Fw: Fw: [Dialogue] All About Eve

[Joe Clift]

----- Original Message -----
From: <RevMariaS at aol.com>
To: <jclift at earthlink.net>
Sent: Monday, August 09, 2004 10:17 AM
Subject: Re: Fw: [Dialogue] All About Eve


> Hi,
>
> This was great! I had just finished reading the original news brief when
> yours came through. Here's the original...
> Top Stories - Reuters
>
> Vatican Says Modern Feminism Dangerous for Family
> Sat Jul 31, 8:14 AM ET
>
> By Shasta Darlington
> VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Modern feminism's fight for power and gender
> equality is undermining the traditional concept of family and creating a
climate
> where gay marriages are seen as acceptable, the Vatican said Saturday.
>
> In a 37-page document "On the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church
> and in the World," the Vatican said women should be respected and have
equal
> rights in the workplace, but differences between the sexes must be
recognized and
> exalted.
>
> "Recent years have seen new approaches to women's issues" including a
> tendency "to emphasize strongly conditions of subordination in order to
give rise to
> antagonism," it said.
>
> The document, which re-stated Catholic Church positions, including the ban
on
> female priests, said that many women felt they had to be "adversaries of
men"
> in order to be themselves.
>
> "Faced with the abuse of power, the answer for women is to seek power.
This
> process leads to opposition between men and women ... which has its most
> immediate and lethal effects in the structure of the family."
>
> The document is a booklet-letter to bishops by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger,
the
> head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican
> department in charge of safeguarding and interpreting doctrine.
> It criticizes feminism's attempt to erase gender differences.
>
> This has "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," it says.
>
> NO TO GAY MARRIAGE
> Pope John Paul has repeatedly defended traditional marriage from the trend
> toward legalizing same-sex unions in the United States and Europe.
>
> After Massachusetts became in May the first state in America to permit gay
> marriages, the issue has been hotly debated ahead of U.S. presidential
> elections.
>
> The document called for greater recognition of a woman's role as a mother
and
> urged society to value it as real work.
> But it also said women's access to the workplace and to positions of
> authority should not be limited.
>
> "Although motherhood is a key element of women's identity, this does not
mean
> that women should be considered from the sole perspective of physical
> procreation," it said.
>
> The Vatican said women who choose to be full-time mothers should not be
> stigmatized, but at the same time, it appealed to governments to make it
easier for
> mothers to hold outside jobs without "relinquishing their family life."
>
> In the introduction, Ratzinger says the letter is meant "as a starting
point
> for further examination in the Church, as well as an impetus for
dialogue."
>
> Among other issues, the document addresses the recurring question of
whether
> the priesthood should be opened to women -- a possibility repeatedly
denied by
> the pope.
>
> The document says woman's role within the Church as a witness and "bride,"
as
> exemplified by the Virgin Mary, is key but different from man's.
>
> "The reservation of priestly ordination solely to men does not hamper in
any
> way women's access to the heart of Christian life," it said.
>
> The Church teaches that it cannot change the rules banning women from the
> priesthood because Christ chose only men as his apostles.
>
> Groups that favor female ordination say Christ was only acting according
to
> the social norms of his times.
>