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ECCLESIAL AND SOCIAL ROLES OF WOMEN The role of
women in the Church and in society is based on man’s creation in the
image of God as male and female (Gn 1:27). This differentiation among
human beings according to gender is the only human differentiation created
by God as a part of the goodness of creation. Although Adam and Eve, by
their disobedience, introduced evil into the world, they did not destroy
the fundamental reality of their sexual differentiation; but they did
bring about a fallen world that would affect them in ways consonant with
that distinction. This is apparent in the consequences God tells them they
have brought upon themselves: consequences that are themselves a
revelation of the fact that there are distinctly male and female spheres
within the order that God has created and will ultimately redeem. The male
sphere is that of work in the world, while the female sphere is bound up
with being mother and spouse. “To the
woman he said, / ‘I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; /
in pain you shall bring forth children, / yet your desire shall be for
your husband, / and he shall rule over you.’ / And to Adam he said, /
‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, / and have eaten
of the tree / of which I commanded you, / “You shall not eat of it,” /
cursed is the ground because of you; / in toil you shall eat of it all the
days of your life; / thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; /
and you shall eat the plants of the field. / In the sweat of your face /
you shall eat bread / till you return to the ground, / for out of it you
were taken; / you are dust, / and to dust you shall return’ ” (Gn
3:16-19). That the
woman’s role is bound up with the realm of personal relationships is
affirmed in the name Eve, which means “mother of the living” (Gn
3:20). The order of
salvation does not destroy the male-female differentiation, but builds on
it. The New Covenant is not just Christ, but the marital union of Christ
the bridegroom with his bride the Church (Eph 5:31-32). Christ is the
“new Adam” and Mary, forerunner and archetype of the Church, is the
“new Eve.” She, like Eve, is defined as mother – Mother of God
(Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon) and Mother of the fledgling Church
(cf. Jn 19:27). Motherhood
and Women • While Scripture tells us to “call no man your father on
earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven” (Mt 23:9), Eve and
Mary are named mothers. As Pope John Paul II has noted regarding human
parents: “Although both of them together are parents of their child, the
woman’s motherhood constitutes a special ‘part’ in this shared
parenthood, and the most demanding part. Parenthood – even though it
belongs to both – is realized much more fully in the woman, especially
in the prenatal period” (On the Dignity and Vocation of Women, Mulieris
Dignitatem, 18). Motherhood therefore is the key to understanding the role
of women both in the Church and in society. Recent Popes have affirmed the
importance and centrality of women as mothers. Speaking in 1955 to a
Catholic Action women’s group, Pope Pius XII observed: “Now the sphere
of woman, her manner of life, her native bent, is motherhood. Every woman
is made to be a mother: a mother in the physical meaning of the word or in
the more spiritual and exalted but no less real sense.” And John Paul II
has written: “Motherhood implies from the beginning a special openness
to the new person: and this is precisely the woman’s part” (Mulieris
Dignitatem, 18). Motherhood is linked in a special way to trust,
personhood, and love. It is
important to recognize that, as John Paul II puts it, “Before anyone
else it was God himself, the Eternal Father, who entrusted himself to the
Virgin of Nazareth, giving her his own Son in the mystery of the
Incarnation” (The Mother of the Redeemer, Redemptoris Mater, 39).
Although Mary’s relationships with the Father and Christ are unique,
what happened at the Annunciation and at Christmas is significant for
every mother, because it brings home in a particularly vivid way the fact
that every child, including the Son of God, is entrusted to a woman and
can enter this world only by way of a mother. “God entrusts the human
being to her in a special way” (Mulieris Dignitatem, 30). Trust is
rooted in the relationship between a mother and her child. This trust is
bound up, however, with far more than conception and birth; it is bound up
with the entire well-being of the child and the mature adult he will
someday become. Both Eve and Mary were recognized as bringing not just
children but men into the world (cf. Gn 4:1, Jn 16:21). If Christ is the
truth, Mary is the trust, a realm that all women as mothers share with
her. The woman
also stands in a special way for the sphere of love. “In God’s eternal
plan, woman is the one in whom the order of love in the created world of
persons takes first root” (Mulieris Dignitatem, 29). In the first
instance, this means that woman is the matrix of all personal relations.
“Of the essence of motherhood is the fact that it concerns the person.
Motherhood always establishes a unique and unrepeatable relationship
between two people: between mother and child, and between child and
mother” (Redemptoris Mater, 45). In the second instance, this means that
love is indissociable, or inseparable, from woman because it is
indissociable from marriage, in which the bride is the one “who receives
love in order to love in return” (Mulieris Dignitatem, 29), and also
indissociable from that entrusting that is bound up with motherhood,
because entrusting is “the response to a person’s love, and in
particular to the love of a mother” (Redemptoris Mater, 45). The woman
therefore enjoys a particular aptitude and responsibility for the whole
realm of personal relationships on the human level. And she also bears a
kind of privileged position with regard to the linking of that human world
with the divine realm of personal relationships through the action of the
Holy Spirit, inasmuch as it is through both Mary (at the Annunciation) and
the Church (at Pentecost) that the Holy Spirit effects the union of those
two realms. Thus does Pope John Paul II insist that “the dignity of
women is measured by the order of love” and that “woman can only find
herself by giving love to others” (Mulieris Dignitatem, 29, 30). In a
letter to women published shortly before a September, 1995, United Nations
conference on women in Beijing, Pope John Paul, deploring “obstacles
which . . . still keep women from being fully integrated into
the social, political and economic life,” declared: “We need only
think of how the gift of motherhood is often penalized rather than
rewarded even though humanity owes its very survival to this gift.” Women in the
Church • Because the Church is recognized as the mother of all of the
children of God and as a kind of extended family for every Christian, the
woman stands for and represents the realm of the Church in a special way.
The Blessed Virgin Mary, by her fiat at the Annunciation, bore Christ into
the world, and she is, by virtue of that act, the archetype and forerunner
of the Church, which continues to bear Christ into the world and to
initiate, nurture, and sustain that active response to Christ that enables
us to become, in her, the children of God. It is through the active
ministry of the Church that the grace and truth of Christ bear fruit in
this world. Therefore, as Hans Urs von Balthasar once noted, “the
feminine, Marian principle is, in the Church, what encompasses all other
principles, even the Petrine” (Woman in the Church, p. 113). Even the
Petrine and apostolic authority of the Magisterium is secondary to the
faith and grace of the Church, since the Pope and bishops can teach
nothing not already present in the faith of the Church and can teach
anything only by virtue of that grace that is sustained and nurtured by
the gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church. As Pope John Paul II puts it,
Mary’s faith “ ‘precedes’ the apostolic witness of the
Church, and ever remains in the Church’s heart, hidden like a special
heritage of God’s revelation. All those who from generation to
generation accept the apostolic witness of the Church share in the
mysterious inheritance and in a sense share in Mary’s faith” (Redemptoris
Mater, 27). All women –
married, single, or consecrated – are called to participate actively in
the life of the Church. That women cannot be ordained priests does not
mean they have no place in the mission of the Church. Rather, it means
that “Christ looks to them for the accomplishment of the ‘royal
priesthood’ ” (Mulieris Dignitatem, 30). The royal priesthood of
all believers, far from being secondary to the ordained priesthood, is the
very reason for it, inasmuch as “the ministerial priesthood is at the
service of the common priesthood. It is directed at the unfolding of the
baptismal grace of all Christians” (CCC 1547). This
“unfolding of the baptismal grace” of every Christian is entrusted to
the woman in a special way because each person is entrusted to her in a
special way. In every role a woman assumes within the life of the Church
– whether as wife, as mother, as consecrated, as single, as involved at
any level of the lay apostolate – she is called upon to strengthen the
life of faith and the bonds of communion among all persons within the
Church. She, like Mary at the Annunciation, is called to bear children
into the world, but even more, she, like Mary at Cana, is called to bring
those children and all children into a relationship with Christ, guiding
them to “do whatever he tells you” (Jn 2:5). Women in
Society • The role of women in society must be understood within the
context of the lay apostolate, which itself is bound up with the
apostolate of the Church. “The Church was founded to spread the kingdom
of God over all the earth for the glory of God the Father, to make all men
partakers in redemption and salvation, and through them to establish the
right relationship of the entire world to Christ” (Vatican Council II,
Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, Apostolicam Actuositatem, 2).
Everyone in the Church is called to participate in this apostolate. The
primary lay apostolate lies not in the Church but in the world. If it is
the role of the ordained ministry to serve all those who share in the
royal priesthood of Christ, by effecting for them the grace, truth, and
authority of Christ through teaching, sacraments, and governance, it is
the role of the laity to take Christ out into the world. The laity are, in
fact, called “to consecrate the world itself to God” (Vatican Council
II, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, 34). Of particular
import for the lay vocation is the need to renew within culture an
“authentic humanism” to counter the secular humanism of our age and to
oppose the “culture of death” that today surrounds us (Pope John Paul
II, The Lay Members of Christ’s Faithful People, Christifideles Laici,
38). This can only be done by restoring within society the reality and
virtues of marriage and family life. “The family can and must require
from all, beginning with public authority, the respect for those rights
which, in saving the family, will save society” (Christifideles Laici,
40). As nurturers of life, women, in particular, have an important role to
play in this regard. Pope Pius XII
recognized how deeply the currents of the modern world run counter to the
interests of the family, and how pivotal is the role of women in reversing
those currents. He told the women of Catholic Action: “The fate of the
family, the fate of human relations are at stake. They are in your hands (tua
res agitur). Every woman has then . . . the obligation, the
strict obligation in conscience, not to absent herself but to go into
action in a manner and way suitable to the condition of each so as to hold
back those currents which threaten the home, so as to oppose those
doctrines which undermine its foundations, so as to prepare, organize and
achieve its restoration.” In Western
societies at least, women today have come into their own, enjoying full
political, social, and economic rights. The dignity of women requires that
they take their rightful place in the political, social, and economic
spheres of society. But it also requires that they do so in a way that
protects and preserves their motherhood and the marital and family life
that flow from it. Women, therefore, should ensure, in whatever walk of
life, that marriage, family, and children always be given priority. That
sphere, far from being merely “private” and secondary to the public
world of politics, finance, and culture, is what sustains the goodness of
the public sphere and guarantees its vitality. “The future of humanity
passes by way of the family” (Pope John Paul II, The Christian Family in
the Modern World, Familiaris Consortio, 86). Married women, therefore,
while enjoying the right to work outside the home, should never sacrifice
their homes and families to their jobs or careers, however important those
might be. Wives and mothers should serve as a constant reminder to the
rest of society that the work of society, at every level, is ordered to
the value and dignity of the human person, and that success and
achievement must always be ordered to the person’s good and to those
human relationships of marriage and family without which there can be no
community, culture, or civilization. As mothers, both spiritual and
physical, women have a special obligation to protect, defend, and speak on
behalf of the unborn, the ill, the old, the handicapped, doing so in a
“culture of death” that would increasingly subject the weakest and
most vulnerable among us to the individualistic ethic of “control”
over life and death. All women
(married, single, or consecrated) have a special responsibility, whether
at home or at work, to restore the bonds of trust in the truth of Christ
and in the need all of us have to give ourselves over to that truth. In
today’s scientific, technological atmosphere, the only truths recognized
as true for everyone are the abstractions produced by scientific method.
Such truths, valuable though they are, offer nothing that can sustain
human beings as persons in an increasingly depersonalized world. Such a
world has no way to understand the truth as a Person or the importance of
the woman as mother. Abstract truth is abstract precisely because it has
detached itself from the unique, the irreplaceable, the personal. It does
not, therefore, as Karl Rahner once observed, require a mother. But the
truth is a person, Jesus Christ, and Christ requires a mother. Every
mother reminds us that the world of persons and the order of love take
priority, even in the realm of truth. As mother, whether spiritual or
physical, every woman should seek to bear into our world the truth of
Christ and the order of love that the increasing relativism, cynicism,
hostility, and violence of our society would deny. As Pope John Paul has
observed, “Today the world is hungrier and thirstier than ever for that
motherhood which, physically or spiritually, is woman’s vocation as it
was Mary’s” (L’Osservatore Romano, January 15, 1979). And, saluting
the “genius of women,” he declares the need that “this genius be
more fully expressed in the life of society as a whole as well as in the
life of the Church” (Letter to Women).
See:
Apostolate; Domestic Church; Family; Hierarchy; Imago Dei; Marriage;
Marriage, Goods of; Mary, Mother of God; Mary, Mother of the Church;
Ministry; Priesthood of the Faithful; Sexism; Sexuality, Human; States in
Life; Theology of the Body; Vocation; Women, Ordination of; Work. Suggested
Readings: CCC 355-373, 487-511, 722-723, 963-975, 1546-1547, 1577,
1602-1617, 2201-2213, 2331-2335, 2392-2393. John Paul II, The Christian
Family in the Modern World, Familiaris Consortio; The Mother of the
Redeemer, Redemptoris Mater; On the Dignity and Vocation of Women,
Mulieris Dignitatem; Letter to Women. L. Bouyer, Woman in the Church. G.
von Le Fort, The Eternal Woman. J. Little, “The Significance of Mary for
Women,” Marian Studies, XXXIX (1988), pp. 136-158; “Mary and Feminist
Theology,” Thought, LXII (December, 1987), pp. 343-357. Joyce
A. Little Russell
Shaw. Our Sunday Visitor's Encyclopedia of Catholic Doctrine. Copyright ©
1997, Our Sunday Visitor.
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