Vatican document provides food for reflection
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
15 Aug 2004
Today Catholics celebrate the feast of the Assumption of Mary, the mother of Jesus, body and soul into heaven.
This is a strange doctrine even by Catholic standards and is not found explicitly in the Scriptures, but dates from the late sixth century.
All mainstream Christians believe that Jesus is divine and that his mother Mary was “full of grace”. Catholics also revere her as Mother of God, free from sin and therefore worthy of sharing the resurrection of the body, before the last day of Christ’s return.
Doctrines like this meant that fifty years ago, Catholics were accused of being too Marian, too feminine, so diverting attention away from Christ. Today because Catholics cannot accept the ordination of women to the priesthood (neither can the Orthodox), they are accused of being anti-women.
Where does the truth lie? A retired senior politician once said to me that the Muslims and Catholics have mistaken views on women. This is an interesting claim when no country in the Western world is producing sufficient babies to keep the population stable. We were so busy being shocked and moralizing about “over population” in the Third World, that we refused to discuss what continues to happen in our backyard!
Leaving aside ordaining women, the Catholic point of view on women, recently restated by Cardinal Ratzinger from the Vatican, in fact represents the views of 99 per cent of all people, religious or irreligious. Man and women are different, made for one another and the centre of this relationship should be love, not power, much less hostility.
Some Catholic teachings are difficult to reconcile with common sense e.g. the need to forgive time and again, the hard line against divorce and remarriage, against artificial contraception. Other Catholic teachings are at the heart of what we define as commonsense e.g. that there is one true God, that love is all important, that men and women are made for one another.
The Vatican issued this recent statement because some feminists were claiming that sexual differences were not innate but created by society, that striving for power and resisting male oppression were of first importance. They concluded from this that the union of a man and woman in marriage was only one option, so that homosexuality and heterosexuality were virtually equivalent.
The document explains that women and men are equal, both made in the image of God, that mutual service is mandatory. Being a woman for others is a call to activity not passivity, motherhood is vital and necessary, not an alternative to participation in public life, where women are encouraged to contribute.
The document is realistic and without shallow optimism recognizing the power of lust, the urge to dominate and the reality of male oppression in history.
It does provide food for reflection and discussion.
