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Empowerment of Women Cardinal Stanis »aw Ry »ko President Pontifical Council for the Laity Vatican City Empowerment of Women in the Church and Society I. Introduction On behalf of the Pontifical Council for the Laity I cordially greet all the cardinals, archbishops and bishops that are taking part in this assembly. I would like to greet most especially the President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, His Eminence Cardinal Telesphore Toppo, and the Apostolic Nuncio to India, His Excellency Archbishop Pedro López Quintana. I am very happy to be able to take part in this Plenary Assembly and I thank you for having honoured me with your invitation. The topic you have chosen, “Empowerment of Women in the Church and Society”, is appropriate in a year that commemorates the 20 th anniversary of the Apostolic Letter Mulieris dignitatem by the Servant of God John Paul II. This is a truly providential document in the magisterium of the Church that has given us major guidelines concerning the presence of women in the Church and in society. Years have passed, but this document has not lost its relevance and it continues to be a contemporary resource that summons our attention today. It is for this reason that the Pontifical Council for the Laity decided to commemorate this anniversary by organising a congress on "Woman and man, the humanum in its entirety" that took place a few days ago in Rome with the participation of 250 delegates from around the world. The objective was to take stock of the progress made over the past twenty years with regard to the advancement of women and recognition of their dignity. They looked at the challenges presented by the new cultural paradigms in the light of Revelation and also on the difficulties that Catholic women must surmount in order to live according to their identity and mission. II. A new cultural paradigm The Letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church 2 and in the World agrees that "recent years have seen new approaches to women's issues". 1 The first is a tendency to create antagonism between men and women. "Faced with the abuse of power, the answer for women is to seek power. This process leads to opposition between men and women...". 2 The second tendency is a consequence of the first. "In order to avoid the domination of one sex or the other, their differences tend to be denied". 3 This second tendency specifically refers to the kind of feminism that places the ideology of gender among its principle elements. The gender ideology promoted by radical feminism is like the tip of the iceberg of a new cultural paradigm that is being imposed on a secularised and nihilistic society. Gender feminism considers that masculine and feminine characteristics are socially constructed. It does not take nature into account nor the sexual differences inscribed in biology. It appropriates and radicalises the concept of gender in order to speak of the social dimension of the differences between the sexes. 4 Jacques Derrida’s definition of the deconstruction of philosophy was adopted and a movement was initiated that used the term “gender” as a weapon against the social roles that had to be combatted: religion, tradition, education and politics. Gender ideology separates the immutable sexual roles of men and women from their social functions, and by doing so considers that social functions can be continually constructed and deconstructed according to cultural tendencies and individual arbitrary options. As a consequence, motherhood and fatherhood are two roles that should be deconstructed according to the role we opt for in society, and individuals can choose the role they wish to play. Here we have a new version of feminism that does not so much demand parity between men and women as an approach to an androgynous humanity. In this way we see how radical feminism or gender ideology is not only a philosophical position with respect to the subject of women, but it is rather a way of putting forward a new cultural paradigm that attempts to eliminate a society based on stable and perennial values. So, we find that this is about something beyond the subject of women, but is in fact a much wider anthropological issue. There is an attempt to bring about a global cultural 1 CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH, Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World , no. 2. 2 Ibid . 3 Ibid . 4 Cf. SECRETARIAT GENERAL DE LA CONFERENCE DES EVEQUES DE FRANCE, La problématique du genre , Paris 2006, 4 3 revolution, a new post-modern, and hence post-Judeo-Christian, ethic. 5 This new approach is based on two pillars: individual autonomy on the one hand, and on the other, emphasis on cultural diversity and relativism without taking anthropological unity into account. Shortly before his election as Supreme Pontiff, Cardinal Ratzinger spoke about the dictatorship of relativism. 6 This is where anarchic liberty and cultural relativism are characteristics that form part of the phenomenon of a “liquid modernity” where all hope of totality and substance are abandoned. This concept coined by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman expresses a culture in which it is held that society is no longer guided by universal principles or social rules, but that it affirms cultural and psychological specificity and reduces everything to the sphere of the individual. 7 Liquid modernity, in the area of men and women, thus becomes “liquid identity” where it is no longer possible to define the profiles of the identity of men and women through the dynamic relation between nature and culture. 8 This liquid culture generates men and women who experience confusion concerning their own identity, a deep insecurity regarding their vocation and destiny, a pressing need to know how to be fulfilled and happy. If a human being does not know who he is, they also lose the ability to guide their own destiny and existence, and hence society. 9 III. An anthropological challenge 5 Cf. M. A. PEETERS, The New Global Ethic: challenges for the Church , 13 6 CARD. J. RATZINGER, Homily at the “Pro Eligendo Romano Pontifice” Mass, 18 April 2005 7 Cf. Z. BAUMAN, Liquid modernity , Polity 2000 8 In some cases, this confusion of identity or liquid identity leads some people to feel capable of constructing their own identity. By eliminating the truth about human nature and reducing all to a cultural construct, some even feel the desire to make decisions about their own body by modifying and defining their own identity. In this way the body becomes a space where new technologies are used for a total self-design of fluid identity. (Cf. H.B. GERL-FALKOVITZ, "Las nuevas mujeres o, ¿existe aún una imagen de mujer" [The new women, or, does an image of women still exist?], in: G. LUDWIG MÜLLER [ed.], Las mujeres en la Iglesia. Especificidad y corresponsabilidad [Women in the Church. Specificity and co-responsibility], Madrid, 2000, 60 [our translation]). 9 Herein lies the profound difference between human beings and animals, because a person is always in danger of being dehumanised. As Ortega y Gasset said: “While the tiger cannot stop being a tiger, cannot be de-tigered, man lives in perpetual danger of being dehumanized. With him, not only is it problematic and contingent whether this or that will happen to him, as it is with the other animals, but at times what happens to man is nothing less than ceasing to be man. And this is true not only abstractly and generically but it holds of our own individuality. Each one of use is always in danger of not being the unique and untransferable self which he is. (ORTEGA Y GASSET, Man and people, (Translator: Willard R. Trask). New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1957). [http://www.uwmc.uwc.edu/communication_arts/barry/Quotes/Gasset_Man_People.htm] 4 Nowadays we are witnessing how relations between men and women, instead of being based on reciprocity and communion, display distrust, rivalry, and the pursuit of power and dominion over the other. In Western countries, post- modern culture propounds the model of a woman who has totally achieved her autonomy. The liquid freedom of present-day culture proclaims that any kind of commitment would threaten the autonomy achieved by women. Today there are many young people who consider that family is not the way to fulfilment and that it would threaten their independence in some way. Post-modern culture urges people to achieve power, money and efficiency, and it invites women to become more like men in order to prove to themselves that they can compete with men and be successful in the professional and economic sphere. Quite a number of men and women reduce themselves to their body. They degrade the Eros and make objects of themselves for each other.10 There are still many places where “the woman remains disadvantaged or discriminated against by the fact of being a woman” ( Mulieris dignitatem , n. 10). With regard to culture in Asia, on the occasion of the 51 st session of a meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women in New York (22 February - 9 March, 2007) on the theme: “Elimination of all forms of violence against girls”, one of the studies affirmed that in many countries in Asia, specifically India and China, the practice continues of the infanticide of girls and female feticide through selective abortions. 11 In many countries in Asia women have to face the consequences of war, poverty and disease.
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