UNITED KINGDOM
The Tablet
02 February 2015 by Gemma Simmonds
The Pontifical Council for Culture is meeting from 4-7 February to discuss women’s cultures: equality and difference. The discussions will cover such urgent matters as physical and sexual violence against women, patriarchal attitudes that subjugate women within the Church and wider society, and the crisis of women’s alienation from the Church in some parts of the world. The assembly document has been drafted by a group of women appointed by the council, and considers both the promotion of gender equality and the valuing of gender difference as well as the extent to which women are excluded in decision-making processes within the Church.
All this is a positive move, but in the past, official church documents and pronouncements have talked an admirable talk about women in the Church while walking precisely nowhere. There is, of course, no single generic category of women, since cultures and contexts will differ enormously. The council cautions against unhelpful generalisations while seeking to “identify possible pastoral paths”. At the same time its anxiety to counteract contemporary theories that gender identity is a self-chosen construct nevertheless leads it to make the very generic judgements and statements that alienate so many women.
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