Analysis: Rome would prefer if women would stay at home and away from the altar, writes Patsy McGarry
Last year it was homosexuals, or same sex unions to be accurate; now it's feminists, as they might be seen. August, it seems, is becoming a month for dealing with the wicked, where Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is concerned.
Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he said in a document last year that same sex unions were "gravely immoral", homosexual acts went "against the natural moral law", homosexuality was "deviant behaviour", and gay couples seeking to adopt children were "doing violence". As regards extending cohabitation rights to same sex couples, his document continued, in an almost threatening tone, that politicians considering such a move "need to be reminded that the approval or legislation of evil is something far different from the toleration of evil".
This year, in a 37-page document, he sets out to challenge "erroneous ideas" where women are concerned. Well, at least the tone and language this year is of a more moderate kind.
But the thinking remains the same. As Archbishop Angelo Amato, secretary to the Congregation, said at the weekend, these days "the institution of the family is called into question, in its natural two-parent structure of mother and father, and the equivalence of homosexuality and heterosexuality is asserted, in a new model of polymorphous sexuality."
The weekend document addressed "the premise that human nature does not possess characteristics determining it in an absolute way as either man or woman. Therefore, every person, free from all biological determinations, can shape himself or herself as he or she pleases," he said.
"Faced with these erroneous ideas, the Church is reasserting some essential aspects of Christian anthropology which are based on the revealed truth of the Holy Scriptures."
The "polymorphous" in any context has little appeal for this papacy, least of all for its prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. Cardinal Ratzinger is all for clear lines, without ambiguity, as we also saw with his Dominus Iesus document in 2000, which defined the inferiority of all other Christian denominatons, and the even lesser significance of other religions.
Sadly ,the messy reality of human life is rarely accommodating where such theological/philosophical aesthetics are concerned.
However there are some shifts, if undeclared as such, in the weekend document. As theologian Gina Menzies noted last night "the most radical shift in the Church's understanding comes in the statement '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'.
"There is even a hint that the traditional Church focus on the passivity of Mary belongs to 'an outdated conception of femininity'.
"However, it then goes on to focus on Mary's disposition of listening, welcoming, humility, faithfulness, praise and waiting as values that women bring to the Church."
Basically, while acknowledging a woman's right to an active place in society, the document would prefer her to stay at home and away from the altar. Plus ca change.