Church must not reduce women to ‘clichés’, says Vatican

By Liz Dodd
Tablet
February 02, 2015

http://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/1696/0/church-must-not-reduce-women-to-clich-s-says-vatican

A new Vatican report has warned that the Church’s image of women does not correspond to reality, and called for them to be given decision-making roles. 

However, days ahead of the Pontifical Council for Culture’s 4-7 February conference, which will focus on women’s issues, the organisers removed from their site a video promoting the event because of "a very negative reaction from both conservative and progressives in Anglo-Saxon countries."

Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the dicastery, said that bishops had also written to him privately to express their concerns about the English-language version of a video featuring a blonde Italian actress Nancy Brilli (pictured above).

The authors of a discussion document for the conference warn the Church against using “rhetoric and clichés” to portray women as an “army” of teachers, catechists, mothers and grandmothers – a depiction it says that “seems to belong to a small ancient world that is disappearing”.

The working paper was prepared by an all female panel. In it they also warn of a “crisis” among young women in the West, shown in declining Mass attendance and vocations, as women who assume senior roles in their careers are denied similar responsibility within the Church.

“What is not working, today, so that the image of womanhood that the Church has kept, does not correspond to reality? Today women no longer spend their afternoons reciting the rosary or taking part in religious devotions; they often work, sometimes as top managers engaged as much as, if not more than, their male counterparts,” they said.

The document does not discuss the issue of female ordination, and says that statistics suggest this is not something women want.

Elsewhere the report considers the detrimental effect on women of “manipulations of the body” such as eating disorders and cosmetic surgery, which it likened to wearing a “burqa made of flesh”.

While the document calls for the Church to explore ways in which it can extend decision-making roles to women as equals, it also highlights and praises the differences between genders.

Women, it claims, are “much more capable of tenderness and forgiveness than men” and differ from men in their techniques of problem-solving.

Above: A screengrab from the Pontifical Council's video featuring Nancy Brilli, in which she urged women to say what their priorities are for women in the Church