Marie Vianney Bilgrien. America. Volume 173, Issue 20, December 1995.
Feminist theology insists that men and women should be treated as equals but does not claim that men and women are the same. Men and women have different gifts that should be respected equally. Sexism and racism are evils the church should avoid and it should listen to women’s views on moral issues.
Looking over a 50-year history of the “Notes on Moral Theology” in the quarterly periodical Theological Studies, Richard A. McCormick, S.J., lists 10 events that, he suggests, amount to revolutionary developments in moral theology. Along with the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council, the birth control commission and Humanae Vitae, the maturation of bioethics and the influence of liberation theology he includes the emergence of feminism, maintaining that we have as yet to experience its full effect.
Almost every feminist has her own definition of feminism. In simplest terms, it is the belief that women and men are equal in dignity as human beings. Most would also assert that equal dignity has usually been denied and that changes are needed in attitudes, concepts and structures to manifest this equality. A further step is yet needed. Feminism is not just a call for women to have an equal place in the current system; it challenges us to rethink the system itself in the light of women’s experience. Women do not merely want equal access to what many consider a patriarchal or androcentric system. They want to remake the system.
Feminism is not defined by issues such as autonomy, pro-choice, rights in reproductive technology and so on. Women stand in various places in the spectrum of these issues. Feminism is truly defined by the foundational principles I have just enumerated: that men and women are equal, that equality has been denied and that the tradition is androcentric. It is important today for moral theology to admit that: 1) there are differences between men’s and women’s experience, 2) these differences are theologically and therefore morally significant and 3) the theological tradition has been shaped mainly by men’s experience.
Feminist theology is convinced that men and women are equal, but not the same. If men and women were the same there would be no need for feminism as a historical, theological movement. Revelation—God’s self-communication—interacts with human experience. The question is, “Whose experience?” If it is true that theology has been based on a generic, inclusive human experience, then focusing on women’s experience as distinct from men’s would not make a significant difference. If, on the other hand, women’s experience does make a significant difference, then we must consider that what was offered as universal was in fact a theology of a particular subset of humanity—that of men. It follows, then, that the full human condition, which involves more than the male condition, has not been and is not accurately accounted for. Until now, men’s experience has been accepted almost exclusively as the norm for the human person. Because women’s experience has been left out, feminists claim that something distinctly human, not just something feminine, has been left out. Androcentrism distorts both human experience and theology. Both need to be corrected. The issue raised by the feminists should concern all, because it is a call to be truthful and faithful to God’s revelation. It cuts much deeper than equality, power, inclusiveness and freedom. It affects how we know God and therefore how we relate to God.
Carol Gilligan, in her book In a Different Voice, challenges Lawrence Kolberg’s standard work on moral development (a study of 84 boys, age 10-16). Gilligan found that girls’ development differs from that of boys and hence affects their moral development. The contrasts are notable. The development of a male identity involves separation and individuation from the mother. The girl defines herself by relating to and identifying with the mother. Male identity is threatened by intimacy and finds relationships difficult. The female personality is threatened by separation and has problems with individuation. Males forfeit close relationships in order to foster freedom and self-expression. Connection, attachment and intimacy are more integral and necessary for the development of the female personality.
An important moral consequence of this development is that men struggle with selfishness and women with self-sacrifice—sacrifice often militates against self-development. Using women’s experience rather than some kind of generic human experience, one can then strongly question the androcentric concepts of sin and redemption. Sin has traditionally been defined as a form of pride, self-assertion, self-love, self-centeredness, the desire to be a god, not a creature. The concept of redemption is seen as a life modeled on that of Jesus: humble self-denial. a life of sacrificial love, abandoning the prideful will to dominate and putting God and others ahead of oneself.
Feminists reject this concept. Women typically have too little self, some have none. Through a life of nurturing and self-giving to husband and children, many women never achieve selfhood. Judith Plaskow, a Jewish ethicist, goes so far as to say that the temptations of women are not the same as those of men. Women are more likely to be tempted by such things as triviality, distractibility, diffuseness, lack of an organizing center or focus, dependence on others for one’s own self-definition, underdevelopment and negation of self.
The distinctive feminine sin, then, is failure to become a self. The traditional description of sin as pride and self-assertion fails to recognize this. The parallel concept of redemption as self-sacrifice has similar problems. Redemption can be almost impossible to achieve because there is not a self to sacrifice, and the women’s struggle to become a centered self and independent is looked upon as selfish and sinful. What can sound like good news to men, redemptive and liberating, can drive women deeper into their original temptation—the failure to become a self.
It is important to be aware that women are not saying that the understanding of sin as pride is incorrect, but that this understanding of sin is limited and that this limitation goes unacknowledged. The characteristic male sin has been reified as the human sin, when in fact it is not. Women do not want women’s experience to become normative in place of men’s; they want the concept to be expanded to include both, not just for the sake of equality but for the sake of a better understanding of God’s revelation and hence the possibility of a more complete relationship with the God who calls us to friendship.
Women warn that as the debate continues in church circles and among feminists themselves, we may fall into the trap of a dual anthropology. Do women share the same human nature as men, or is their humanity an essentially different mode of being human? This fundamental question is raised when one reads contemporary official church statements that invoke the “order of creation” from Genesis, Ch. 2 and 3, and the Pauline notion of “the headship of the male.”
The complementarity of the sexes is put in such a way that women’s roles and functions in church and society are seen to be of an essentially different nature from men’s. Over and over one finds presuppositions and stereotypes that define women as particularly humble, sensitive, intuitive, gentle, receptive, passive. Implicitly or explicitly, these are contrasted with men’s aggressiveness, rationality, activity, strength and so on.
Emphasizing the complementarity of the sexes, it seems, offers a new rationalization for the subordination of women. This dual anthropology is accentuated by our marriage symbolism. Christ’s relation to the church and the sacrament of Eucharist are often explained in terms of the relation of male to female or activity to passivity. Women rightfully ask, “Is women’s human nature different from men’s human nature?” In 1978 the Catholic Theological Society of America issued a research report that studied official theological arguments about the question of the ordination of women. It noted the difference in anthropological presuppositions. Arguments against the ordination of women imply a two-nature anthropology, in which sexual differentiation is seen as inherent in nature and therefore part of the divine plan.
This duality, the report said, “is the ordering principle for complementary roles, functions and activities of women and men.” Arguments in favor of the ordination of women, on the other hand, presuppose a one-nature anthropology, in which “there is no preordained role or function, beyond the biological, for either men or women since the appropriate activities of the individual are extrapolated from spiritual and personal characteristics.”
The moral fallout from the dual-anthropology model is that when Jesus’ maleness is emphasized it leads to odd and disturbing questions. Who is saved? Can a male savior redeem women? Is Jesus the model for all human persons as male or as human? These are not facetious questions; they profoundly influence theology and moral theology in particular.
When the C.T.S.A. met again in 1979, Mary Buckley offered a third model, which differed from both the dual-nature complementary and the single-nature equality models. She called it the “transformative, person-centered model.” The first two models are inadequate, she argued, because they reflect society as it is and place the impetus for change on individual efforts. Her model is personal and public. It receives its impetus from changes taking place in society and from a Christian faith that models Jesus in “love, compassion, mercy, peace, service, care in community.” Both men and women are called to this likeness, not to the half-personhood of complementarity that often conceals a hidden domination, but to an equality that breaks the barriers of sex, race and class. It is a model of solidarity between the sexes.
A further ethical issue along these lines arises in the dualistic attitude that both society and church entertain about virtue. Stereotypical feminine virtues such as gentleness, love, pity, honesty, simplicity and sensitivity are relegated to women and the private realm. (Even so, men are held to account if they do not practice these virtues in the public sector.
In one of the closing addresses of Vatican II, for instance, women were challenged, “You to whom life is entrusted, it is for you to save the peace of the world.” Yet few women were invited to that church-changing event, and fewer yet were allowed to speak, even in committees. Women shout and cry at the incongruity. The war machine, symbol of male courage and strength, is unable to protect women, children and the innocent. Its wastefulness in the use of money is notorious. Yet seldom is there a public platform for women to use their so-called feminine virtues to urge public support for rape victims, abused children, battered women, starving women and children around the world, especially in the war zones.
Women’s voices call us to deeper truth. If the complementarity of human nature continues to be stressed, the differences between male and female will become more and more exaggerated, and a dual anthropology will emerge. Questions about sin and salvation will intensify. Are there two human natures? How does the male Jesus save male and female? Is Jesus the model for the human person or only the male? What dangers lurk in upholding Mary as the model for women? Is Jesus the model for men and Mary the model for women? Are church documents faithful to Scripture when they stress Mary’s motherhood to such extremes that only motherhood can define women? (See Pope John Paul II’s apostolic letter Mulieris Dignitatem, No. 18, 19, 30.
If the equality model is stressed, women’s ordination cannot be ignored, nor women’s place in the public arena of the church—even at its highest levels. If it is true that the human person attains self-determination and autonomy through the responsible use of freedom, then opportunities for growth have to be present for women in the life and movement of the church. To develop as m persons, not just bystanders or dependents. we have to be part of the internal structure. But we are not. The fact that there is an encyclical on women. but not on men illustrates the point. Women are seen primarily as different, not equal. Their role has to be defined for them. To this women are saying: “We can do it ourselves. We want our rightful place in society and in the church.”
Carol Gilligan’s research on moral development in girls indicates that women characteristically make moral decisions based on relating rather than autonomy. Accordingly, she has developed a feminist ethic of caring. She shows how women tend to orient themselves by responding to others. Moral decisions are made in a framework of relationships rather than of rights. Because women are more at home in relationships, they are more concerned with how we make commitments and how they are kept.
Women are doing a lot of study of the dynamics involved in commitments—study that sheds light on experience of marital fidelity, fidelity to God, the requirements of friendship and what makes it grow. They ask, “What ought we to love? To what should we commit ourselves? Who do I want to become?” These questions epitomize the moral life. All but the most fleeting, superficial relationships carry obligations. Women are looking deeper into the meaning of promises, contracts, covenants, vows.
Some examples: In Personal Commitments (1990 Margaret Farley notes that women’s experience of commitment constitutes in large part our vantage point for understanding God’s commitment to us and God’s desire for commitment from us. Denise Lardner Carmody’s Virtuous Women (1992) reminds us that Jesus is the paradigm of faithful commitment. Jesus laid down his life for his friends and for his God. Feminists will be Christian to the extent that they struggle with Jesus’ self-sacrificing love.
Women wonder about Jesus’ friends. Would his life and death have been different if his closest friends had been women? Women tend to have more friends than men do because of the importance of relationships to them. They challenge men to be aware that: 1) women and their concerns continue to be of marginal importance in men’s perception, 2) males have more difficulty than females in understanding what the other gender means and 3) men suffer and cause others to suffer from an inability or unwillingness to disclose themselves, to discuss feelings and to interact supportively.
Dialogue is the ground for building relationships. Women’s voices call men to dialogue in society and in the church. We are not afraid of confrontation. It helps clarify issues and holds the possibility of ever deeper dialogue and relationship. Women know that a strong opponent is more confirming than one who politely listens but does not take your opinion seriously. When debate is not allowed on issues within the church, women ask if they are being taken seriously. Many believe they are not. Relationships cannot be one-sided.
More and more, women are stressing mutuality in relationships rather than equality. In the drive to help the other become equal in a relationship, there is the danger of slipping into paternalism or maternalism. Our relationships with developing countries and in the church have taught us that. In striving for mutuality, each one is held responsible and no one usurps the responsibility of the other. Mutuality in relationships is the feminist alternative to domination. Mutuality moves beyond equality to recognize the reciprocity of giving and receiving, caring and being cared for.
The Implications of mutuality help us rethink such structural sins as racism and sexism. Both the racist and the sexist are diminished in spirit and lose some of their human dignity. Mutuality becomes destructive. Both the perpetrator and the victim are affected. The bad effects are mutual. Feminists want a new stress on mutuality along with a new respect for the place of women in all questions of social justice and discussion of social ethics. It is incomprehensible to women that they were not consulted in the writing of Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (1988). In a world where the majority of the poor are women and children, where whole countries are made up of widows and orphans, where and when do they get to speak for themselves? More than likely the reality is not that they were actively excluded, but that it never entered the minds of the framers of the encyclical that they should even be consulted. The same is true for the writing of the encyclicals Centesimus Annus (1991) and Veritatis Splendor (1993).
Women are expected to be the repositories and safeguards of morality. Yet when women try to extend their moral consciousness into the wider political or religious world, their femaleness becomes a detriment. The drafters of church policy, in their teaching authority, assume that they know what is good for women because they assume that they know what is good for the human person always and everywhere. Until there is the recognition that women’s distinctive voice has a role to play in understanding the human person, the shaping of social doctrine in the church will continue to suffer from myopic, one-sided and therefore ineffectual social policy.
Feminists are asking searching questions and challenging society in many areas of reproductive technology—a rapidly changing scene. Earlier women had asked: “Is in vitro fertilization acceptable from a feminist moral perspective? What is the situation with women’s moral autonomy during the treatment? What about the child’s interest?” They moved on to ask, “In what direction should reproductive technology be developed so that it can be applied in a humane and dignified way, worldwide?” Women are now critically examining the technology itself.
Feminists are concerned that more and more aspects of reproduction are being controlled by medical technology. Fertilization and selection techniques are beginning to overlap. Second, they are noticing that it is the reproduction experts, usually male, who decide which women will be considered for treatment. Third, as a result of medical improvements, more and more difficult decisions have to be made about couples unable to have children and about those with serious hereditary defects. Decisions are made by the medical profession without taking into account the fallout for those who are helped to have children or those who are rejected. With prenatal diagnosis and selective abortion, it will be less and less acceptable to bring a child with a hereditary defect to full term. Societies are already less and less willing to give support and monetary aid in the rearing of a defective child. So some women ethicists ponder whether it is wise or just to bring a child into a defective-child-free-world. Of course, it remains a value in a Christian society to teach people how to cope with suffering and handicap. Usually, though, this has been a question of coping with one’s own suffering, one’s own handicap. Now we have to struggle with such questions as: “Can I impose such suffering on my child? To what extent do I, the parent, share this with my child? Is it just and right?”
If immoral decisions have been made in these areas—and they have—the fact that feminists continue to raise such questions indicates that Christian values continue to be important and that the answers come only through continual dialogue.
The judgment about feminists seems to rise and fall on the issue of abortion. Yet when abortion is made out to be the only or the overriding issue, many women’s voices are not heard. Different moral values play an important role in the pro-life, pro-choice feminists. Beverly Wildung Harrison, in Our Right to Choose (1983), looked at abortion not from a single focus on the act itself, but in light of the social reality in which women make the decision to have an abortion. Pro-choice feminists want us to consider all the social conditions, many of which force women into abortion: poor education, inadequate pre-natal and post natal care, poor self-image, inadequate jobs and job opportunities, marital rape, inadequate food, clothing, school opportunities for the children they already have. Many women believe that the rate of abortion would decrease substantially if society worked harder to rid itself of these injustices.
Pro-life women are at their moral best when they stick to the morality of the act of abortion and focus on the moral value of the fetus. They are more effective in their approach when they base their arguments on a natural law ethic and less effective when they try to sway social policy. It seems to me that bishops, by trying to influence social morality through state and Federal legislation, have misplaced the real challenge of the church’s wisdom and moral tradition. The church has a position that asks more of its members than the state can, and bishops should use that approach more often.
Women are saying many different things, many of which are contradictory. Issues that caused a flurry a few years ago have disappeared or are not as important. Feminists are criticizing each other, and the truer voices are coming to be heard. What one hears and reads in the media are often the attention raisers with little substance. The best of the feminists are asking truthful questions, want to work through truthful dialogue and arrive at whatever truthful answers are now possible—not because they are angry, not because they want to win, not because they want to trample on men’s feelings, but because they are searching for the truth about themselves as women, so they can relate more lovingly to their neighbor and to God. These voices are not going to go away, nor can they be silenced. Their basic questions are: “Is it good? Is it good for women? Will it help us to be family? Will it lead us home to God?”