nineteenth-century
feminist exegesis, first by the Norwegian Aasta Hansteen in 1878.(12)
Superseding traditional concepts of male or sexless Godlikeness, inclusive
imago Dei became normative in twentieth century Western Christianity.
Soon adopted by Protestant exegetes and endorsed in Catholic anthropology after
the II Vatican Council (1962-65), it is of note that the second stage persists
in Eastern Orthodox doctrine.
In conclusion, the recently inculturated concept of
holistic Godlikeness, now accepted by Catholic theology, provides the necessary
doctrinal foundation for promoting the rights of women as fully autonomous
human beings.
IV. Traditional Sexology
Despite the current updating of theological
anthropology, institutional Roman Catholicism opposes women's reproductive
autonomy. In order to explain the doctrinal rationale of this Vatican
obstruction, it is necessary to outline the main themes of traditional
sexology. In ancient Christianity, the two basic human drives of religiosity
and sexuality are axiomatically considered to be antagonistic. In consequence,
the perfect human prototype is defined as male or presexual, so that sexual
differentiation, or more precisely femaleness, is interpreted as a cause or a
consequence of primeval sin. This theme appears already in Hesiod's Works
and Days (ca. 700 B.C.), where the female prototype Pandora is created as a
curse for mankind by bringing sexuality and death into the world.
Therefore, ascetic Christian movements practiced sexual
abstinence in order to restore humanity's pristine immortality. In this context
of dualistic anthropology, where bodily death is caused by the original fell,
the leading Greek Church Fathers Origen (died ca. 254) and Gregory of Nyssa
(died ca. 395) elaborate a twofold scheme of creation: First, a purely
spiritual human prototype is created in God's image. Second, God introduces
male and female physicality in order to counteract death by sexual
fertility.(13) The leading Latin Church Father, Augustine, contests this double
creation,where gender differentiation is linked to humanity's loss of
immortality. He strongly insists that female humanity is established by God's
unique creation. Consequently, Augustine refutes the early Christian belief
that women will resurrect in male or genderfree perfection, boldly stating that
women will be restored as human females.(14)
It is important to note that liberal Church Fathers like
Clement of Alexandria invoked Stoic sexology against extreme ascetic rejection
of sexual activity for all Christians. Still praising virginity as a most
Godlike way of life for the Christian elite, they considered married sexuality
to be legitimate for the common multitude, but only if practiced as a means of
procreation.
Unfortunately, Augustine's androcentric explanation of
original sin, where humanity's collective guilt is propagated from Adam via
paternal seed, enforced the traditional connection of death and sexual
activity. His ambivalent moral rule is succinctly expressed as "bene uti
malo," to neutralize bad orgasm by good fertility, Augustine also tolerated
marital intercourse as a remedy for concupiscence, thereby mitigating the Stoic
prohibition of coitus with pregnant, nursing, or menopausal women.
Nevertheless, he condemned contraceptive avoidance of female fertile periods as
a method used by Manichees to impede the imprisonment of divine sparks in
material bodies. It is noteworthy that Augustine had embraced dualistic
Manichaeism for at least ten years and that his concubine bore only one child
during more than fifteen years of cohabitation.
As a converted Manichee, Augustine insists that
fertility belongs to God's creation. In this perspective, Eve's formation from
Adam's rib (Gen. 2:18, 21-23) is interpreted in terms of derived femaleness,
created to serve as instrument for men's procreation. It follows that women's
specific raison d'êtreis motherhood, defined according to
androcentric biology, to receive and nourish the potential embryo contained in
the male seed.(15). In fact, Augustine's sexology, reshaped by Thomas Aquinas'
(died 1274) Aristotelian finality of male generative power, survives in the
Vatican's current ban on contraception.(16)
V. Vatican Sexology
Efficient fertility control, introduced by
twentieth-century medical technology, represents a revolution in human history.
In premodern societies, population growth was mainly determined by extensive
infant mortality. Contraceptive means were inefficient and provoked abortions
were dangerous, so birth control was often practiced by coitus
interruptus. Before the discovery of the female ovum in 1827 by Karl Ernst
von Baer, dispersion of male seed was condemned as destroying potential embryos
and, therefore, confused with abortion in traditional sexology.
It is significant that this biological shift was first
negotiated in a Protestant context by approval of contraception as legitimate
in marriage; cf. the 1930 Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Communion. Pius XI
reacted against this novelty with a rehearsal of traditional doctrine in the
encyclical Casti connubii (1930).
Challenged by the growing debate within the Catholic
Church, John XXIII in 1963 nominated a pontifical commission of theologians and
lay experts to examine the validity of current teaching. The global demographic
explosion was taken into account, but without focus on female reproductive
autonomy. Among progressive members were the leading moral theologians Bernhard
Häring and Josef Fuchs, who in the 1950s had introduced a positive
evaluation of sexual activity in marriage as expressing love.(17) This holistic
approach represents a major reform of Christian anthropology. Traditional
doctrine considers married intercourse and marital love to be antagonistic. In
consequence, ancient Church Fathers regularly exhort pious married couples to
actualize their loving union by sexual abstinence. Conservative members were
afraid to endanger the Church's authority by changing established doctrine.
Their invocation of traditional sexology apparently ignored the fact that
voluntary conception is a new option, resulting from the twentieth-century
biological revolution and, therefore, not addressed in previous moral
discourse. To Paul VI's consternation, the commission's final reports of 1966,
leaked to an American Catholic newspaper in 1967, showed that a strong majority
(60 of 67 members) recommended allowing contraception in marriage.(18)
It is important to know that the archbishop of Krakow,
Karol Wojtyla, strongly supported the small minority, encouraging Paul VI to
publish the contested encyclical Humanae vitae in 1968.(19) Based on a
premodern concept of natural law, this document reaffirms that the biological
finality of procreation is normative for each single conjugal act, thereby
condemning so-called artificial contraception as intrinsically evil.(20)
Insisting on the absolute inviolability of biological functions in every
so-called use of marriage, the encyclical affirms that all acts of sexual
intercourse must remain open to procreation, whether or not causally
responsible at the given moment. In consequence, the only licit method of
fertility control is conjugal abstinence during female fertile periods.
(Previously condemned by Augustine!)
Intended to safeguard the Pope's teaching authority
concerning faith and morals, the encyclical proved counterproductive by
provoking widespread dissent. In their comments on Humanae Vitae,
leading Catholic theologians like Karl Rahner and Yves Congar pointed to the
historical inculturation of Christian tradition, which has proved viable
through reception by the faithful, not by pontifical diktat.(21) It is
significant that only 17 % of episcopal responses to the encyclical expressed
unmitigated acceptance. In developed countries, where women enjoy full civil
rights and contraception is normal; like Scandinavia, France, The Netherlands,
Belgium, Austria and Canada; the bishops expediently referred to the moral
judgment of individual conscience.(22)
Since cardinal Wojtyla became John Paul II in 1978, he
has used every opportunity to reinforce the doctrine of Humanae Vitae.
Aptly co-opting the new inculturation of sexual union as an expression of
conjugal love, he confirms the biological purposiveness of coitus by
transforming procreative purpose into an essential part of love in marriage.
The apostolic letter Mulieris dignitatem in 1988 condemns contraception
as degrading women from their specific dignity of motherhood.(23) The
encyclical Veritatis splendor in 1993 reiterates that every
contraceptive act constitutes a violation of the God-given law of nature.
(24)
VI. Pontifical Censure
The Roman Church's institutional blockage under John
Paul II follows from his imposition of assent to Vatican sexology, including
the opposition to women's priestly ordination, as the indispensable
prerequisite to become a bishop. An oath of loyalty to the papal
magisterium is imposed on teachers of theology at Catholic universities
(Professio fidei 1989, Ad tuendam fidem 1998). By virtue of
concordats, such Vatican control also extends to state universities, as in
Germany and Austria. In fact, when the II Vatican Council approved religious
freedom (Declaratio de libertate religiosa1965), this new doctrine
primarily envisaged corporate liberty for the Catholic Church in Communist
societies. In consequence, the human right to religious freedom for individual
Catholics within the institutional Church remains unresolved.(25)
Considered in the context of Church history, the current
ban on contraception has a privileged position among many fateful errors
committed by the Roman papacy. Often concealed by contemporary apologetics and
rarely known except by scholars, some mistakes are still operative, such as the
excommunication of the Greek Orthodox patriarch in Byzantium in 1054 and the
excommunication of Martin Luther in 1520. Commenting on John Paul II's recent
retraction of the Holy Office's process against Galileo Galilei (1633), a noted
Italian politician, Alberto Ronchey, succinctly states that if this
condemnation could be rectified, even after centuries, the persistent Vatican
obstruction of fertility control to solve the global demographic crisis, with
growth from 3.5 billon in 1968 to 6 billion in 1998, cannot be
exonerated.(26)
In conclusion, since the concept of female autonomy
remains alien to all global religions, women's human right to control their own
voluntary fertility represents a fundamental challenge to traditional gender
models, and not only in Roman Catholicism. Recently forced to admit the
socio-economic necessity of so-called responsible paternity (paternitas
conscia), the Vatican advocates sexual abstinence or avoidance of female
fertile periods as the only licit method of voluntary control of fertility.
Biologically inefficient and harmful to the psychophysical equilibrium of
couples, this clerical solution has proved to be impracticable. Invoking
marital love and parental responsibility in order to restrict sexual
intercourse, the traditional rejection of orgasmic coitus as sinful is here
obfuscated by inverted apologetics. In fact, most Catholics in socially
advanced societies no longer respect Vatican sexology, thereby producing a
healthy criticism of ecclesiastical theocracy. Unfortunately, the Holy See's
privileged status at the United Nations strengthens its political influence in
underdeveloped countries.
VII. Androcentric Typology
The twentieth-century collapse of androcentrism
represents a more fundamental challenge to traditional theology than the
previous collapse of geocentrism (Kepler) and anthropocentrism (Darwin).
Upheaval of gender hierarchy shakes the core of Catholic and Orthodox doctrinal
symbolism, where androcentric gender models are transposed from God's creation
to the order of redemption. Godlike Adam prefigures Christ, who as new Adam and
divine Redeemer is incarnated in perfect maleness. Non-Godlike Eve prefigures
the Church/Mary, who as new Eve represents dependent and, therefore, womanlike
humanity (Rom. 5:14; Eph. 5:32). Based on the early Christian concept of male
Godlikeness, this asymmetrical typology remains fundamental in Catholic and
Orthodox Christology, ecclesiology, and Mariology. Thus excluding femaleness
from a description of the Godhead, typological gender models serve as a prime
obstacle to women's cultic capability in the non-Protestant majority of
Christendom. According to Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventura (died 1274),
Christlike maleness is an indispensable prerequisite for the sacramental
signification of priestly eminence.(27) It is important to observe that this
refusal to ordain women as priests and bishops issues from the preservation of
a traditional incompatibility of Godhead and femaleness. In medieval Canon law,
women's cultic impedimentum sexus is explicitly justified by men's
exclusive imago Dei, in accordance with the first stage of Christian
anthropology. In line with women's legal incapacity in civil society, termed
infirmitas sexus in Roman law, this cultic incapability remained
unchallenged in all institutional churches until the twentieth century.(28)
Previously, all mainstream Christian denominations were firmly opposed to
women's civil rights, considered to violate God's order of creation. Enforced
by the socio-cultural consequences of new Western ideals like democracy and
citizenship, female suffrage was first accepted in Protestant countries (New
Zealand 1893, Australia 1902, Finland 1906, Norway 1913), and several years
later in Catholic countries (France, Italy, Spain 1945). A similar Protestant
precedence concerns women's cultic capability to be ordained as priests and
bishops, (Lutheran Denmark respectively1948/1995, Sweden 1958/1997, Norway
1961/1993, Anglican Great Britain 1994).
In Roman Catholicism, the recent acceptance of women's
Godlikeness qua female human beings entails a contradictory mixture of premises
discarded and conclusions preserved. Simultaneously upholding the mutually
exclusive doctrinal tenets of early androcentric typology and holistic
Godlikeness, the institutional Church decrees that Godlike women cannot be
ordained as Christlike priests. The Codex Iuris Canonici of 1983 (canon
1024) repeats the formula from the Codex of 1917 (canon 968,1):
"Sacram ordinationem valide recipit solus vir baptizatus" ("Only a
baptized male can receive valid ordination.")
At the initiative of the bishops' synod in 1971, Paul VI
in 1973 nominated a pontifical commission to study the status of women in
society and Church, with 25 members, among them 15 women.(29) It is significant
that only one of these women, a female medical doctor, had professional
expertise in theology, natural or social sciences; such expert knowledge was
reserved for the male members. The question of ordaining women was deliberately
excluded from their mandate and left to the papal Biblical commission, which
included male theologians only. According to a secret report from 1975,
published in 1976 by so-called indiscretion, this commission unanimously
considered that referring to New Testament texts only could not solve the
question of ordaining women. In fact, the Church's clerical hierarchy and
monarchic episcopate were structured from the second/ third centuries onwards.
Hence, a majority of 12 exegetes (against 5) found that the Church could ordain
women without opposing Christ's initial intention.
Nevertheless Paul VI in 1977, overruling the majority of
experts as he had done in 1968, sanctioned a doctrinal document against women's
ordination: Inter insigniores. The main argument is that the Church's
constant tradition of excluding women from the priesthood is not based on socio
cultural androcentrism, but on the indispensable conformity between Christ's
incarnate maleness and the priest's male sex. The courageous theologian Karl
Rahner's critique of this Christoiogical rationale is pertinent: "The mere fact
that Jesus was of the male sex is no answer here, since it is not clear that a
person acting with Christ's mandate and in that sense (but not otherwise) in
persona Christi must at the same time represent Christ precisely in his
maleness."(30)
Like Humanae Vitae, this declaration provoked a
lively theological debate in the Church, giving rise to growing awareness among
Catholic laypeople of the untenable arguments invoked to preserve the cultic
impediment of femaleness.(31) Incidentally, Communist authorities in
Czechoslovakia were conveniently duped by several women who were ordained to
the Catholic priesthood before 1988, in spite of their canonical
impedimentum sexus. This stratagem served them to perform forbidden
pastoral work secretly, for instance, to administer the sacraments in
prisons.(32)
VIII. Vatican Feminology
In Orthodox Christianity, the question of women priests
is still marginal, debated only in Westernized context, as in France and the
United States. In Protestant churches, priesthood is not defined in terms of
androcentric typology, with axiomatic conformity between Christ's incarnate
manhood and the priest's Christlike maleness. Christology does not, therefore,
contravene women's ordination. Inversely, John Paul II invokes the typological
gender models of Christ as new Adam, and Mary as new Eve, to justify the cultic
incapability of femaleness. Combining women's Mariotypic motherhood with the
new concept of female Godlikeness in Mulieris dignitatem, he mixes the
first and the third stage of Christian anthropology, that is, an androcentric
typology and an updated imago Dei.(33) When Mary is proposed as the
exemplary role model for women, this exhortation tends to obscure that Christ's
mother as the new Eve has an instrumental and subordinate function vis a vis
the Godhead, incarnated as the new Adam.(34)
In fact, the current incoherence between discarded male
Godlikeness and upheld female cultic impediment is manifest by John Paul II's
apostolic letter Ordinatio sacerdotalis from 1994, where he refers to
Inter insigniores and Mulieris dignitatem, concluding that the
Church cannot ordain women because Christ called twelve male apostles and did
not ordain his mother Mary. The traditional exclusion of women from the
priesthood is, therefore, in accordance with God's plan for his Church
("congruenter statuit mulierum exclusionem a sacerdotio convenire cum
consilio Dei pro sua Ecclesia"). Since this invocation of divine
androcentrism did not silence the persistent demand for women priests in the
Catholic Church, the Pope's doctrinal chieftain, cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in
1995 issued a Responsio, certifying that the disputed apostolic letter
pertains to the normative deposit of faith ("ad fidei deposition
pertinens").
In conclusion, it is certainly not a human right to be
ordained a priest or a bishop in the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, it is a
fundamental right for all human beings to be equally attributed a fully Godlike
humanity, being able to mediate between the Godhead and humankind. Preserving
the canonical impedimentum sexus of femaleness, the institutional Church
decrees that God is impeded from calling women to the priesthood because of
their God-given cultic deficiency. Since the twentieth century, such an
attribution of androcentric incapability to the Godhead has become perfectly
unconvincing.
IX. Feminism and Christianity
The Vatican's efforts to counteract the current
androcentric collapse have been succinctly described: "The Catholic Church...
is writhing in knots around feminism like a worm impaled on a hook."(35) It is
essential to observe that women's claim to bio-socio-cultural and religious
autonomy results from the epistemological revolution of feminism, where women
and men are defined as human beings of equal dignity: "Feminism is concerned
with the shift in roles and the question of rights that have been unjustly
denied women. But all of that, however important and essential, is secondary.
The main event is epistemological. Changes in what we know are normal; changes
in how we know are revolutionary. Feminism is a challenge to the way we have
gone about knowing. The epistemological terra firma of the recent past is
rocking, and as the event develops, it promisesto change the face of the
earth."(36)
From an historical perspective, the relationship between
feminism and Christianity is radically ambivalent.(37) In Western civilization,
the ideal of female autonomy is based on the Christian concept of women's
equivalence with men in the order of salvation. The feminist revolution starts
when redemptive inclusiveness is backdated as normative for the present world,
thereby superseding creational gender hierarchy. In the European history of
ideas, this process coincides with the transformation of human Godlikeness from
exclusively male to equal privilege for both sexes. Women's gradual achievement
of autonomous humanity is realized through the stages of stratified communality
in the Middle Ages, religious individualism in the Age of Reform, universal
human rights for men in the Enlightenment, and the twentieth-century shift from
droits de 1'homme to inclusive droits humains, when human rights
are equally attributed to women.(38)
In consequence, this recent Western inculturation
represents a fundamental challenge to traditional gender models in Roman
Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity, where the core doctrine and symbolism
are structured by androcentric typology. In conformity with Islam, traditional
Christian discourse axiomatically connects creational gender differentiation to
the God-given division of male and female roles in Church and society. In a
European perspective, the eighteenth- century asymmetrical polarity of male and
female functions (Rousseau and Kant) is in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries redefined in terms of complementarity of the sexes, where the
subordinate character of female roles becomes strategically obscured. It is
significant that the Northern-European partnership model; where women and men
collaborate in all fields of society and Church, precisely because of and not
despite their sexual difference; proves to be alien in Mediterranean
civilization
The impact of Scandinavian State feminism and a
Scandinavian welfare system, in which a strong participation of women in
political government is correlated with a high voluntary birth rate, is
striking.(39) In contrast, the lack of feminist welfare policy in Catholic
countries, such as Spain and Italy, generates feeble participation of women in
political government and a voluntarily reduced natality. It is of note that
Norway did not join the European Union because of a significant gender gap in
the referendum of 1994 in which 62 % of the female electorate voted against
membership, presumably in large measure to protect the feminist welfare system.
From this point of view, it is regrettable that prospective new members from
Eastern and Central Europe are not required to fulfil Western juridical norms
for equality of the sexes and women's reproductive autonomy before entering the
Union. Enforcement of Canon law in civil society is especially problematic, as
in the case of Malta's concordat with the Holy See from 1995.
X. Sex and Gender
Feminist epistemology presupposes a twentieth-century
anthropology, where the human being is defined as a sexually differentiated
psychophysical unity. It is essential to note that this holistic concept is
completely different from the Platonized anthropology of Christian tradition,
where the human being is defined as a sexless rational soul in a male or female
body. This dualistic concept of humanity has shaped theology and philosophy
from late antiquity until the nineteenth century. It is, therefore,
paradoxically counterproductive when gender studies in the social sciences
often persist in presupposing an anachronistic dichotomy of sex, as
biologically programmed, and gender, as socially constructed. In fact, this
division corresponds to traditional androcentric dualism, thereby inadvertently
imitating the Church Fathers' promotion of women to Godlike manhood in sexless
intellect and virtue, despite bodily femaleness. The same strategy was repeated
in seventeenth-century French salon feminism with the Cartesian
adage:"I'âme n'point de sexe," and still echoed by Simone de
Beauvoir: " On ne naît pas femme, on le devient" Among the
humanistic disciplines, gender studies in religion are at the scholarly
forefront by applying human, that is, male or female "genderedness" as a main
analytical category.(40) This holistic approach highlights the connected
interaction between psycho-physical sex and socio cultural gender, which is
equally fundamental for women and for men. Applied to the Christian tradition
as in feminist theology, human God-language is consequently understood in terms
of verbalized male or female experience.
The epistemological clash between God-given specific
complementarity of the sexes and post-modernist deconstruction of gender was
striking in the dialogue des sourds between the Vatican delegation and
feminist activists at the 1995 United Nations conference in Beijing.(41) Both
parties apparently ignored the historical construction of their respective
agendas, in fact, equally resulting from millennia of androcentric
socio-biology. Fervently fighting feminist efforts to strengthen women's human
rights, the Holy See tactically abused less sophisticated variants of feminist
constructionism. The demagogical confusion of abortion and contraception on
both sides proved particularly counterproductive. The practical social reality
that abortion of a healthy fetus generally presupposes involuntary conception
makes the Vatican a causal agent of abortion in societies influenced by its ban
on contraception. The Holy See's condemnation of condoms to protect against HIV
and AIDS is a scandalous consequence of pontifical bio-theology.(42)
When feminists advocate women's right to safe abortion
in case of enforced pregnancy, their undisputed primary goal is to make the
biological revolution of efficient contraceptive technology operative in
underdeveloped areas. Female reproductive autonomy is first and foremost to be
realized by voluntary conception in order to prevent subsequent abortion.(43)
Inversely, the Holy See fiercely opposes women's control of fertility because
the Vatican is fully aware that worldwide feminism presupposes reproductive
choice and vice versa.
XI. Discourse and Reality
The argumentation of contemporary Vatican discourse on
contraception and prevention of HIV/AIDS is dearly vicarious. My present
summary of doctrinal construction shows that the historically shifting
inculturation of traditional theology and anthropology has been logically
coherent. The majority of Church Fathers and scholastic theologians were
well-educated aristocrats; the socially mobile Augustine is a significant
exception. This thorough knowledge of ancient and medieval learning made their
articulation of the Christian tradition meaningful in a given socio-cultural
context and, therefore, viable. In fact, the current doctrinal incoherence
between outdated premises and preserved conclusions, which affects the main
themes of theological sexology, is a new phenomenon in the history of
Christianity, resulting from the recent collapse of androcentric or dualistic
axioms. In consequence, no longer able to control Catholics by condemning
sexual activity as transmitting original sin, the pontifical castigation of
"hedonism" insists on condemning contraception, Christianity's traditional
conflict between love of God and sexual love is no longer axiomatic, but upheld
by the obligation of cultic celibacy. Male priests must keep away from women
and femaleness constitutes cultic incapability. According to Vatican statistics
as of 1998, the number of nuns in the Catholic Church (814.779) doubles the
number of priests (404,629) and non-ordained monks (57,813). This peculiar
situation helps explain why the Vatican invokes women's impedimentum
sexus in order to exclude them from participation in the hierarchical
government of the Church, reserved for the Pope and his Roman Curia of male
cardinals. During the theocratic pontificate of John Paul II, the collegial
decision-making of bishops, envisaged by the Second Vatican Council, has been
reduced to consultative status. In consequence, restoring episcopal
collegiality on the model of the ancient Church, and recognizing women's cultic
capability, will be urgent tasks for a third Vatican Council.(44) A decisive
influence of male and female lay people has to be codified in concordance with
recent norms of political democracy. The Catholic Church can no longer be
governed on the model of the Roman Empire with a majority population of
illiterate serfs.
As a Nordic Catholic feminist historian of theology, I
find it paradoxical that Christian feminism has first been accepted in
Protestantism, where the literal Bible is invested with a sacramental function
as God's instrument of revelation, akin to the Islamic concept of the Koran as
a divine revelatory medium. In this context, it is interesting to note that
contemporary Islamic feminist theology emulates the strategy of previous
Protestant feminist theology by criticizing the subsequent interpretations of
sacred texts, not the androcentrism of revelatory Scripture ad
litteram.(45) Inversely, I argue that indispensable instruments for a
feminist Reformation of Christianity are to be found in the Catholic and
Orthodox traditions. A dynamic interpretation of incarnate Scripture; that is,
historically shaped revelation and an optimistic anthropology, in terms of
Christ's redemptive divinisation of humanity, are essential means for this new
inculturation.(46) Divested of androcentric typology, the ancient Graeco-Roman
Church Fathers' inculturation, emulated by the medieval Northern-European
Church Mothers' holistic God-language, are exemplary models for reconstructing
a viable Roman Catholicism.(47)
Vatican Documents published in Acta Apostolicae
Sedis, Città del Vaticano:
Casti connubi—AAS 22,1930, 539-592.
Humanae vitae—AAS 60,1968,481-503.
Inter insigniores—AAS 69,1977,98-116.
Mulieris dignitatem—AAS 8O,
1988,1653-1729.
Veritatis splendor—AAS
85,1993,1133-1228.
Ordinatio sacerdotalis—AAS
86,1994,545-548.
Responsio (Ordinatio sacerdotalis)—AAS
87,1995,1114.
NOTES
1. Ann Elizabeth Mayer,Islam and Human Rights. Tradition and Politics
(Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press,1999);Shaheen Sardar Ali, Gender and
Human Sights in Islam and International Law. Equal Before Allah. Unequal Before
Man?(The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 2000); Jonas Svensson,Women's
Human Rights and Islam: A Study of Three Attempts at Accommodation(Lund:
Almqvist & Wiksell, 2000)
2. The process of entry into the system of international
organizations started in 1929 when the Vatican City joined the World Telegraph
Union and the Universal Postal Union. Since 1957, the supreme organ of
government of the Roman Catholic Church is uniformly termed the Holy See. As a
legal entity, the Holy See obtained status as a Non Member State Permanent
Observer at the United Nations in 1964 when the Secretary General U Thant
accepted its self-designation as such. (Switzerland had obtained this status in
1948); see Josef Kunz, "The Status of the Holy See," International Law,
American Journal of International Law46 (1952): 308-14 (arguing the case
for sending a US ambassador to the Holy See). The attribution of statehood to
the Holy See appears somewhat anachronistic since the Papal State in central
Italy, restored to the Roman pontiff at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, was
finally conquered and annexed by Italy in 1870. In 1929, the Lateran treaty,
signed by II Duce Benito Mussolini and Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, recognized the
papal sovereignty of the Vatican City (0.44 square kilometers or 108.7 acres),
in compensation for the loss of the Papal State; see Anika Rahman, "Church or
State? The Holy See at the United Nations," Conscience 20 (1999): 2-5;
David Nolan, "The Catholic Church at the United Nations: Church or State?"
Conscience 21 (2000): 4, 20-24.
3. Female reproductive autonomy was established as a
human right in international law by the Convention on die Elimination of AH
Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), in force since 1981, as of 16
fJuly 2001 ratified by 168 states. Article 16, paragraph 1 reads: "States
Parties shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against
women in all matters relating to marriage and family relations and in
particular shall ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women . . . [t]he
same rights to decide freely and responsibly on the number and spacing of their
children and to have access to the information, education and means to enable
them to exercise these rights." The Holy See, along with eight Muslim states,
has not signed this Convention, nor the 1952 Convention on the Political Rights
of Women. The US has signed, but not ratified, CEDAW, mainly because of
political pressure from Protestant fundamentalism.
4. Elissavet Stamatopolou, "Women's Rights and the
United Nations," Women's Rights, Human Rights: International Feminist
Perspectives, ed. Julie Peters and Andrea Wolper (London: Routledge, 1995),
36-48; Rebecca J. Cook, "International Human Rights and Women's Reproductive
Health," Women's Rights, Human Rights, 256-75; Susan D. Rose, "Christian
Fundamentalism: Patriarchy, Sexuality, and Human Rights," Religious
Fundamentalisms and the Human Rights of Women, ed. Courtney W. Rowland
(London: Macmillan, 1999), 9-20; Ann Elizabeth Mayer, "Religious Reservations
to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against
Women: What Do They Really Mean," in Howland, Religious Fundamentalisms and
the Human Rights of Women, 105-16,
5. Margaret E. Galey, "International Enforcement of
Women's Rights," Human Rights Quarterly 6 (1984): 463-90; Noreen
Burrows, "International Law and Human Rights: the Case of Women's Rights,"
Human Rights: From Rhetoric to Reality, ed. Tom Campbell et al.
(London: Blackwell, 1986), 80-98; Kevin Boyle, "Stock taking on Human Rights:
The World Conference on Human Rights, Vienna 1993", Political Studies 43
(1995): 79-95; Katerina Tomasevski, "Women's Rights," Human Rights:
Concepts and Standards, ed. Janusz Symonides (Paris: UNESCO Publishing,
2000), 231-58,
6. Kari Elisabeth Børresen and Kari Vogt,
Women's Studies of the Christian and Islamic Traditions (The Hague:
Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995).
7. See Joan Bamberger, "The Myth of Matriarchy: Why Men
Rule in Primitive Society," Women Culture and Society, ed. Michelle Z.
Rosaldo and Louise Lamphère (Stanford; Stanford University Press,1974),
263-80.
8. Børresen, Subordination and Equivalence: The Nature and
Role of Woman in Augustine and Thomas Aquinas (Kampen, The Netherlands: Kak
Pharos, 1995).
9. Børresen, ed., The Image of God: Gender Models in
Judaeo-Christian Tradition (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1995).
10. Vogt, "'Becoming Male': A Gnostic and Early Christian Metaphor," in
Børresen, The Image of God, 170-86; Elizabeth A. Clark,
Ascetic Piety and Women's Faith (Edwin Mellen Press, 1986).
11. Børresen, "Ancient and Medieval Church
Mothers," in Børresen and Vogt, Women's Studies of theChristian and
Islamic Traditions, 245-75; Børresen, "Julian of Norwich: A Model of
Feminist Theology,"in Børresen and Vogt, Women's Studies of the
Christian and Islamic Traditions,295-314.
12. Aasta Hansteen, Kvinden skabt i Guds Billede
(Christiania: n.p., 1878; 2nd expanded ed.,Christiania Steen, 1903): ["Woman
created in God's image"].
13. Giulia Sfameni Gasparro, "Image of God and Sexual
Differentiation in the Tradition of Enkrateia," in Børresen, The
Image of God, 134-69.
14. Børresen, "Patristic 'Feminism': The Case of Augustine,"
Augustinian Studies 25 (1994): 139-52.
15. Erna Lesky, Die Zeugung-und Vererbungslehren der Antike und ihr
Nachwirken (Mainz: Veriag der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, 1950);
Aline Rousselle, Porneia {New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988).
l6. John T. Noonan Jr., Contraception: A History of
its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists (Cambridge, Mass.;
Harvard University Press, 1986).
17. Ambrogio Valsecchi, Controversy: The Birth
Control Debate 1958-1968 (London: Geoffrey Chapman Ltd., 1968).
18. "The Majority Papal Commission Report" is reprinted
in The Catholic Case for Contraception, ed Daniel Callahan (London:
Macmillan, 1969), 149-73, where the core rationale is spelled out at page 161:
"The reasons in favor of this affirmation are of several kinds: social changes
in matrimony and the family, especially in the role of the woman; lowering of
the infant mortality rate; new bodies of knowledge in biology, psychology,
sexuality and demography; a changed estimation of the value and meaning of
human sexuality and of conjugal relations; and most of all, a better grasp of
the duty of man to humanize and to bring to greater perfection for the life of
man what is given in nature." See ibid., 174-211; the Minority Report is a
pathetic example of male celibate isolation from human reality.
19. Jan Grootaers, "Humanae Vitae, encyclique de Paul
VI," Dictionnaire d'Histoire et de Géographic
ecclésiastiques 25 (1994): 328-34 (Wojtyla's conservative stance
favored his papal election in 1978).
20. Charles E. Curran, "Natural Law and Contemporary
Moral Theology" Contraception: Authority and Dissent, ed. Curran (New
York: Herder and Herder, 1969), 151-75; see Curran and Richard A. McCormick,
eds., Dialogue about Catholic Sexual Teachings, (New York: Paulist
Press, 1993); Curran, The Catholic Moral Tradition Today: A Synthesis
(Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1999).
21. Karl Rahner, "On the Encyclical 'Humanae Vitae,'" Theological
Investigations 11 (1974): 263-87; Yves Congar, "Reception as an
Ecclesioiogical Reality," Concilium 77 (1972): 43-68
22. John Maloney, The Making of Moral Theology: A Study of the Roman
Catholic Tradition {New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 259-301;
William H. Shannon, The Lively Debate: Response to Humanae Vitae (New
York: Sheed and Ward, 1970), 117-46.
23. See Vogt, "Catholicisme et Islam: Une rhétorique
apologétique commune à propos de la femme," in Børresen
and Vogt, Women's Studies of the Christian and Islamic Traditions,
359—65 (The definition of motherhood as women's specific dignity
corresponds to Islamic sexology.).
24. Joseph A. Selling and Jan Jans, eds., The Splendor of Accuracy:
An Examination of the Assertions Made by Veritatis Splendor (Kampen, The
Netherlands: Kok Pharos, 1995); see Curran and McCormick, eds., John Paul II
and Moral Theology (New York: Paulist Press, 1998). For a pertinent
critique of the papal concept of God as a superimpregnator, who creates new
life through the biological finality of human sexual organs, contradicting
human autonomy as being created in God's image, see Christian Duquoc,
"Procréation et dogme de la création," Lumière et
Vie 187 (1960): 51-65.
25. James H. Provost, "Freedom of Conscience and Religion. Human Rights
in the Church," Culture Chrétienne et Droits de l'Homme—du rejet
à l'engagement, ed., Michel J. Verwilghen (Rome: IFCU, 1991), 35-61;
William Johnson Everett, "Human Rights in the Church," Religious Human
Rights in Global Perspective: Religious Perspectives, ed. John Witte Jr.
and Johan D. van der Vyver (Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1996),
121-41.
26. Alberto Ronchey, "In sei milliardi stretti e caldi," ["Six crammed
and overheated billion"] Corriere della Sera, 14 November 1998
27. Børresen, "The Ordination of Women: To Nurture Tradition by
Continuing Inculturation," Studia Theologica 46 (1992): 3-13.
28. Haye van der Meer, Women Priests in the Catholic
Church? A Theological Historical Investigation (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1973); Roger Gryson, The Ministry of Women in the Early
Church (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 1976); Ida Raming,
The Exclusion of Women from the Priesthood: Divine Law or Sex
Discrimination? (New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1976).
29. In 1974, five women members were refused to present
their minority report that contested the commission's submissive final
document. The women did not dare to publish this report until several years
later. See Maria del Pilar Bellosillo et al., "Women Appeal to the Pastors of
the Church," Pro Mundi Vita Bulletin 108 (1987): 1-36.
30. Kari Rahner, Theological Investigations XX: Concern for the
Church (New York: Crossroad, 1981, 35-47),
31. Walter Gross, ed., Frauenordination. Stand der Diskussion in der
katholischen Kirche (Munich: Erich Wewel Verhg, 1996).
32. The Vatican prefers to keep these women priests underground, but
they appear in Hansjacob Stehle, Geheimdiplomatie im Vatikan. Die Papste und
die Kommunisten {Düsseldorf: BenzingerVerlag, 1993), 320, 428.
33. Børresen, "Image ajustée, typologie arretée:
Analyse critique de Mulieris dignitatem," in Børresen and Vogt,
Women's Studies of the Christian and Islamic Traditions, 343-57.
34. Børresen, Anthropologie mediévale et
théologie mariale (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1971); "Mary in
Catholic Theology," Concilium 188 (1983): 48-56,
35. Andrew Brown, "The Future of the Papacy," The Spectator, 25
April 1998, 13-14.
36. Daniel C. Maguire, The Moral Revolution: A
Christian Humanist Vision (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), 122.
37. Børresen, "Christianisme et
féminisme," Maschio e femmina li creè, ed. Fiorenza Taricone
(Verona: II Segno dei Gabrielli Editori, 1998), 83-99.
38. See Jerome J. Shestack, "The Philosophical
Foundations of Human Rights," in Symonides, Human Rights: Concepts and
Standards, 31-66; Arvonne S. Fraser, "Becoming Human: The Origins and
Development of Women's Human Rights," Human Rights Quarterly 21 (1999):
853-906.
39. One indication is the differential total fertility
rates 1995-1999 for Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden compared to Italy and
Spain: Norway 1.85, Denmark 1.72, Finland 1.73, Sweden 1.57, Italy 1.20, Spain
1.15. The State of World Population 2000 is available online at
<http://unfpa.org/swp/ 2000/english/indicators/indicators2 html>.
40. Ursula King, "Gender and the Study of Religion,''
Religion and Gender, ed. King (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 1-38.
41. Doris E. Buss, "Robes, Relics and Rights: The Vatican and the
Beijing Conference on Women," Social & Legal Studies 7 (1998):
339-63
42. See the statement of the Holy See concerning the
Declaration and Platform for Action of the United Nations Conference on
Women in Beijing 1995: "The Holy See in no way endorses contraception or the
use of condoms, either as a family planning measure or in HIV/AIDS prevention
programmes," Report of the Fourth World Conference on Women, available
online at <gopher://gopher.undp.org/00/unconfs/ women/off/a—20.en>,
chapter V, sec.11. It is of note that faced with human disaster, the Vatican
has now dissociated the medical use of condoms from its upheld ban on condoms
as means of contraception. At the United Nations Special Session on HIV/AIDS,
25-27 June 2001, New York, the Holy See's Permanent Observer presented a
Statement after the adoption of The Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS, 2
August 2001, with implicit reference to # 23 and # 52: "He emphazised that in
accepting the language on the use of condoms as a method of prevention of the
disease, the Holy See in no way changed its moral position." The full text of
the 2 August 2001 UN Declaration is available online at:
<http://www.unaids.org/whatsnew/others/un_special/DeclarationQ20801_en.htm:».
43. It is important to note that the widespread
selective abortion of female fetuses in Asia mainly results from the axiomatic
inferiority of femaleness. This discrimination in Hinduism and Buddhism is
explained by the ontological hierarchy of reincarnation and rebirth, placing
women betwen men and animals. The current euphemism of blaming cultural
relativism instead of androcentric religion is here especially fallacious;
consider the windspread practice of direct or indirect female infanticide, well
documented from classical antiquity to early modern Europe.
44. It is noteworthy that a majority of leading feminist theologians are
Catholics. Their contribution as experts will be important in a third Vatican
Council. Some influential European scholars are as follows: Elisabeth
Gössmann (Munich), Anne Jensen (Graz), Ursula King (Bristol), Cettina
Militello (Rome), and Janet M. Soskice (Cambridge), and in the USA
(significantly, all nuns): Anne E, Carr (Chicago), Margaret A. Farley (Yale),
Elizabeth A. Johnson (New York), and Sandra M. Schneiders (Berkeley).
45. Examples of similar approaches, with a significant time lag, are the
following: Letty M. Russell, ed., Feminist Interpretation of the Bible
(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1985) and Amina Wadud Muhsin, Qur'an and
Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1999).
46. Børresen, "Femmes et théologie depuis 1960—le
parcours d'une protagoniste," Donne e Teologia. Bilancio di un secolo,
ed. Cettina Militello (Rome: Edizioni Dehoniane, 2001); see Christine Amadou,
"An interview with Kari Elisabeth Børresen," in Børresen, The
Image of God, xxii-xxix; Rosemary R. Ruether, Women and Redemption: A
Theological History (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1998), 190-93,
338.
47. Børresen, "Religious Feminism and Female
God-language: From Hildegard von Bingen to Théresè de Leisieux,"
Ab Aquilone: Nordic Studies in Honour and Memory of Leonard E. Boyle.
O.P., Suecoromana VI, ed. Marie Louise Rodén (Marieberg, Sweden:
Riksarkivet, 2000), 197-222.
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