ROME (CNS) — Unless the Catholic Church can show the world concrete models of male-female cooperation in positions of responsibility and decision-making, the church will continue to struggle against charges that it is chauvinistic, said Mary Ann Glendon, president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences.”church teaching that women and men are equal, but not identical, is a healthy corrective to the feminism of the late 20th century, which, she said, promoted a “unisex society.”
Glendon and Lucetta Scaraffia, a professor at Rome’s La Sapienza University, spoke at a Dec. 15 Rome conference on “Feminism and the Catholic Church.” Both women argued that, despite a widely held prejudice, for centuries the Catholic Church has been a key promoter of women’s dignity and equality, particularly by offering them education and through women’s religious orders, which raised up generations of strong, creative leaders.
