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[novapsyche]

Is the Pope a Feminist?

In his Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World, the Pope has taken on feminism, which most people outside universities thought dead and buried years ago. The attack, written by 77-year-old Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, to which his Frailness merely gave the nod, need not cause too much shock and horror. Anything denounced from the papal throne is instantly catapulted into the awareness of the poor in the Catholic third world, whose view of the Roman hierarchy is already profoundly disenchanted. Family planning workers in the vast slums of Catholic Latin America will tell you that whenever the Pope is known to have been inveighing against contraception, and the cry is taken up by every local pulpit, people flock to the clinics, avid for pills and IUDs. His Holiness's grief and wrath is far more effective in persuading the indigent faithful that contraception actually works than anything the family planners might say. Now that his nibs has turned his attention to feminism, oppressed women may very well begin to suspect that there must be something in it after all.

Comments

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

I staunchly oppose many central tenets of Catholicism, but I nonetheless feel tha the representation of this letter in the press has been near-libellous.

The letter is a restatement of the Catholic Church's committment to conservative gender roles, and a renunciation of certain ideas which it associates with feminism- namely the de-emphasis of gender differences and renewed antagonism between the sexes.

The letter made no comment on feminism as a whole.

I think that the letter was somewhat sad, but that the general response to it has been distinctly sadder.

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

I could compare this to my writing an essay denouncing the "Gangsta Rap culture" that I saw as pervasive among inner-city blacks, and then being told that such a denouncement was an attacking on black people as a whole. My thesis might be right or it might be wrong, but such a response would be simple misrepresentation.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the letter personally. Do you know if there is a link to it somewhere?

The letter made no comment on feminism as a whole.

That may be true, but the phrase "marriage is a man and a woman" is an attack on the idea of homosexual marriage, and John Kerry saying "I will not lead this nation into a war of convenience" is an attack on how well GWB has led this country. Just because you don't name something specifically doesn't mean you're not speaking about it.

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

I would like for you to more clearly distinguish between "disagree with" and "attack". Many people do the two things simultaneously, but that does not mean that they have become synonomous.

Do you think that it is possible to vocally disagree with homosexual marriage, or premarital sex, or Catholic doctrine on contraception, for that matter, without your expressions being equivalent to an attack?

I think that more accurate commentary on the letter and its contents can be found. (Link to the letter's fulltext on the same page.) I still disagree with the Cardinal's fixation with traditional gender roles, mind you, and with his incorporation of gender-role idealism into theology, and with his failure to appropriately contextualise the ideas originating from the feminist movement that he was criticising; but his letter was constructed in support of women's control over their life-direction and destiny, and that should be clearly reflected in any criticisms we make.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

I do make a distinction between disagreement and attack. At the same time, the Pope, in such a position of power as he is, does not brook disagreement.

Recent years have seen new approaches to women's issues. A first tendency is to emphasize strongly conditions of subordination in order to give rise to antagonism: women, in order to be themselves, must make themselves the adversaries of men. Faced with the abuse of power, the answer for women is to seek power. This process leads to opposition between men and women, in which the identity and role of one are emphasized to the disadvantage of the other, leading to harmful confusion regarding the human person, which has its most immediate and lethal effects in the structure of the family.

A second tendency emerges in the wake of the first. In order to avoid the domination of one sex or the other, their differences tend to be denied, viewed as mere effects of historical and cultural conditioning. In this perspective, physical difference, termed sex, is minimized, while the purely cultural element, termed gender, is emphasized to the maximum and held to be primary.

This is the section that Greer noted in her article, and it is this section that speaks about feminism without putting a name to it. This letter seems to make statements of opinion as statements of fact, which is dangerous considering the office from which it originates and the vast number of people this doctrine will affect.

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

The distinction that Greer blurs is that he certainly refers to ideas of feminist origin; however, as I said before, he makes no comment on the feminist movement on the whole. The general tone and thesis of his letter is thoroughly synchronous with the goals of mainstream feminists; he just works towards the clear integration of those goals into conservative Catholic theology and policy.

If you oppose his Catholic theology and policy and theology- as I do- that's fine; but it is false to claim that he attacked feminism, unless you consider feminism to be defined by gender-enmity and/ or the erasure of gender differences.


As for opinion-versus-fact; I viewed the letter as an opinion piece, but didn't expect it to be littered with "in my opinon", "some people agree with me that..." softeners. I don't view the absence of such hedging as a fault.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

it is false to claim that he attacked feminism, unless you consider feminism to be defined by gender-enmity and/ or the erasure of gender differences.

Actually, by describing the fight for women's rights as enmity between the sexes, the Church has shown its bias. That description is how feminism is framed in that document.

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

But he didn't "describe the fight for women's rights" as enmity between the sexes.

That is my point.

He merely said that some people think that way- which some do- and that we must try to avoid that kind of thinking- which we must- and that the Catholic Church should support the autonomy of women to chart their course as they see fit- which it should.


Where's the problem?

[guttaperk.livejournal.com]

I think that the current furore utterly refutes the idea that the Pope does not brook disagreement.

Can you give more details as to why Ratzinger's letter constitutes attack and not disagreement or critique?