Distortion, misrepresentation and caricature: the Vatican's letter to women is confused about scripture and feminism.

THE "LETTER TO THE BISHOPS of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World," released by the Vatican Offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on May 31, 2004, has already drawn extensive criticism worldwide. I hope to add a few additional comments, primarily from the perspective of a historian of Christian thought.

First, I state the obvious criticisms. The letter is addressed to the bishops of the Catholic church, not to the whole church as clergy and laity. Hence women as such are not addressed by the letter, but rather simply defined in order to inform bishops of what they should teach on women. The underlying assumption here is one of a pre-Vatican II ecclesiology. The church is the magisterium, i.e. the pope and the bishops. The laity are subjects of the church, not themselves church or, as the Vatican II view had it, part of the People of God.

Secondly, the letter is misnamed. It is not about the collaboration of men and women in the church and the world. Its purpose is to condemn "certain currents of thought which are often at variance with the authentic advancement of women." Presumably these "currents of thought" are seen as "feminism," although neither the word feminism nor the supposed authors of these "currents of thought" are ever named or their works referred to.

Thirdly, although the letter calls for "dialogue with all men and women of good will, in a sincere search for the truth and in a common commitment to the development of ever more authentic relationships," in fact the approach taken by the letter excludes any real dialogue with anyone, particularly with women. Rather the letter presumes that the "correct understanding" of the nature of women and how men and women should collaborate in the church and society is already completely known by the magisterium (i.e., Cardinal Ratzinger interpreting the views of Pope John Paul II). Thus it is only a question of defining this correct view, promulgating it to the bishops and, through the teaching authority of the pope and bishops, getting everyone else in both the church and the world to acquiesce to it or else stand condemned.

DUBIOUS SCHOLARSHIP

The letter stands on a very narrow base of "scholarship." The footnotes cite almost entirely the writings of Pope John Paul II and other approved Vatican documents. Scripture is referred to, but no scriptural exegetes. There are one or two cursory references to several church fathers. No recent theologians, much less female theologians, are cited. The assumption is that the correct anthropology of men and women and their true nature and collaboration are already fully known a priori. Moreover, this "correct" view has been unchanging for all eternity, revealed in the Old and New Testament and known in the church tradition. There is no need to consult or dialogue with anyone about this, but only to promulgate the correct view and banish all contrary proposals.

What this means is that the author of the letter allows no historical consciousness of the cultural context of his own views on anthropology and its deviation, not only from various proposals of modern feminism, but also from the views found in Hebrew Scripture, the New Testament and the church fathers. In fact the anthropology presumed in this letter is not that of either scripture or patristic and medieval theology, but rather it is the anthropology of 19th century romanticism. This anthropology was based on the complementarity of two totally distinct human natures, masculine and feminine, that define the essential being of males and females. This anthropology governs the theology of the document from beginning to end.

INTERPRETING THE BIBLE

Beginning with Genesis 1 and 2, the author claims that the image of God in which humans were created is one of distinct and complementary natures, masculine and feminine which only together, in a relational unity, are the image of God in humanity. Whether one agrees with this anthropology or not, what must be said at the outset is that it is the anthropology of 19th century Germany, not that of the bible or the church fathers. The church fathers, both East and West, (i.e. Gregory Nyssa and Augustine) are united in assuming that the image of God in humanity is not found in maleness and femaleness, but in that unitary expression of human nature which is not male or female; namely the Spirit, the soul or reason. Male and female belonged to the body, not to that part of humanity made in the image of God since God is neither male nor female.

The Eastern fathers tended to see maleness and femaleness as appearing only with the Fall, while Augustine came to insist that it was there from before the Fall. But for Augustine also the image of God is essentially non-gendered, shared by both men and women. This view contained some confusion, since reason was seen as more natural to men than to women. Nevertheless women were presumed by Western and Eastern theology until modern times to possess the image of God, but exactly in that part of themselves which is not gendered, i.e. not feminine. Femininity is not included in the image of God in any classical Christian theology.

One might well question this classical anthropology, but what one cannot do is to try to interpret classical Christian anthropologies without understanding them, imposing on these texts an early modern anthropology that is fundamentally different. This is what the letter does. The result is a basic confusion about the scriptural and patristic views of male and female.

The theology of creation and redemption that the letter presupposed is the following: Humans are created male and female with essentially different and complementary natures. They are intended by God to exist in a loving mutuality defined through this complementarity. But this initial loving relationality was distorted into domination and subjugation with the Fall. This distorted and wounded the original good relationality. Redemption is about overcoming this distortion and restoring loving complementarity, to be completed only in heaven, when it is delinked from sexuality.

But the male side of this complementarity is never defined. Only the feminine or female side is defined as an attitude of receptivity, faithfulness and being for others. The feminine is here highly idealized. It is not to be confused with mere passivity or subjugation, which is its distortion through sin. Women are presumed to be specialists in this loving "being for others" by their very nature, while males apparently have to learn how to do it through women's example. One might wonder then if only men, but not women, have fallen into sin. Women apparently can be victimized by domination and their being for others distorted as vulnerability and passivity, but they have not lost their "essential nature" as being for others.

This being for others, however, is what all humans, men and women, need to cultivate as the right relation to God. Moreover, God is seen as essentially male vis a vis this receptive or "feminine" relation of humanity toward God. The Son of God had to be incarnated as a male in order to reflect this male nature of God. Although it is not spelled out in the letter, the assumption here is that this masculinity of God and God's incarnate Son, Christ, is the reason why women cannot be ordained. Thus the anthropology of complementarity moves in two contradictory directions. First, "femininity" as the capacity for loving "being for others" is something that women do "naturally," but men need to learn and cultivate, a move that presumably would cancel the difference of male and female, if males were to succeed in this redemptive process.

But, in the opposite direction, the relation of God and humanity is continually compared with the relation of male and female. God acts and humanity receives. Maleness is different from femaleness precisely in sharing this Godlike activity vis a vis feminine receptivity. This is clearly not a mutual and complementary relationship, but a hierarchical one, indeed a relationship of power as agency over receptivity. Apparently, although males can cultivate femininity, i.e. receptivity, women cannot cultivate Godlike activity; hence they lack fundamentally that image of God which reflects divine agency.

Thus the letter contains three anthropologies: 1) a complementarity of opposites in egalitarian mutuality; 2) a unitary human nature, defined as all women and men becoming "feminine," i.e. cultivating "being for others," and 3) a hierarchy, based on the analogy that male is to female as God is to human. The three are simply pasted together, with the contradictions between them unrecognized.

This misunderstood mixture of anthropologies from Western Christian traditions of different periods and contexts are set against a caricature of those "currents of thought" which the letter opposes. These are defined as "two tendencies." One tendency condemns the abusive hierarchy of men over women that makes men the adversaries of women, and the second seeks to abolish any difference of sex, while privileging difference of gender. Since those who hold these views are undefined, it is hard to know who the letter has in mind in condemning these views. But what needs to be said is that they do not correspond to any major currents of feminism.

On the first "tendency," feminism seeks indeed to overcome abusive domination, a view that, oddly enough, the letter shares and claims as basic to its view of salvation. But feminism seeks to overcome abusive domination, not to turn males into adversaries. Rather, abusive domination has already created this adversarial relationship. Rather, feminism seeks to overcome the cultural, structural and psychological patterns of abusive domination precisely in order to overcome this adversarial relationship and create genuine egalitarian mutuality, the very goal that the letter claims to be its own.

Secondly, the Vatican letter completely misreads the feminist distinction of sex and gender. It is not that feminism seeks to abolish biological sexual differences, while privileging differences of gender, but rather the opposite. Gender differences, as cultural definitions of masculinity and femininity, are what are seen as cultural constructions that can and should be overcome, while most feminists acknowledge biological sexual differences. Here is the real crux of the difference between the anthropology, of the letter and that of most modern feminism.

The Vatican letter wants to construe biological sexual differences as the base for a total ontological and spiritual difference between males and females as masculine and feminine, and insists that good relations between men and women are possible only by essentializing this difference from eternity, to eternity. It acknowledges that this difference has been distorted by sin into domination and victimization, but it assumes that it can be restored as a relationship that keeps men and women both totally different and yet similar in an egalitarian and mutual way.

Feminism sees the dualism of masculine and feminine as mutually distinct genders to be itself built on a distortion of domination and subjugation and seeks to overcome the distortion to create a mutuality based on a shared holistic humanity in which men can be receptive and women active. By presenting a caricature of feminist anthropology, the letter both fails to see the similarities between its own theological anthropology and that of feminism and also its own contradictory inability to maintain a consistent complementarity, without falling into a feminized unitary anthropology on the one side and a masculinized/divinized hierarchical one on the other.

Real dialogue of the Catholic magisterium with feminism might open up this contradiction and lead to better understanding, if the letter writer were open to such dialogue. But such dialogue has been blocked from the very beginning by the assumption of a priori truth, on the one side, and caricatured error, on the other. Thus any response to this letter is by definition a "dialogue" of the deaf.

ROSEMARY RADFORD RUETHER is the Carpenter Professor of Feminist Theology at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, Calif.