Chapter 4 - The Vatican and the War on Gender

Summary

One might reasonably expect that the Roman Catholic Church, which insists on the recognition of the inherent, inalienable dignity of women, the importance of women’s presence, and participation in all aspects of social life, and which admires ‘the genius of women’ (Pope John Paul II 1995: paras 9, 10; Pope Francis 2015) everywhere, to generate a theology from which their full dignity and equal rights follows, and to seek common cause with secular organisations and academic disciplines to the extent that they too are pursuing similar ends. Instead, however, we will find in the present chapter that ‘gender’, a term that in secular thought picks out the arena where the struggle for dignity and equality between women and men happens, has become a multifaceted enemy the church is determined to oppose, whatever the moral and theological cost both to its own integrity and to those millions of people who are adversely affected by the firming up of its gendered teachings.