 From CIOFS-L, Year 10, N.
30, 2004, Weekly edition (CIOFS Bulletin, 2004, N. 5)
THE SFO IN THE CHURCH
Man and Woman: Diversity and Mutual Complementarity
by Emanuela De Nunzio
(former SFO Minister General)
As announced in the last issue of this Bulletin, on January 30-31, 2004,
the Seminar of study on this topic, organized by the Council for the Laity,
took place. With its Prefect, Mons. Stanislaw Rylko, the new Secretary, Mons.
Joseph Clemens, the Undersecretary, Avv. Guzman Carriquiry, and some of
their employees, a group of about forty guests (three quarters of which were
women!) were present, coming from all over the world.
The work of the two days was very deep and engaging with a good number of
talks and debates. The talks were of high level, given by qualified and
expert people (theologians, philosophers, psychologists, historians,
sociologists, journalists). The debates, in which nearly all present took
part, were lively and engaging.
The talks were mostly based on the teachings of John Paul II in his
anthropological and theological foundations of the dignity and mission of
women. His reflections on women, in fact, are expressed in at least two of
the most important papal documents: Mulieris dignitatem (1988) and Letter
to women (1995, proclaimed by the United Nations the International Year of
the woman), subsequently taken up again by the Pope himself, with analytical
thoroughness, in catecheses, allocutions, messages, homilies, etc.
In Mulieris dignitatem, the Pope begins with a series of considerations on
the two biblical stories of the creation and asserts: "Man cannot exist
alone (cfr. Gn 2,18); he can only exist as a unity of the two, and therefore
in relation to another human person..." Man-woman thus appears as the
expression of the fundamental principle of dual unity, according to which,
in the contingent reality, unity is always introduced as internal polarity
(and this is true also for spirit and body, individual and community).
Such contingency does not characterize only the limit of us humans ("it's
not good for man to be alone"), but also our ability to outdo
oneself in the discovery of the other as positive self. In this sense, the
contingency reveals that humans, like every creature, is a sign: not only
individual (identity) but also person (relation, difference). To this
purpose the Pope says: "Being a person in the image and likeness of God thus
also involves existing in a relationship, in relation to the other 'I'".
The male and female relationship is characterized, at the same time, as a
relationship of identity and of diversity.
The issue of identity is easily reconciled to the absolute parity of the two
(of man and woman) in being person and in all that derives from this. The
conciliar text that the Pope stresses continuously in order to illustrate
this affirmation, is taken from the Council Document Gaudium et spes (n.24):
"Man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot
fully find himself except through a sincere gift of
himself".
The issue of diversity is more complex and problematic. In any case it
cannot be reduced to a simple problem of roles, but it calls for being
understood in its essence, to prescind from its manifestations. Seen in
these terms, dual unity (of man and woman) is transported to the essential
dimension of the human being as imago Dei (image of God) and can be seen
also in a certain analogy with the infra-Trinitarian relation and with the
hypostatic union of the divine and human natures in the person of Christ.
The mysteries of the Trinity and of the incarnation are therefore the
foundation of the dual unity and, in the end, of human sexuality. To speak
of the Trinitarian union and of the hypostatic unity as foundations of the
dual unity of man-woman demonstrates that this difference, without confusion
and separation, is a positive fact that exalts and does not break unity.
This helps us also to understand that unity can only be realized in its
fullness by and through this difference.
Finally, dual unity has its ultimate model in the marriage between the Lord,
crucified and resurrected, and his body, that is, the Church. Such espousal
dimension of the relationship God-man in the Church is expressed in the
Pauline image of the Church, spouse of Christ. The Lord, in fact, loves his
people as a spouse and offers his life for her salvation. And the Church,
spouse of Christ, receives from him all her fecundity. In the same way,
every kind of love (parent-child, siblings, friends, etc.) finds its term
of comparison in the spousal love of Christ: "Love as I have loved you". To
this purpose the Pope asserts: "The nature of the one and the other love
(virginity and marriage) is spousal, that is, it is passed through the total
gift of oneself. Both loves tend to express the spousal significance of the
body, which "from the beginning" is inscribed in the personal structure of
the man and of the woman themselves."
From these premises, difficult but necessary, the Seminar has developed a
series of inferences and of applications on the family
level, as well as the social and ecclesial, that I will try to transmit to
you through the Bulletin, when the proceedings of the meeting are
published.
But I would like to point out to you, how useful for a positive placement of
women in the life of the Church, was that pronouncement of the Holy Father
in 1995 (Angelus of the 3rd of September), when he made "an appeal to the
whole ecclesial community to favor in all ways, in its inner life, feminine
participation," pointing out some of the "ample spaces" which are open to
the presence of women: "for example -- he affirms -- theological education;
accepted forms of liturgical ministry, including altar service; pastoral and
administrative Councils; diocesan Synods and ecclesiastical Tribunals; many
pastoral activities, and new ways of participation in the care of parishes,
in case of clergy shortages, except for the specific priestly tasks."
I hope that the readers will pardon me if now I pass from a general level,
like the one outlined here, to a more limited and specific one, which is
the Franciscan Family. It seems to me that dual unity is found also in the
mutual vital communion between "all members of the people of God -- laity,
religious, and priests -- who recognize that they are called to follow
Christ in the footsteps of St. Francis of Assisi": dual unity between male
members of the First Order and TOR, and the corresponding mainly feminine
members, of the Second and Third Orders.
From the papal teaching ministry and the work of the Council for the Laity
we can draw a series of guidelines and enrichments, theological and
pastoral, for our family and social lives and for the feminine presence in
the Church and in the Franciscan Family.
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