11.08.2004

Inquisitor attacks women's rights

Joseph, Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly known as the Holy Office and earlier as the Holy Inquisition) has published a document entitled ‘Letter to the bishops of the catholic church on the collaboration of men and women in the church and in the world’. It was issued with the approval of His Holiness Pope John Paul II. Given the frailty of the Holy Father’s health (though Parkinson’s disease has not impaired his intellectual faculties) and given the fact that the 77-year old cardinal, though not papabile himself, may have great influence in determining who next ascends the throne of St Peter, it behoves us to listen to his words.

On the face of it, the letter seems to be a curiously anachronistic attack on feminism - anachronistic in the sense that bourgeois feminism, having joined the 1960s and 70s rebellion against sexist attitudes, blatant discrimination and the domination of the middle class professions by men, has become thoroughly incorporated. Nowadays bourgeois feminism is part of the establishment’s furniture, along with quotas and targets for female recruitment and promotion. Tony Blair, Charles Kennedy and George Galloway all pay lip service. Full equality there is not, but women can now pursue successful careers, along with having children. Even in Cardinal Ratzinger’s homeland of upper Bavaria, where catholicism is as much an integral part of the landscape as the beautiful mountains and lakes, one suspects that not all women still wear the Dirndl and stay at home all day preparing pig’s knuckle, potato dumplings and sauerkraut while rearing a large family. The days of Kinder, Kirche, Küche are long gone.

But the point about rights in this system (not least those concerning abortion, contraception, equal pay for equal work, and measures outlawing overt discrimination - conceded only grudgingly by the BMA, the courts, employers, government ministers and union bureaucrats) is that they can easily be eroded or taken away altogether. Look at what happened to trade union rights under Thatcher and the situation now under the premiership of her spiritual heir.

The thing which really began to change the position of women in our society was World War II. Men were sent away to kill or be killed; the women took their places in the factories and offices and it transformed their lives. They got money, found comradeship and won a real degree of autonomy. However, after the war was over, in many industries, it was made clear to the women: ‘Thank you very much, but your jobs belong to men. Time for you to get back into the kitchen.’ And the women who did stay, like this writer’s mother, ended up doing a man’s work for a fraction of the pay and then being a housewife as well. It took countless petitions, campaigns, trade union resolutions, court cases, demonstrations and strikes before Harold Wilson’s government finally agreed to enshrine the principle of equal pay in legislation.

On one level, the essential message of His Eminence’s letter - notwithstanding the multiplicity of biblical references (where there embarrassingly is no alternative but to rely on the creation story and the Book of Genesis for authority) is perfectly clear. Leaving aside all the compliments to “the genius of woman”, the letter is saying: ‘Get back in your proper place’.

On another level, however, and more profoundly, it represents a more wide-reaching restatement of the church’s views on human sexuality, affecting the rights of all human beings, not just women. The opening paragraphs make this clear:

“Recent years have seen new approaches to women’s issues. A first tendency is to emphasise strongly conditions of subordination in order to give rise to antagonism: women, in order to be themselves, must make themselves the adversaries of men. Faced with the abuse of power, the answer for women is to seek power. This process leads to opposition between men and women, in which the identity and role of one are emphasised to the disadvantage of the other, leading to harmful confusion regarding the human person, which has its most immediate and lethal effects in the structure of the family.”

One’s first comment is to say, where have you been, your eminence? Recent years? The process you describe - of women struggling against unjust subordination and the abuse of power - led, in a limited sense, to their liberation. The struggle goes on and can only be successful in the context of the liberation of humanity as a whole from the alienation which afflicts them. The “harmful confusion” and “lethal effects” you attribute to this struggle (women enjoying a measure of equality in the workplace; women having the opportunity to fulfil themselves outside, as well as inside, their “traditional” role) reflect what seems to be the determination of the catholic church (at least its leadership) to go on maintaining a view of woman and the family which rests on a basis that is not only morally and theologically unsustainable, but politically too.

The cat comes out of the bag in the next paragraph: “A second tendency emerges in the wake of the first. In order to avoid the domination of one sex or the other, their differences tend to be denied, viewed as mere effects of historical and cultural conditioning. In this perspective, physical difference, termed sex, is minimised, while the purely cultural element, termed gender, is emphasised to the maximum and held to be primary. The obscuring of the difference or duality of the sexes has enormous consequences on a variety of levels. This theory of the human person, intended to promote prospects for equality of women through liberation from biological determinism, has in reality inspired ideologies which, for example, call into question the family, in its natural two-parent structure of mother and father, and make homosexuality and heterosexuality virtually equivalent, in a new model of polymorphous sexuality.”

So those awful feminists have not just produced “lethal effects” on family life, but their struggle for equality has dangerously blurred the difference between men and women on a “biological” basis, to the point where people don’t know what they are supposed to be doing or with whom. In the concept of “polymorphous sexuality” (a splendid new piece of Vaticanese) you have a nightmare vision of a world in which men love other men; women other women; and they might actually want to get married and raise children by adoption or whatever. An assault, then, on the rights and human dignity of gays and lesbians.

The problem is not really about feminism (as if feminism ever turned anybody into a lesbian or a queer): it is about the church’s view of the role of sexuality in human life, which is perfectly straightforward. The essential purpose of sex is the procreation of the species. Therefore the only morally licit form of sexual activity consists of vaginal intercourse between a married couple. The ejaculation must take place in the vagina and there must be no physical impediment to conception of whatever kind. Simple really. All other forms of sex are intrinsically evil. If you engage in them and die without first having confessed and repented, then you are damned. It rests on an idea of natural law deriving from Aristotle and St Thomas Aquinas. The notion of natural law in this moral theological context is a complex one and rather fascinating. Readers should turn, for example to the Encyclical Veritatis splendor (The splendour of the truth August 1993), issued by the Holy Father.
Do catholics observe these strict injunctions? Of course not. For example, in Italy, France, Spain and Germany - all with notionally large catholic populations - demographics clearly show that people are limiting their families, presumably by using the contraceptive pill or other such devices. Even in ‘holy Ireland’ the situation is comparable. This is and always should have been a matter for people’s own consciences. It now perversely becomes an opportunity for cash-strapped governments who have spent billions on weapons to say that state pensions will have to be reduced or replaced with personal ones because there are not enough workers to fund them.

Many millions of catholics have gone through agony of various kinds trying to keep faith with the church’s teaching. In 1968 it looked as if a change was possible, but an anguished Pope Paul VI, who they say came near to a nervous breakdown over the issue, reportedly overruled the advice of his experts and confirmed the ban on contraception in the Encyclical Humanae vitae. The chance of any change under the current papacy is zero, of course. But there is always the so-called rhythm method: “periodic continence ... the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods”, which “is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality”, can be used (Catechism of the catholic church London 1995, paragraph 2,370).

Even a novice would recognise that for the days a month in question, whatever the “objective criteria of morality” involved, the method does not work effectively, is beyond the practical resources of the millions of people who could best benefit from it and - no small matter - tends according to research to increase the chance of conceiving a damaged foetus. As the popular adage has it, ‘What do you call people who use the rhythm method? Answer: parents.’ But, while subjectively it aims to avoid conception, objectively it is in accordance with the natural law. Only a celibate theologian could sit down and come up with such distinctions.

At least in theory married couples using the rhythm method and doing the dreaded deed according to the instruction of their parish priest can, other things being equal, evade eternal punishment in hell. But what about homosexuals? No chance at all. Following Genesis again, and St Paul (who hated queers - perhaps he was a bit of a one himself?), homosexual acts are always intrinsically disordered and intrinsically evil, because, in the words of catechism, “they close the sexual act to the gift of life because they do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved” (ibid paragraph 2,357). Back to natural law.

But there is a way out of the conundrum. It is acknowledged that gays and lesbians “do not choose their homosexual condition; for most of them it is a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided ... homosexual persons are called to chastity” (ibid paragraphs 2,357 and 2,358). So, if you are a gay or lesbian catholic, all you have to do is not fall in love, or at least ensure that your love remains governed by chastity. Given that human sexuality is “ordered to the conjugal love of man and woman”, you as a homosexual have no chance of meeting the criteria for salvation, unless you make the conscientious decision to abstain from any sexual expression of your personality in relation to the man or woman you love.

Yet the catechism appears to accept that homosexuality is a “condition”: ie, an illness or disorder for which the individual is not responsible. Who made them gay? Was it god or society? If it was god, then why should he create beings whose “orientation” and desires would lead them either to damn or neuter themselves? None of it makes any sense. You cannot have your Genesis both ways, especially since, as even a rational conservative theologian would tell you, the book is a myth, a profound allegory about the human condition.

What lies at the heart of Cardinal Ratzinger’s missive is no more than a desire to turn the clock back. He should know better. Life and the evolution of society moves on. Would he agree that the outright condemnation of democracy, let alone socialism, in the Blessed Pope Pius IX’s Syllabus of errors is no longer remotely sustainable, either rationally or morally? Who knows? The Cardinal will hopefully enjoy a long retirement and then a splendid funeral. What happens afterwards nobody knows.
But the job of communists and socialists lies in this world. Preserving and greatly extending the hard-won victories of the working class - including, of course, women’s rights and the rights of gays and lesbians - is a central part of our task. The threat to those rights comes from many sources. We must battle against them all.