More than once along the twenty years from the publication of Mulieris dignitatem I have reflected on the theme of the relation woman-church. I honestly add that I have been thinking of this theme from the beginning of my studies in theology. It was not possible to elude it, since in the academic year 1968-1969 the women on roll in the faculty of theology were truly too few. We straightaway felt that those places had not been thought of for women. We looked as a strange presence for our colleagues and lecturers. Something different turned around in our brain. It was actually so. We asked the Church to share, though we were women, the so far formulated learning used only by men. We did not know clearly what we would do with that learning.

Personally I did not think of a theological profession of searcher and lecturer. I was satisfied with the access to faith in a reflected way.  

However, those years ran off speedily and with them also the question of women, the search for a different and new relation between women and the Church. We were supported in our request by Vatican II, whose turning point we were a tangible sign. Let us not forget that without the Council, we would never have thought of or said the things we now speak of.

Request of visibility

We would not be able to understand the Mulieris dignitatem without what preceded it, at social as well as at ecclesial level. At social level –the movement was a planetary one- the neo-feminism took a polemic and biting breath, vindicating the equality of women’s right. The role of the woman in the family and in society was in question. The private knots regarded the erosion of the patriarchal model; in public there was the right to work without economical and professional discriminations.

We cannot say that the season of the Woman’s Liberation has been “regulated”. The non doubtable excesses, on the other hand, were related to the difficulties the women had to face in the second after-war. Capable of managing the economy of war, active in both fronts of the war, they found themselves once again and only confined to the traditional roles, just as if the acquired experience could simply be erased. Let us add to all this the growing and ever more qualified schooling

Coherent with what they thought, the women addressed also to the Church the question of their being part of it. If it is true- and it is- that in becoming Christian there has never been any sexual discrimination; this gave good reason for women to advance the request of stopping the already surpassed incongruence –common in the Western culture- which assigned family and private roles to women and professional and public roles to men

The reversal of the Council, on the other side, suggested accepting the prophetic words of Pope John XXIII with which the access of women into the public life was greeted as a “sign of the times”.

The Pacem in Terris, as well as the “Message of the Council to the women” had aroused plenty of enthusiasm: it was the first time! Thus, we understand how Paul VI first and John Paul II after, had to face a new problematic. In fact, in their tension towards emancipation, women did not stop at their civil rights; they asked the Church the right of being visible protagonists.

In particular, as it has already been written, the pursued emancipation invested the sexual as well as the political and religious sphere. The women wanted the end of discrimination staring from the sex, but also the recognition of their autonomy, the right of disposing and proposing themselves with authority, not less than men, at political, professional and religious level

There were various answers –at political and ecclesial level- In particular I refer to the fact that the Christian churches gave diversified answers during the period of time that goes from the 60s to the 90s. The Catholic Church made her own the request of the women’s ecclesial participation, anchoring them however, only to the baptismal statute. The fatigued journey that goes from the Inter insigniores up to the «Responsum» to «Dubium» submitted to the Congregation of the doctrine of faith after the publication of. Ordinatio Sacerdotalis has excluded –starting from the traditio perpetuo serbata- the legitimacy of priesthood for women. However, a full citizenship, in society and in the Church herself, has welcomed the requests.  

«Mulieris dignitatem»: a catalysing moment

The Mulieris dignitatem is in between this journey. As I have written more than once during these years, its major originality is in the proposed anthropology: iconic anthropology that reads the human couple man-woman, created to the image and likeness of the divine persons, for which it indicates the constitutive reciprocity. 

I say it, without minimising the fact that we find ourselves for the first time before a document with the woman question as theme, not in the partiality of a problem, but in its entirety. As I have several times underlined, the vision of John Paul II makes a tabula rasa of radical prejudices. Let us think, for instance, of the question attributing to Eva the responsibility of the original sin: the Mulieris dignitatem states openly that the fault is to be attributed to both the proto-parents.

We know well that the thesis of John Paul II is that of the feminine “genius”, for what is proper of women because of their specific nature. For what concerns this particular problem, the Pope breathes the cultural debate in action at his time and solves it, not differently from the others, by founding in the native relation woman-life the feminine peculiarity and specificity. To John Paul II, the women have by nature bio file qualities. A bit more sceptical than he is concerning the native “bounty of women”, I have taken the freedom of pointing at him as the last “menestrello”, the last “courteous knight”. Effectively he assumes a measure of the woman “Our Woman”. Her exaltation carried with itself the exaltation of the feminine tout court. The concrete women, however, to use an old saying, are neither Eva, nor Mary, but still beyond. They are what they are in the complexity of situations, culture, self qualities, made choices

In other words, if John Paul II weds the “feminism of the difference” at theoretic level, and the “egalitarian feminism” at social level, then at theological level the contemplation of Mary induces him to lead back to her the women with the exaltation of their genius  and their function, which in  the Theotokos has the archetype model.  

The adhesion to egalitarian feminism of right at work level, at par retribution, without discriminations; the historical awareness of women’s demotion, of their genius, their production, leads him in 1995, writing at the eve of the conference in Pechino, to recognise them as producers of culture, at par with men. 

The mystics of femininity till then had shut up the woman into the only productive circle of maternity. The step forward linked to the affirmation: producing culture, is beyond any calculation.

We must remember that both the Mulieris dignitatem and the post-synod exhortation Christifideles laici had recognised the specific role of women in the elaboration of a new culture. However, this culture was left written in the biofile quality, in the relation woman-life that the women were to witness and promote to point at a new model.

The Letter to women, written at the eve of the conference in Pechino, goes still beyond by making man and woman one common reality. The post-lapsaria disjunction that has written male in the fatigue of work and female in the travail of maternity, is thus healed;: work and generating  becomes common to both, man and woman together. To produce a culture –the Pope says- is nothing but cultivating. The world is handed over to both, so that they may share and adequate it to the project of God

The relation women-Church

We now understand how during the past forty years from the end of the Council and the recently past twenty years of Mulieris dignitatem, the search for a renewed relation woman-Church has been hard, complex, but not deprived of consoling results. The quality of presence of the women in the church is one of its obvious signs

Personally I love very much the theology of the triple munus, namely the one that reads the baptized, confirmed and Eucharistic person in the Spirit, conformed to Christ king, priest and prophet

I believe that if we want to catch with our own hand the new relation between the church and the women, we need to take act of all that has changed at the level of exercising the prophetic munus, the priestly munus and the kingly munus. .

The acquired authoritative character of the women at Word level is now irreversible. Women have access to the Scripture, study it, teach it, meditate it and re-propose it in its very vital and spiritual power. More generally, women study, search and teach. There is no field of learning which they are excluded from. Concrete Ministries correspond to all this, such as teaching at different levels. There are women catechists – a very old ministry- teaching women IRC, active and competent women exercising the ministry of teaching in very much different disciplinary areas of academic and pastoral contexts (printing press, Television, internet).  The prophetic munus embraces experiential and testimonial areas, where women believers who profess with awareness and rigour their faith, both lay and religious, are called to be present..

A new competence characterises the priestly munus. The heritage of Sacrosanctum concilium invests also the baptised who live with another aware participation their liturgical subjectuality and exercise various ministries in the liturgy (reader, psalmist, cantor, commentator, extraordinary ministry…) according to what is requested from them, It is true that these ministries –often joined by a certain service to the altar- have not received a canonical codification, but perhaps it is better so. At least, this is my personal opinion.  Let us add to all this the search for women in the liturgical field: their teaching, their presence in liturgical diocesan and national commissions  Let us add the creativity that women contribute if the are requested to do something. We know that in the actuation of the liturgical reform that followed Vatican II, women have been present: in the study of sources, in the redaction of new ecologies and of the benedictions.

A new competence characterises the women also for what concerns the kingly munus.  Figure of feminine authority keeps on multiplying: from the spiritual direction to the leadership of diocesan and national offices, to the responsibility of parishes and communities deprived of presbyters with the permanent assignation of their pastoral care.

There is a growing number of women in the Episcopal Roman Curiae, in the Roman curia, in the Synodal structures (pastoral diocesan and regional councils). There is an increase of women who exercise tasks once reserved to ordained men, such as the office of rector, deacon, director of a faculty or of an academy or of a theological institute.

Along the journey

I do understand that my words may appear apologetic. I know well how much way is still to be covered and how, in the last analysis, the key question is that of truly recognising men and women as collaborators in reciprocity in the family, in society and in the Church.

Much, very much has been done, yet there is a lot still to be done. Sometimes we have the impression that, once removed the anti-woman prejudice another one is introduced, that of the difference of one who goes on searching and struggling so that  –just to use the expression of John Paul II- one may pass from a splendid theory to its practice

We have the impression that at the end the theory may not be equal for all, but that, added to it, if really we need to create the space for women, it is better to choose in a certain way. It does not matter if they are linear and coherent, what matters is that they may wed certain theses, that they put their culture and their charme, as well as their social relevance, at the service of these theses.. In other words, at the end we need that nothing truly may change. The church has always had women satisfied by their visibility, dictated by particular social situations. But these exceptions are not enough to make them grow. The church grows if all the women grow in the awareness and in the service connected with their baptismal dignity.

Summing up, we need women authentically aware of their condition of faith; women animated by the sincere will of collaborating with men, within and outside the Church; women committed to the research and realisation of a new relation in the sign of partner-ship, of mutual understanding along the journey that waits for us.

It is not easy to be converted to what the Church is: people of God, body and spouse of Christ, sacrament of salvation. May the Holy Spirit, who never ends his action of purifying and making the church cosmic, turn us into reciprocal witnesses to the Trinitarian love. Only then we can say of having inaugurated a new relation, when we, men and women, will have become transparency of what God is in himself and in the loving and reciprocal circulation of the Father Son Spirit. 

Cettina Militiello
Pontifical Theological Faculty, Marianum  
Viale di Villa Pamphili, 20 int.13/A - 00152 Rome