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Pope Benedict XVI- Address- Congress on Women |
 Papal
Address to Participants in Congress on Women
His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI
"Recall the Design of God That Created the Human Being Male and
Female"
February 9, 2008
The
following address was given at a conference sponsored by the
Pontifical Council for the Laity and titled "Woman and Man, the
'Humanum' in Its Entirety."
Dear Brothers and Sisters!
With true pleasure I welcome all of you who are taking part in
the international conference on the theme "Man and Woman: The
‘Humanum' in Its Entirety," which has been organized on the
occasion of the 20th anniversary of the publication of the
apostolic letter "Mulieris Dignitatem." I greet Cardinal
Stanislaw Rylko, president of the Pontifical Council for the
Laity, and I am grateful to him for being the interpreter of
shared sentiments. I greet the council's secretary, Bishop Josef
Clemens, and the members and the collaborators of this dicastery.
In particular I greet the women, who are the great majority of
those present, and who have enriched the conference's
proceedings with their experience and competence.
The question on which you are reflecting has great contemporary
relevance: From the second half of the 20th century until today,
the movement for women's rights in the various settings of
social life has generated countless reflections and debates, and
it has seen the multiplication of many initiatives that the
Catholic Church has followed and often accompanied with
attentive interest. The male-female relationship, in its
respective specificity, reciprocity and complementarity, without
a doubt constitutes a central point of the "anthropological
question" that is so decisive in contemporary culture. The papal
interventions and documents that have touched on the emerging
reality of the question of women are numerous.
I limit myself to recall those of my beloved predecessor Pope
John Paul II, who, in June 1995 wrote a "Letter to Women," and
in Aug. 15, 1988, exactly 20 years ago, published the apostolic
letter "Mulieris dignitatem." This text on the vocation and the
dignity of women, of great theological, spiritual and cultural
richness, in its turn inspired the "Letter to the Bishops of the
Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the
Church and in the World" of the Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith.
In "Mulieris Dignitatem," John Paul II wanted to delve into the
fundamental anthropological truths of men and women, the
equality in dignity and their unity, the rooted and profound
difference between the masculine and the feminine and their
vocation to reciprocity and complementarity, collaboration and
communion (cf. "Mulieris Dignitatem," No. 6). This dual-unity of
man and woman is based on the foundation of the dignity of every
person, created in the image and likeness of God, who "created
them male and female" (Genesis 1:27), as much avoiding an
indistinct uniformity and flattened-out and impoverished
equality as an abysmal and conflictive difference (cf. "Letter
to Women," No. 8). This dual-unity carries with it, inscribed in
bodies and souls, the relation with the other, love for the
other, interpersonal communion that shows that "the creation of
man is also marked by a certain likeness to the divine
communion" ("Mulieris Dignitatem," No. 7). When, therefore, men
or women pretend to be autonomous or totally self-sufficient,
they risk being closed up in a self-realization that considers
the overcoming of every natural, social or religious bond as a
conquest of freedom, but which in fact reduces them to an
oppressive solitude. To foster and support the true promotion of
women and men one cannot fail to take this reality into account.
Certainly a renewed anthropological research is necessary that,
on the basis of the great Christian tradition, incorporates the
new advances of science and the datum of contemporary cultural
sensibilities, contributing in this way to the deepened
understanding not only of feminine identity but also masculine
identity, which is frequently the object of partial and
ideological reflections.
In the face of cultural and political currents that attempt to
eliminate, or at least to obfuscate and confuse, the sexual
differences written into human nature, considering them to be
cultural constructions, it is necessary to recall the design of
God that created the human being male and female, with a unity
and at the same time an original and complementary difference.
Human nature and the cultural dimension are integrated in an
ample and complex process that constitutes the formation of the
identity of each, where both dimensions -- the feminine and the
masculine -- correspond to and complete each other.
Opening the work of the 5th General Conference of the Latin
American and Caribbean Episcopate last May in Brazil, I recalled
how there still persists a macho mentality that ignores the
novelty of Christianity, which recognizes and proclaims the
equal dignity and responsibility of women with respect to men.
There are certain places and cultures where women are
discriminated against and undervalued just for the fact that
they are women, where recourse is even had to religious
arguments and family, social and cultural pressures to support
the disparity between the sexes, where there is consumption of
acts of violence against women, making them into objects of
abuse and exploitation in advertising and in the consumer and
entertainment industries. In the face of such grave and
persistent phenomena the commitment of Christians appears all
the more urgent, so that they become everywhere the promoters of
a culture that recognizes the dignity that belongs to women in
law and in reality.
God entrusts to women and to men, according to the
characteristics that are proper to each, a specific vocation in
the mission of the Church and in the world. I think here of the
family, community of love, open to life, fundamental cell of
society. In it, woman and man, thanks to the gift of maternity
and paternity, together play an irreplaceable role in regard to
life. From the moment of their conception, children have a right
to count on a father and a mother who care for them and
accompany them in their growth. The state, for its part, must
sustain with adequate social policies all that which promotes
the stability of matrimony, the dignity and the responsibility
of the husband and wife, their rights and irreplaceable duty to
educate their children. Moreover, it is necessary that it be
made possible for the woman to cooperate in the building-up of
society, appreciating her typical "feminine genius."
Dear brothers and sisters, I thank you once more for your visit
and, while I wish you complete success in the work of the
conference, I assure you of a remembrance in prayer, invoking
the maternal intercession of Mary, that she help the women of
our time to realize their vocation and their mission in the
ecclesial and civil community. With such vows, I impart to you
here present and to your loved ones a special apostolic
blessing.
[Translation by Joseph G. Trabbic]
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