This study seeks, through the presentation and criticism of the official Roman Catholic position on the role of women as mothers and in the family, to move towards a feminist theological perspective on these issues. Roman Catholic moral teaching has shaped the lives of millions of families worldwide, and has also contributed to the formation of views on the appropriate roles of women within the family, and in wider society. In the Church of today, both within the Roman Catholic tradition and in the wider ecumenical field, the presuppositions behind this teaching need critical, yet constructive, examination: this is what this study seeks to achieve.
The first Section presents the Roman Catholic view, together with some criticisms from within its own tradition. Section Two introduces some critical themes from sociology, which lay important foundations for a feminist perspective. Section Three looks in some detail at aspects of the feminist critical writing on motherhood, the social construction and reproduction of gender and the role of women in the family. The fourth Section examines Christian theological rejection of these secular feminist themes, and also criticism of the traditional view of Mary as a role model for women as mothers. In the final chapter, and using material from all the preceding chapters, I hope to have indicated the shape and methodology of a renewed feminist theological perspective.
Here the official Roman Catholic teaching on the role of women in the family is presented. And then criticisms from within the Roman Catholic Church of the nature, and theological and practical implications of this teaching are examined. In particular, the major points made by significant twentieth century papal encyclicals and other statements in this debate will be looked at, tracing the broad lines of development, showing both the continuities and discontinuities in the tradition.
The first major source is Casti Connubii ("Christian Marriage", 1930), in which Pope Pius XI seeks to protect and promote marriage in the face if its apparent decline. The encyclical outlines the three-fold blessing of marriage, the most important being offspring; the others are conjugal fidelity and the sacrament. The first blessing clearly involves the woman as mother most centrally. Pope Pius XI then goes on to discuss "errors concerning marriage". Sexual relations and procreation outside marriage are clearly unacceptable. In looking at contraception, it is clear that the primary end of sexual relations is procreation:
The conjugal act is of its very nature designed for the procreation of offspring. 1
I will refer to this as the procreative view of sexual relations. Any attempt to avoid this procreative function is described as "intrinsically immoral". 2 Where pregnancy endangers the life of the mother, the Church marvels at her "heroic courage", 3 and says that God will reward it. The encyclical does not allow the risk to the mother to be an exception to the ruling on contraception. Where either partner is infertile, the encyclical praises the "secondary ends" of sexual relations, for example the strengthening of the bond between the couple, and other psychological benefits. I will refer to these as the unitive aspects. There are, furthermore, no social or economic circumstances which would be allowed as exceptions to the ruling against contraception:
No difficulty that arises can ever detract from the binding obligation of the divine commandments which forbids acts intrinsically evil. 4
The "emancipation of woman" is numbered as one of the sins against fidelity in marriage. This has three aspects: social emancipation, freeing women from the home; economic emancipation, which would allow a woman to manage her monetary affairs separately from her husband "and even against his will"; and finally physiological emancipation, involving limitation of children and freedom from the maternal role. All this is described as a "degradation of the spirit of woman and of the dignity of the mother." 5 The role of women as mothers within the family is described as an "order... constituted... by the authority and wisdom of God himself." 6
In the encyclical Divini Redemptoris "Atheistic Communism", 1931), Pope Pius XI condemns the communist view that the traditional family form is a product of certain economic conditions, as this leads to perceiving it as an "artificial institution". The "complete emancipation of women" 7 from the home and family, already described in Casti Connubii as a sin, is here viewed as a characteristic of communist thought. The Pope deplores the inclusion of women in public life as this will lead to children being cared for and educated by the wider community. Such a situation is clearly outside the Pope's idea of what constitutes divine order.
The 1951 Address to the Congress of the Italian Association of Catholic Midwives continues much of this teaching, outlining the midwives' appropriate Christian duty with regard to childbirth and parenthood. This duty primarily concerns instilling maternal feelings in the mother. Midwives are required to teach on the use of the infertile period. This is lawful as long as it is only used to avoid pregnancy for a time, and for specific reasons. If child bearing is psychologically impossible for a woman,
God obliges married people to abstain if their union cannot be accomplished according to the rules of nature. 8
The unitive function as subordinate to the procreative is expressed unequivocally:
The truth is that marriage... is not ordered by the will of the Creator towards personal perfection of the husband and wife as its primary end, but to the procreation and education of a new life. 9
Pacem in Terris, an encyclical written in 1963, deals with peace, justice and the correct ordering of social relations. In outlining human rights, Pope John XXIII states the right to found a family. He sees this as the "natural, primary cell of human society" 10 and so its interests must be a special concern of all social endeavour.
A shift of emphasis in this teaching occurs with the publication in 1965 of Gaudium et Spes (a pastoral constitution on "The Church in the World of Today"). The purpose of this document is to respond more fully to modern culture. One of the aims is to:
overcome and remove every kind of discrimination which affects fundamental rights, whether... based on sex, race, colour, class, language or religion. 11
It then turns to look at specific problems, the first being marriage and the family. Marriage is described as ordained for the procreation and bringing up of children, but the unitive aspects are placed alongside this:
Man and woman, who by the conjugal pact are 'no longer two but one' (Mt. 19:6)... experience the real meaning of their union and achieve it more every day. 12
The language used has a much more personalist emphasis. Marriage is a way to perfection and mutual sanctification, and children contribute to this. The sexual act
signifies and fosters the self-giving by which the couple gladly and gratefully enrich each other. 13
Significantly, in describing the task of transmitting life, there is no specific mention of the mother's role: both parents are treated equally. The encyclical sidesteps explicit endorsement of the teaching on contraception: it acknowledges situations where procreation would make life very difficult, and against certain "wrong solutions" states that:
the Church... reminds us that there be be no contradiction between two divine laws - that which governs the transmitting of life, and that which governs the fostering of married love. 14
This affirms the importance of both procreative and unitive aspects, while remaining unclear on how this non-contradiction is to be achieved in practice. Abortion and infanticide, however, in line with previous teaching are categorically rejected. For the first time that women may not solely be mothers is acknowledged:
Mothers' care in the home... must also be safeguarded, without losing sight of the legitimate social advance of woman. 15
The whole tone of the writing on the family here is clearly different from the previous encyclicals. Populorum Progressio ("The Great Social Problem",1967) continues the more liberal perspective on the family introduced in Gaudium et Spes. It recognizes that although the family plays a central role in helping humans to attain their true identity in the social milieu, in some periods in history its influence has been too overbearing, to the detriment of individual rights. However, the family is still described as "natural" and "monogamous", to accord with the divine plan.
Humanae Vitae ("The Regulation of Birth") published in 1968, is an attempt to respond to three areas of change which present a challenge to the competency of the magisterium: a rapid increase in population, the new place of women in society and increasing control over nature. Much of the earlier teaching is reasserted, although it is similar in some ways to Gaudium et Spes, in its personalist emphasis and in stressing the unitive aspect of marriage. It affirms sexual activity as good, but also affirms traditional teaching by saying it must always "retain its natural potential to procreate human life". 16 Rather than merely stating the centrality of this, it now affirms the non-separability of the unitive and procreative significance of the sexual act, against those who would want to stress only the unitive. Contraception is described in terms of contradicting the moral order and so cannot be tolerated even though a greater good might come out of it. The Church fears that contraception may result in men forgetting "the reverence due to a woman", 17 and also worries about the social implications, fearing that authorities may promote or enforce their use. The encyclical recognises that this teaching will not be well received, and so gives a considerable amount of space over to pastoral directives. It is up to parents and teachers to promote awareness of these issues in children, especially cultivating "complete mastery over themselves and their emotions." 18
In a section headed "New Social Problems" in Pope Paul VI's encyclical Octogesima Adveniens ("Social Problems", 1971), the role of women in the family and society is discussed. A "charter for women" which would establish equality in rights is affirmed, but in a qualified way. It does not envisage the "false equality" which denies "women's proper role... at the heart of the family", but rather, any developments should both preserve woman's "proper vocation" and allow her equal rights in "cultural, economic, social and political life." 19 Familiaris Consortio ("The Christian Family in the Modern World", 1981) is another important source. Pope John Paul II is here seeking to understand the situation of the family in the 1980s, with both positive and negative effects on modern culture. At the beginning the personalistic and unitive aspects of sexuality are spelt out:
sexuality... is by no means something purely biological, but concerns the innermost being of the human person as such 20
- but only in the context of marriage. It goes on to see the role of the family as consisting in four tasks: 1) forming a community of persons; 2) serving life; 3) participating in society's development; 4) sharing in the life and mission of the Church.
In the first task, the family is a community of love founded on indissoluble conjugal community, and maintaining this requires sacrifices from all its members. The role of women is seen as central here. While women and men have "equal personal dignity", this dignity for women is "in the highest form possible" and it is shown by the example of Mary, the "new Eve... and model of redeemed woman" 21. While the equal dignity of women and men means that women's access to public life is fully justified, this is only secondary to her role as mother.
Society must be structured in such a way that wives and mothers are not in practice compelled to work outside the home. 22
In cultural conditions where fathers are required to spend much time outside the home, "the unique and irreplaceable importance" 23 of the father should be reasserted.
In the second task, Gaudium et Spes and Humanae Vitae are reaffirmed, and the Church's role in presenting sexuality as a part of the whole person is stressed. Contraception wrongly separates the unitive and procreative aspects, leading to a "falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love." 24 (It is important to note here, however, that unlike Humanae Vitae, Gaudium et Spes does not refer to natural law.) The importance of educating children to be aware of sexuality as "an enrichment of the whole person" is stressed. 25 In the third task, the family is seen as a first experience of society, and its energies are capable of counteracting increasing depersonalisation in society. The church upholds the rights of families against incursions by the state:
Society should never fail in its fundamental task of respecting and fostering the family. 26
The fourth task explores the relation of the family to the Church: its role in building the Kingdom, as an evangelizing community, by prayer and preaching. The rest of the encyclical consists of pastoral directives which outline the ways the Church supports the family in general, and in certain difficult circumstances.
Firstly, I will look at Mulieris Dignitatem ("On the Dignity and Vocation of Women", 1988), which, I will argue, represents a more conservative view of the role of women than that suggested by documents around the time of Vatican II. This is a meditative document, which uses analogies to put its message across. The first analogy is with Mary, Mother of God (Theotokos): a woman is found as the source of the key event in the history of salvation - Jesus. The dignity of woman here is brought out by the fact that Mary represents all humanity in her response to God. The words "full of grace" in the annunciation dialogue are central to the argument, as the Pope takes this to signify "the fullness of the perfection of 'what is feminine'." 27 That is, motherhood is identified as the "essential horizon of reflection on the dignity and vocation of women." 28
In discussing how women and men are made in the image and likeness of God, the Pope relies on texts from Genesis. Gen. 1 states how women and men are equally created in God's image, while Gen. 2 is described as using more metaphorical language. Being of Adam's rib, and created a helper, symbolizes woman's "essential identity" with men. While women and men exist as mutual helpers, what is "masculine" and "feminine" develops alongside this, (although these categories are not explored.) Central to this document is the idea that self-realization is only achieved "Through a sincere gift of self" 29. It must be noted that this represents a strongly a priori approach: the dignity of women is sought not from women's lives and experience, but is very much a "from above" theology, extrapolating women's significance from Scripture. 30
In the "Eve-Mary" analogy, sin enters the equation and obscures the image and likeness of God in women and men. It is this which results in the statement that "he shall rule over you" (Gen. 3:16). The Pope allows for women's opposition to such a notion expressed in society, although it much not lead to "the masculinization of women". 31 The "personal resources" of femininity and masculinity are equal but different. In looking at Jesus Christ, the Pope notes that there is nothing in his attitude towards women which shows forth the prejudices of his day. Even more, it is asserted that Christ's life "is a consistent protest against whatever offends the dignity of women." 32 Motherhood and virginity, united in Mary, are the "two dimensions of the female vocation". 33 The significance of motherhood is explored in these terms since it is used to describe human self-fulfilment, namely by "sincere gift of self". Motherhood is the way that women realise their true dignity through this gift: "Motherhood is linked to the personal structure of the woman", and this results in her share of parenthood being "the most demanding part." 34 This fact must be taken into account in any move to equal rights for women. Through Mary's fiat, a new Covenant is begun with humanity, and every subsequent mother participates in this Covenant. The pain of childbirth links motherhood with the Paschal Mystery. With celibacy, spiritual motherhood expresses her spouse in Christ and in every person.
In the final analogy, that of the Church as the "Bride of Christ", 35 the feminine image of the Bride refers to all that is human - women and men. Women's ordination is rejected, as despite Christ's free attitude to women, he did not choose women to be disciples. To summarize: The Biblical picture of women is described as
Eve-Mary... seems to reveal the true order of love which constitutes woman's own vocation. 36
It is appropriate at this point to register a weakness in Pope John Paul II's argument which Gregory Baum raises. 37 It is stated that masculinity and femininity are very different but equal; yet these differences are not spelt out. It would seem important that this should be done, in the light of the different roles assigned to women and men, and especially as feminine characteristics apparently count against leadership in the form of priesthood. However, for Mary Rousseau:
the human, personal, religious and ecclesial equality of women and men does not permit the easy conclusion that all roles in Church and society should be equally open to people of both sexes. 38
Jackie Latham guesses that the differences between masculinity and femininity are based on different roles in procreation, but points out that motherhood and fatherhood are not natural, but are the result (at least partly) of cultural conditioning. She also notes that in the history of oppression this is another example of a dominant group defining the role of a subordinate group: it is in the former's interests to maintain these differences between women and men. 39
Before going on to listen to the more critical voices in this tradition, I will briefly summarise the continuities and developments described above. The continuities form most of the substance of the Church's teaching in these documents. Throughout, contraception, abortion and infanticide are always seen as morally wrong, while use of infertile periods is consistently allowed. The sexual act, in its natural form, is affirmed as good as long as it is expressed within marriage, which is indissoluble, in the sense of "not capable of being dissolved". Changes and developments are shown more subtly through different emphases. The first shift, between the first three documents (1930, 1931, 1951) and Gaudium et Spes (1965), is clear. The strongly procreative language, stressing family order, gives way to a more personalistic emphasis, using terms like "personal well-being". The unitive aspects of the sexual act are given equal status with the procreative, and this means that after 1951 periods of abstinence are not recommended. In marked contrast to the 1930 encyclical's derogatory account of the claims of women to emancipation, Gaudium et Spes very much takes women's social advancement seriously.
This pastoral constitution is a turning point: its language moves radically beyond what has gone before; it does not use natural law in its argument and it even declines an explicit endorsement of the official position on contraception. Subsequent documents, while maintaining some its innovations, 'tend to backtrack on the question of the role of women, wanting to circumscribe it more, rather than leaving it as open-ended as Gaudium et Spes does. After the door which this opened in 1965, Humanae Vitae represents a strong reassertion of the traditional natural law position on contraception, stating categorically that the unitive and procreative aspects cannot be separated. Personalist language, expressing sexuality as an important part of human fulfilment is continued. Both the present Pope's encyclicals, (Familiaris Consortio and Mulieris Dignitatem) mentioned here show a more conservative emphasis. Any move towards women's equality is limited by the importance of her role in motherhood, and comparisons with the Virgin Mary become wearisome in their frequency. Both encyclicals seem very divorced from women's experience: written by men, they argue deductively from scripture to establish women's dignity, and both read as lofty, theoretical accounts.
In the final part of this chapter, I will introduce some themes which criticise this tradition. (This is not meant as a systematic critique of the official doctrine, but merely to indicate examples of ways in which it might be criticised.)
Bernard Häring has called for a new look at natural birth control in the light of new scientific research. 40 This is a response to the call in Humanae Vitae for scientists to aid our understanding of this technique. Part of the official Roman Catholic position is that humans are morally responsible for actions which can be foreseen, and so Häring demands a response to scientific research which suggests that natural birth control techniques may often lead to fertilisation of over-ripe ova, which then spontaneously abort. This would put natural birth control on a similar moral level to the IUD and morning-after pill, both of which work by inducing expulsion of a newly fertilised zygote. More research which suggests that fertilisation of over-ripe gametes increases the frequency of defective progeny adds to the suggestion that natural birth control is not in fact a morally neutral method. Häring calls on the Church to have courage for a moral re-evaluation.
Edmund Hill O.P. looks at the way moral judgements on sexual morality are made. 41 He recognises that cultural judgements may become confused with theological judgements. For example, a ban on premarital sexual relations is not totally a theological one (as it is presented in the official Roman Catholic view) about rupturing divine order, but is culturally specific in that it only truly makes sense in a context where marriage is a specific legal and ecclesial event. It wouldn't mean much in a culture where a period of unmarried cohabitation (betrothal) blurred the definition of what constitutes the married state. Cultural outlook may determine the severity with which certain forms of "deviant" sexual behaviour are viewed. An example is homosexuality, which though not orientated towards marriage, is clearly not against love and personalist values. Hill also criticises the Church's use (particularly in Humanae Vitae) of natural law. There it is used directly to form laws, for example, describing contraception as contradicting moral order. Rather than being a source for positive law, natural law should act as a criterion (i.e. by the standard of what promotes the common good) for testing the usefulness of positive law: this is truer to Aquinas' intention.
In her Ph.D dissertation, Colleen Weiden analyses papal encyclicals from 1740 to 1989, offering a feminist critique of the theological anthropology contained in them. 42 In the fourth chapter, she discusses the images and roles of women which emerge from the encyclicals, and assesses the meaningfulness of these for women's lives. The theme of rational man as the head, and emotional woman as the body or heart of a marriage is a continual theme throughout. Women are not valued for their capacity to make intellectual decisions: this is a male province. The titles of the encyclicals indicate the ways in which women struggled for equality, which Weiden describes as "forming a reticular web of courage". 43 In terms of role, women are overwhelmingly presented as dutiful wives and self-sacrificing mothers. With regard to motherhood, she asserts that the characteristics used to describe it (for example, self-offering, supportiveness, devotion):
differentiate social roles so that the roles are non-interchangeable and become sex-specific roles, when, in fact, the characteristics suggested need not be confined to one sex. 44
The general characteristics of the role of women which emerges are those involving inferiority and complementary to men's roles.
In general, Weiden finds that the encyclicals only produce meaningful perspectives on existence when the anthropology refers to the whole of humanity; when they delineate specific characteristics of women they are less than adequate. A central factor here is that they often present "false idols" of women: idealizations which are inconsistent with women's reality. She says:
the encyclical texts are self-limiting, other-imposed textual descriptions of the nature of women, with an inability to imagine any differently, or, in fact, to know the reality of female life. 45
In their book on human sexuality, Kosnik et al also criticise the Roman Catholic ethical methodology. 46 Teaching is formed by rational reflection on what is considered to be the ideal nature of humanity, so the actual behaviour is never the source for normative behaviour. The discrepancy between the ideal and the actual is defined as sin, and the definition of ideal behaviour is ratified by divine revelation, This position takes no account of humanity's experience, nor of the historical and cultural specificity of every thinker and every community. The authors take their own look at research and statistics on various forms of "deviant" sexual behaviour and conclude that this data suggests that no sexual practice is shunned by all peoples because of its evil consequences. This obviously doesn't show that all sexual practices are necessarily permissible, but is an attempt to redress the balance.
In their next chapter, Kosnik et al attempt a move towards a theology of human sexuality which is both consistent with Catholic tradition (while recognising its cultural and historical relativity), and sensitive to modern data. The emphasis on personal relationship from Vatican II onwards leads the way, so that sexuality involves both personal and interpersonal growth:
human sexuality... [is] the way of being in, and relating to, the world as male and female. 47
Such a definition is very far from the solely procreative view expressed in Casti Connubii, and builds on the rejection at Vatican II of the primacy of the procreative over the unitive aspects of sexuality. For Kosnik et al, sexuality is a "creative growth towards integration". 48
The official Roman Catholic teaching is concerned very much with how individuals should conduct their lives and intimate relationships with others. Critics have drawn attention to the asocial nature of such an approach, particularly in the case of birth control. The twentieth century population explosion puts a large question mark against the Church's individualistic teaching. Arthur McCormack calls for the Church to acknowledge the data on population growth without maintaining certain doctrines as a prerequisite 49 Poverty, and the ability of all people to provide a life for their offspring in keeping with human dignity is surely a major concern of the Church. The Church's birth control policy may cause people to take desperate measures. For example, in Latin America abortion is the only weapon against a birth rate as high as 5% in some areas.
So, this chapter outlines the main components in the Roman Catholic Church's official position on motherhood and related issues of marriage and sexuality, and introduces some of the critical questions. I will refer back to this material in due course when I discuss some very different sociological and feminist perspectives.
In the Roman Catholic material, cultural norms of motherhood and the family were presented in absolute terms, as part of God's order. In this next section, I will open up the subject of critical enquiry from a sociological and economico-political perspective. It will not be an exhaustive account of critical study of the family, but will show how some of the absolute views can be critically explored. It will more generally look at the family rather than specifically at motherhood.
In Section One, I looked at Edmund Hill's criticism of official Roman Catholic sexual morality, in which he made a distinction between cultural judgements and theological judgements. David Morgan makes similar distinctions in outlining some of the ways in which sociologists of the family criticise traditional sociology. 50 Firstly, he looks at themes of conflict and contradiction. Traditional sociology has an individualistic outlook, which sees the individual as the site of conflict, and so blame and efforts to remedy the situation are directed at individuals within the family. Critical sociology on the other hand thinks in terms of contradictions which do not occur spontaneously, but are built into the structure of the family. Any remedies are therefore more socially and structurally directed.
Traditional sociology usually deals with gender socialization in the home as part of the nature of the relationship between the parent (usually the mother) and the child. While it does not now rely on biological determinism and can acknowledge the social and learned nature of gender, this can become sociological determinism: society is seen as a structure, their roles are given, and so how the roles are acquired is the subject of study. Critical sociology seeks instead to challenge these roles and also asks questions about power and inequality. "Reproduction" as a term is preferred, as it refers to the origin of such relationships, as well as how they are handed on. It is not only used in its biological sense, but refers to social, cultural and economic ways of relating between the sexes. A very similar process of discovering origins occurs when social construction is recognised as ideology: when the family becomes a symbol invested with meaning which has wider resonances in everyday language, and which can be used to enforce certain values. (I will discuss this more specifically later in the chapter.) For Morgan, the most important critical theme is that which judges sex roles to be produced by patriarchy, as this perspective provides the most comprehensive critique. (I will not discuss this in detail here, but will do so in the following two chapters.)
Along these lines, I will now look at some more specific critiques of motherhood and the family. The writers here are used heuristically to generate critical questions, and are not intended as a replacement for the absolute views expressed in Chapter One. Diana Gittins explodes as mythical the norm of the "extended family of the old days" by studying both the pre-industrial family, and the changes which came about with industrialization. 51 She shows that families have always existed in a great variety of forms, depending largely on social and economic position. She identifies the ideology of the mother at home as a product of capitalism, which required the separation of home and work, and so this ideology was maintained to provide workers. It is therefore not absolute, but is culturally and historically determined.
By criticising functional sociology's definition of the family in terms of four basic functions necessary to society, Gittins attempts to move towards a more more satisfactory way of viewing the family. The first function is the formation of the household: a married couple co-residing with the offspring. The second is economic co-operation, in which traditionally the sexual division of labour results in the woman being economically dependent on the male wage earner, so that resources of all types are pooled. The third and fourth are sexuality and reproduction. These are closely linked as sexuality is defined only as heterosexuality, due to the essential link of sexuality with marriage and reproduction.
Gittins criticises all these categories. Co-residence is not exclusive to families; neither do all families co-reside, for example if children are at boarding school. Non-co-residents may also be seen as family, and many people who share co-residential activities may not regard themselves as a family, for example those in institutions. Economic co-operation is not exclusive to families. For Gittins, cooperation implies equal distribution, but she asserts that this is rare in families, with allocation of resources occurring along lines of power in relationships. She also rejects heterosexual monogamous marriage as a monolithic basis for the family: it is rather a culturally specific form.
Having established that the family cannot be described sociologically as a universal form. She goes on to look at the broader concept of kinship. This covers all ties existing due to birth (descent) and mating (marriage). Gittins sees kinship as a social construction. It often involves biological relationships, but there is also fictive kinship, in which friends become family members. The concept goes beyond boundaries of co-residence and economic co-operative, thus encompassing greater variety in who is defined as family members. Motherhood has perhaps become so central as it is the one relationship which is always known and evident: paternity can be debated. For Gittins, the biological basis to motherhood stops after birth: the rest is social construction. She rejects the masking of this social reality by biological terms such as "maternal instinct", asserting that even breast-feeding is culturally determined, and not an automatic process. That motherhood is a social reality is evidenced by the fact that social approval is given only to married mothers: single mothers are rarely described as displaying strong "maternal instinct".
This alone bears testimony to the inherently social essence of motherhood. 52
She also says:
To use our own ideology of motherhood and love and apply it universally to all cultures is a highly ethnocentric and narrow way of trying to understand other societies. 53
Gittins notes that little attention is paid to sibling ties in the West, as kinship is so located around parenthood. Yet in other societies, sibling ties form the basis of households.
In a subsequent chapter, Gittins examines the social and cultural reasons why couples have children and also seek to avoid having them, attempting to show it is much more complex than simply being the "natural" outcome of marriage.
Heterosexuality, marriage and having children are thus all part of the western patriarchal parcel of rules for appropriate sexual relations and behaviour between men and women. 54
Often children are for women the price paid for the economic stability provided by marriage, while for men children are a corollary to being provided with sexual relations. In the past, children have been an economic necessity, being required to work from a young age, and also desired as heirs in property-owning families. They bring status to women, as traditionally true womanhood is accomplished through motherhood.
It is, more than marriage even, the principle way in which a woman becomes socially recognised as being a 'real' woman, a woman who has fulfilled her 'true' destiny and role in life. 55
Children have also provided security for old age, especially when the workhouses were the only alternatives. It is often argued that choice in child-bearing has only come about fairly recently with the advent of modern contraception, but in fact attempts have been made to control births throughout history. However, 'mothering' as a social role, whether involving her own children or not, has always been expected of women. This expectation has greatly affected the type of work traditionally available to women, which usually involves selfless personal service, for example nurses, teachers, secretaries.
If Gittins' critique is sociological, Barrett and McIntosh's critique is political: they criticise what they define as the right-wing British ideology of the family, which they describe as familialism. This is produced by the right-wing stress on the importance of individualism in fact referring to the family as the basic unit of self-support.
Society is divided into families and the divisions are deep, not merely ones of slight antipathy and mild distrust. 56
Society is not made up of individuals as such, but of those who contribute to production: those who don't have "dependants", and are subsumed under the producers. In practice, this has traditionally meant women and children are subsumed under men: hence the category "individual" refers to men, who represent family interests. This is why the ideology of the family is so central to right-wing thought.
This form also contains the capacity to reproduce itself, as Barrett and McIntosh assert that sole rearing by the mother produces individualistic character types with a predisposition to forming exclusive relationships.
The separation of home from the workplace and the idea of "domestic privacy" is essential to maintaining the ideology. Although this can provide security and protection, Barrett and McIntosh argue that it has had much more sinister effects on women. Domestic violence becomes a hidden affair, and the private domestic haven becomes a prison for women, caused by the isolating nature of their "workplace". Barrett and McIntosh see the "tyranny of motherhood" as largely responsible for the sexual division of labour at the heart of these problems. The "natural" association between "femininity" and housework is made via motherhood: housework is the obvious corollary of child-bearing. This is reproduced by a complex social structure within which women hand on to other women standards of housekeeping and in which the media and advertising have a large role to play.
Barrett and McIntosh then look at the economic maintenance of the family ideology comprising wage earner and his dependants by unequal power relationships. The benefit a man derives from a woman's domestic labour is greater than the support he gives her. Men could not afford wives if they paid them for their services. Also, the man's financial support for his wife is variable and often dependent on his good will, particularly in relationships where women do no paid work at all, the system of paying "housekeeping" fuses the woman's financial needs with those of her children, hence the guilt women often feel in spending money on themselves. However, Barrett and McIntosh see this economic inequality as a symptom of a deeper inequality.
The root of unequal power in the family lies in an imbalance in the evaluation of female and male sexuality. Within heterosexual monogamy (the only form traditionally endorsed) there is a sexual double standard. Male sexuality is seen as positive and male promiscuity is rarely condemned, while female sexuality is only seen positively if connected to motherhood, and female promiscuity incurs severe sanctions. Although nineteenth century feminism celebrated the asexual side of womanhood, and Marx and Engels saw monogamous sexuality as a product of the economics of private property, on the whole sexuality has been excluded from the public, political sphere, and kept as a private "natural" matter. Barrett and McIntosh assert strongly that this sexual asymmetry is social and not natural in character, and that its exclusion from the political sphere has been necessary to prevent it being questioned. It is this assertion of the "natural" based on "biological" (sexual) roles which has given family ideology its force. The family powerfully affects the way in which alternative lifestyles are viewed, because it has become an absolute form:living outside the narrow definition of the family is seen as undesirable. Barrett and Mackintosh feel this ideology has negative effects for the rest of society:
Caring, sharing and loving would be more widespread if the family did not claim them for its own. 57
So, in the first part of the chapter, I have sketched some broad critical themes suggested by Morgan, and have gone on to look at the more specific criticisms by Gittins and Barrett and Mackintosh. It should be clear that the sort of criticisms made of traditional sociology or right-wing ideology by these writers can equally be made of the presentation of women's role in the family given by the official Roman Catholic documents. Centrally, the judgement of the family as an absolute monolithic form is suspended in favour of socially and culturally variable forms, which would allow women greater freedom and choice in the roles they take on.
In the last Section, sociological and economico-political questions were addressed, in a preliminary way, to the absolutist theological concepts of the Roman Catholic material. However, as was stated in that chapter, these questions do not add up to an adequate analysis. In this chapter, I will examine some of the secular feminist critiques of the role of women in the family and motherhood, as such analyses of the issue of gender within the family lead to a relativisation of the universalist theological position more penetrating and pervasive than that offered by the sociological and economico-political enquiry.
All feminist critiques of the family in one way or another presuppose an analysis of the centrality and importance of ideology. I will briefly point out some main features of this. Lee Comer repudiates the ideas that families are "natural", and that those outside the accepted nuclear form are somehow "abnormal". She points out that the pattern of two generations cohabiting is a minority pattern: only about a third of all people live like this at any one time. She sees this ideal as socially and psychologically enforced:
The supposed freedom of the individual to arrange his or her life according to personal inclination is a pernicious myth. 58
She rejects any mystification of the family which describes it as centred on love: this confuses analysis and undermines our experience. Rather, she focuses on the question of why people conform to this minority form in practice.
Juliet Mitchell would perhaps find the answer in the prevailing economic system. She sees the ideological and economic roles of the family as interlinked. 59 The family was ideologically vital to the move from feudal (property-owning) society to capitalism: the family became the site of private property. Its economic role was to provide capitalism with a workforce, while ideologically it functioned to replace the lost ideals of feudal society. However, Mitchell notes that there is a degree of separation between the ideological superstructure and the economic base. The former may promote such values as freedom, mutuality and love, while the economic realities may be very different. These realities divide the family, from being a unity to a unit of individuals; thus capitalism introduces tensions which were not there is pre-industrial society. Mitchell identifies the woman's role in this as holding together and unifying these individuals as they explode off in different directions.
Jane Flax describes the family as constituted by three types of social relations: production, reproduction and psychodynamics. 60 I will use these categories for the structure of this chapter, thus looking at the place of women and motherhood: in constructing environments in order to survive (production); in the production and socialisation of new members of society (reproduction); and in ensuring stability and structure of the internal world of each individual within the family (psychodynamics).
So, how do women contribute to providing and maintaining an appropriate environment for the family? 61 The feminist work I want to look at here is the Marxist-feminist critique, which used Marxism to understand the family's relation to production, and women's role within this. I think it is important, before this, to examine briefly the dual nature of women's work, with the consequences this has for family life. It is broadly true to say that women's "choice" in employment is, in the majority of cases, determined by their role as mothers. Women work in specific areas of the employment sector, which are generally low status, low paid jobs, usually involving personal contact, for example, retailing, cleaning, caring and catering. There is a high degree of gender segregation at work: 66% of male workers and 49% of female workers work only with men and women respectively. Part-time work is a common choice for women, so responsibilities at home can be fitted in with paid work. The most useful type of research in this area, and in looking at women as housewives, is of the documentary type: charting women's experiences of paid and unpaid work. Considerable variation arises due to class and geographical location. For example, women's role at home as mothers and homemakers directs the employment situation and is the root cause of the sexual division of labour.
Juliet Mitchell attempts a detailed analysis of the position of women in the family in Chapters 5, 6 and 7 of Woman's Estate. She aims to destroy the inevitability of women's position, but first rejects "woman" as a monolithic description, finding instead four separate structures in which women participate and which determine their position in the family. These are production, reproduction, sexuality and socialization. She asserts that any women's revolutionary movement needs to address each of the four areas, but in this part of the chapter I will concentrate on what she has to say about women in production.
Women form a permanent sector of cheap labour. This is partly because the concept of equal pay is linked to ideas about the value of work: women having equal pay somehow takes away from men who are seen as the breadwinners. Women may devalue their own work, but Mitchell points out this
conservative role of women... is not theirs, but an economic system that enforces the unity of the couple rather than the solidarity of the workers. 62
This points to the thesis that family structure, and women's role within it, largely determines the work situation. In a sociological study, she compared conditions in an unautomated biscuit factory, a semi-automated bacon factory and a foundry which employed both men and women working together. In all cases, the work could hardly have been described as "light": it was physically tiring and involved long hours. Work in a biscuit factory was monotonous, but as the foreman noted:
That's the trouble with men, they want to see where something comes from and where it's going. Now a woman... she's not interested.' 63
Mitchell confirms it is women's social training which prepares them for monotonous work. Women on the whole gave their reasons for working as money for "extras", or for social reasons - the company of other women. Professional women also suffer from gender segregation, usually working in female dominated jobs such as teaching or nursing, with the result that the whole profession then has a lower status. Whereas working class women's work is largely determined by their economic situation, with middle class women the ideological structure governing which work they do is of primary importance.
To conclude, Mitchell notes that although the technical knowledge is available which could end the physical difference between men and women at work, socially and ideologically, this is not a possibility. As sociologists have noted, 64
within the occupational organisation [women's jobs] are analogous to the wife-mother role in the family.
This economic discrimination rests on an unequal education system. It is not just a matter of improving women's access to education, but of changing the content. Mitchell then sets out the agenda for liberated education concerning marriage and the family. The central problem with the concept of the family in our society is monolithism; there is only one institutionalised form of inter-sexual and inter-generational relationship possible. 65
She rejects this, calling not for the abolition of the family, but for a diversification of socially acknowledged relationships.
Jane Flax presents and criticises a more general overview of the Marxist-feminist critique. Orthodox Marxists see women's oppression as a corollary of the class system, and so expect it to disappear after a socialist revolution, for example, Engels's account of women's inferior status sees it as the result of the introduction of private property and not the consequence of male domination. While Marxist analysis enables women to see their relation to production, this analysis is also problematic. Engels does not question the sexual division: he takes for granted the fact that women do housework, rather than asking after its origins. Also, the institution of private property does not explain male supremacy: it would not be the cause of male domination unless property-ownership was already the basis of power in society: the argument is circular. Given these and other problems, feminists have had to adapt and extend Marxism in various ways to make it useful to them. Most attempts to do this, however, share common themes: that relations of production determine women's status in the family, minimising the role of psychodynamic processes. Flax notes also that Marxist analysis can give an abstract quality to descriptions of the family, for example, children as "potential workers". She encourages Marxist feminists to
consider the possibility that Marxist categories themselves should be subjected to a feminist critique. 66
In this next section I turn to look at secular feminist writing on the institution and experience of motherhood. In a fascinating book, which reads as a collection of anecdotes serving to illustrate women's experience and comment upon it, Lee Comer describes the rise of motherhood and the mystique of motherhood. She first notes that the whole social order is dependent on women's availability to take full responsibility for children while men work, whether the women also work or not. This exclusive emphasis on maternal care is a recent phenomenon. Looking at the history of parenthood in the twentieth century would reveal a range of practices from the rich employing nannies to look after children, to the very poor being looked after by siblings, friends and relations. Since the period of post-war prosperity which blurred class divisions, mothers have been left to bring up children in their homes without wider support. This was reinforced by a whole generation of male psychologists who created the ideology to rationalise women's condition, for example John Bowlby.
Their dictates have succeeded... with the result that the hand of motherhood lies heavier on women now than ever before. 67
By creating this ideology, men were exempted from guilt for their lack of participation in childcare. It has become such a far reaching ideology that the maxim "a bad mother is better than no mother" is seen to prevail.
As long as the mother is present in the home, regardless of whether she wants to or is physically and financially able to care for them, the children will not be taken from her. 68
The ideology of the importance of the mother to the child gives rise to ideas about women only being able to realise their true identity through childbirth and child-rearing. Comer calls this the "mystique of motherhood." 69 This again is a recent phenomenon: such an ideology could hardly flourish while many children born to women died, and while childbirth was a common cause of death in women. The mystique took hold as women were considered economically useless, as their economic role was appropriated by men. Debasement of women is involved: women's
child-bearing function is always held up as the ultimate justification for their inferior position in society and that can only come about in a situation where child rearing is, in itself, devalued. 70
This is disguised by a "rose-tinted" picture of motherhood which points to a mother wrestling with the needs of two young children "and ties it with a bow labelled 'creativity'." 71 Women are assured of the importance of their role, yet Comer asks if it is so fulfilling, creative and important, why are men so reluctant to do it? She praises the almost universal willingness of women to take on these roles as "heroic", but asserts that after the mystique is dissolved, there is something less than healthy for both mother and child about such a state of affairs.
In her study of motherhood, Adrienne Rich makes a crucially important distinction between experience and institution: between the "potential relationship of any woman to her powers of reproduction and the institution". Paradoxically, the institution of motherhood, defined by patriarchy, "has alienated women from our bodies by incarcerating us in them." 72 She makes this distinction so that she can criticise motherhood in its patriarchal forms, while reappropriating it for feminism as a positive experience of women. I feel this is an important distinction for the purposes of this dissertation, expressing as it does the separation between what women are told about their lives, and how they themselves actually experience their lives. This distinction therefore illustrates the gulf between the official Roman Catholic view of motherhood (institution) and the (admittedly diverse) experience of women, which has not been a criterion in the formulation of the institution.
Interestingly, she begins her book with an account of the ambivalence felt concerning motherhood: "anger and tenderness". She describes her own experiences of anger at her children, and feelings of entrapment, because of a lack of choice regarding the way she entered into childbirth. The mixture of frustration and fulfilment is not simply the "human condition", but something much more of the nature of the institution:
Motherhood - unmentioned in the histories of conquest and serfdom, wars and treaties, exploitation and imperialism - has a history, it has an ideology, it is more fundamental than tribalism or nationalism. 73
She describes the power relations involved: that the mother-child power relation reflects those in a patriarchal society. As women are given so little power in society, they use motherhood as a channel for their own human will to power. This, and many other factors in the institution, alienates women from their true spirit, causing a reaction in women against their own bodies, so that women want to describe themselves more as "human beings" than women.
Two of her most useful chapters deal with the intertwined historical, social and political aspects of child-bearing itself. Pain and suffering in childbirth, and their relation to the position of women as a whole, is a theme running through the two chapters. In Judaeo-Christian theology, Rich asserts, women's pain in childbirth is a punishment from God. Such ideas have characterised the handling of childbirth through the ages: passive suffering is seen as a "universal, 'natural' female destiny, carried into every sphere of our existence". 74
Rich charts the history of childbirth in some detail, drawing out its implications for modern attitudes. The establishment of Christianity in the West affected childbirth practice, as the ancient Christian writers' misogyny resulted in midwifery being declared unclean, and men were forbidden at births. The medicalisation of health care in general has its roots in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with the suppression of witches, who were in practice women healers or midwives. Rich goes on to chart in some detail the processes by which this medicalisation of childbirth was completed, so that midwives were declared incompetent, and male surgeons were always present at deliveries by the eighteenth century. This led to two centuries of puerperal fever caused by bacteria transferred from the surgeon dealing with festering wounds to the labouring woman, and accounting for the very high mortality rate amongst labouring women during this period.
Having charted this history, Rich goes in to look at its social, political and ideological aspects. She points to the irony of the metaphor of childbirth being prominent in the women's movement: "I am a woman giving birth to myself." 75 This represents a painful, yet chosen and conscious process. However, in the history of childbirth there has been little choice or consciousness: pain has had negative connotations. "Pain... is embedded in the ideology of motherhood." 76
Rich refuses to distinguish between physical and psychological pain, as such a distinction cannot possibly do justice to female experience, she recognises pain has a historical reference: felt pain will depend on the conditions and culture on which it is experienced. She does, however, with Simone Weil, distinguish between suffering (pain which has an ultimately positive outcome) and affliction (pain to no purpose). She connects affliction with powerlessness, as it often occurs because people have no power over their own situation: hence it is a central part of women's experience. Due to lack of choice in contraception, the male medical control of childbirth, and often unrequested pain control techniques which render women utterly passive "the labour of childbirth has been a form of forced labour." 77 She also looks at the psychological aspect of pain in childbirth: the tension between maternal feelings and self-preservation. Powerful negative attitudes contribute to the psychic pain of childbirth, for example, widespread attitudes about the ritual uncleanliness of a labouring woman among Christians, Jews, Arabs, Indians and Africans.
Rich then charts in detail very different attempts to overcome this fearful history of child-bearing, by the advocates of natural childbirth, such as Grantly Dick-Read and Sheila Kitzinger, and by radical feminism, for example Shulamith Firestone and others, who totally reject child-bearing since it is the locus of women's oppression. For Rich, any such agenda has wider implications than solely physical benefits:
To change the experience of childbirth means to change women's relationship to fear and powerlessness, to our bodies, to our children; it has far-reaching psychic and political implications. 78
To conclude, Rich observes that childbirth is only a part of women's experience, and not our whole purpose. She condemns the male separation of sexuality and maternity, as it is in the male interest to limit women's sexuality to heterosexual coitus. Rich's vision is to give women sexual and maternal choice:
Birth might then become one event in the unfolding of our diverse and polymorphous sexuality: not a necessary consequence of sex, but an experience of liberating ourselves from fear, passivity and alienation from our bodies. 79
In the final section, I want to examine the woman's role in the maintenance of the internal world of each individual within the family. This is the concern of feminists who see psychodynamic factors as instrumental in continuing women's position in the family as that primarily of mother. A classic text in this field is Nancy Chodorow's The Reproduction of Mothering, and I consider it worthwhile to look at her ideas in some detail, rather than present a wide range of theories.
In her introduction, Chodorow holds up analysis of motherhood as a priority for feminists, describing the phenomenon of women's mothering as the most enduring aspect of the sexual division of labour. Marxist feminist socio-economic analysis cannot reach to the heart of the problem for Chodorow; despite considerable socio-economic changes women overwhelmingly still mother. Rather, her intention in this book is to analyse
the reproduction of mothering as a central and constituting element in the social organisation and reproduction of gender... the contemporary reproduction of mothering occurs through social structurally induced psychological processes. 80
She acknowledges the use of two feminist concepts in her work. First, the socially constructed sex/gender system described by Gayle Rubin. Second, Sherry Ortner and Michelle Rosaldo's distinction between the domestic "natural", female world and the public, "normative" male world. These form two of Chodorow's central presuppositions.
Chodorow bases her theory on the Freudian account of personality development, but changes and reinterprets this in significant ways. Both male and female children form a strong primary bond with the mother. In Freudian theory there are two outcomes of the successfully completed oedipal stage: the attainment of erotic heterosexuality and super ego formation (that is, masculine and feminine identities). Attainment of heterosexuality by changes of object from mother to father is the central aspect for girls, while for boys the major goal is achieving masculine identity by separation from the mother. Traditional psychoanalysis takes these developments for granted; Chodorow feels they need explaining by the phenomenon of asymmetric parenting. These two outcomes are not the central importance of the oedipal complex for Chodorow. She focuses on the effect it has on the modes of relational potential in people of different sexes: the outcome for relationships between the sexes.
The Oedipus complex is the form in which the internal interpersonal world will later be imposed on and help to create the external. 81
The mother experiences a daughter as more continuous with herself, and so girls tend to remain in this primary relationship for longer (a fact Freud counts negatively.) In contrast, the mother experiences a son as "other", identifies less with him, thus pushing him more quickly out of the pre-oedipal relationship. The result of this is
girls emerge from this period with a basis for 'empathy' built into their primary definition of self in a way that boys do not. 82
In girls, the father is added to the pre-oedipal relationship to form a relational triangle, (rather than a complete transfer from mother to father), and this leads to a greater complexity in the woman's object-world. Men may be the primary erotic objects, but other women remain emotionally primary to the woman. Psychological and emotional support is more fully given to women by other women. Women and men therefore have very differently structured inner object-worlds. Feminine identity is based on continuity in external relationships; masculine identity is based on separation from others, and has more rigid ego boundaries. To conclude
Women's mothering, then, produces asymmetries in the relational experiences of girls and boys as they grow up, which account for crucial differences in feminine and masculine personality, and the relational capacities and modes which these entail. 83
Chodorow looks at the wider societal implications of her theory. In the oedipal phase, both sexes fear and are ambivalent to the mother. In boys this dread becomes associated with the whole female sex, whereas a girl is less likely to extend this to all women, as she is unlikely to fear herself. As men control social institutions they have the power to transform these perceptions into more general norms. Thus she notes assertion of male superiority is built into the definition of masculinity. She identifies this as a background theme in the development of capitalism:
Women's and men's personality traits and orientations mesh with the sexual and familial division of labour and unequal ideology of gender and shape their asymmetric location in a structure of production and reproduction in which women are in the first instance mothers and wives and men are workers. 84
The intense mother-daughter relationship and lack of a complete transfer to the father as object, due to his lack of availability, has an implication relevant to the reproduction of women's mothering. As the woman's relationship with men (initiated through her father) is established in the context of a triangle, and if, as I have already stated, men remain emotionally (though not erotically) secondary to women, a woman may experience the dyad of marriage as not fulfilling. Hence the triangular relationship is restored by the desire to form another mother-child bond, by having a child herself. A woman develops the ability to be a parent because of this wish to have a child, thus "women develop capacities for mothering from the object-relational stance." 85 Chodorow concludes:
the psychoanalytic account of male and female development... gives us a developmental theory of the reproduction of women's mothering. 86
Jane Flax presents an account of Chodorow's book and raises some questions. She notes that Chodorow's solution is the active participation of men in infant care, so that infants also form primary bonds with their fathers. Positively, Chodorow's work shows how intertwined gender is with individual identity, and thus the futility of token or surface changes in behaviour. It provides a sound basis for critique of the Marxist-feminist view of the family as an ideological institution. More critically, Flax points out that Chodorow does not adequately put child-bearing into a political, economic and social context. The relationship between sexual division of labour in the family and other divisions of labour, for example, class, needs to be explored. She does not discuss class and race differences in mothering and the implications of these for a general theory of the psychology of mothering. Flax also observes that on Chodorow's account, the desire to mother is primarily an expression of neurosis; the desire arises due to women's unfulfilled infantile fantasies of the mothers. Flax misses a wider discussion of the ambivalent nature of mothering, such as the kind provided by Rich, for example. Finally, although Chodorow proposes the solution of equal parenting, no mention is made of, nor strategies proposed for overcoming the economic, social and political restrictions and difficulties which would undoubtedly arise.
This chapter aims to present a variety of feminist critiques of motherhood and the family, exposing the complexity of gendered relationships within families, which the universalist concepts of the Vatican documents obscures. It develops some of the critical questions raised by the sociological analysis, showing the necessity of seeing the issue of gender as central to analysis of the place of women in the family. However, this sophistical, economic, political and psychodynamic analysis of the family does not, in my opinion, preclude the validity of a theological contribution to the analysis of women in the family, and I propose to explore such work in the following chapter.
In the last Section, I reviewed some of the secular feminist literature in its account and analysis of motherhood. In this chapter, I will take up the theological perspective briefly introduced at the beginning. There, the Roman Catholic documents presented an absolutist picture of women's role in the family. The writings I will focus on in this chapter to varying degrees presuppose the sociological and feminist critical account presented in Chapters Two and Three, but also bring their theological perspective to their analysis of motherhood. Implicitly or explicitly, these writings show active encounter with the sociological and feminist critique, so that the resulting theological perspective is to a certain extent transformed. A problem, however, is that there are no sustained treatments of a Christian approach to the role of women in the family and motherhood. The material in this chapter is therefore derived from diverse perspectives and must briefly survey examples of the available literature in the absence of an informed feminist, theological critique of motherhood.
An important source, particularly in the light of the Roman Catholic material revered to in Chapter One, is a very different Roman Catholic analysis of motherhood. The journal Concilium's Special Column (206) "Motherhood: Experience, Institution, Theology" is a collection of diverse essays looking at different aspects of motherhood from a feminist theological perspective. The title itself implies awareness of Adrienne Rich's critique of motherhood as divided into institution (motherhood as defined by patriarchy) and the actual experience of motherhood for women. The contributors come from a range of both European, American and African countries, so the collection has an important cross-cultural flavour.
Ursula Pfafflin observes that the distinction between motherhood as experience and institution spawns much historical, sociological and psychological study of motherhood, and leads to the central question concerning motherhood: are women different by nature, that is, due to their biological function? She surveys some answers to this, principally Chodorow. She also looks at Magrit Bruckner, who agrees with Chodorow that the male rejection of the mother during development results in degradation of women. Bruckner has spent time researching the problem of abuse to women, which she sees as an extreme outworking of this degradation. The Church and theology contribute to societal violence against women by sanctioning a polarised view of women: as either Eve the temptress, or the idealized Virgin Mary. She encourages women in Christian theology also not to contribute to this, by participating in patriarchal structures but she urges them to seek new paradigms for women, to embrace every class and race. If we accept the feminist analysis that culture and social conditions deeply affect the way women mother, cross-cultural dialogue is essential, and theology has much to contribute to this. She says:
Eve's abundant life has too often been compelled to be exclusively for childbirth and submission... Giving birth became a burden for women because it forced them to... pursue male interests by female means. 87
The way out of this is to rediscover inter-connectedness between women, symbolised by the web.
Mercy Amba Oduyoye, a Ghanaian theologian, describes the centrality of motherhood to Akan culture in Ghana, and looks at the relationship of motherhood to poverty. In Ghana, mothering is:
a principle of human relations and the organisation of the human community. 88
Yet despite its high value and because women are totally excluded from wealth production, motherhood is closely associated with poverty. She observes problems resulting from imposing Western family models on African society. The African concept of mothering involves the woman as financially responsible (in addition to her other roles) for her children. War, economic mismanagement and the prevalence of natural disasters in Africa has meant that millions of women rear children unsupported in any way. Oduyoye feels much of the burden of Africa's poverty rests on women, in their role as mothers.
The principal poverty-maker is power: women in Africa cannot influence the decisions which affect their lives. Power is derived from knowledge, and women are kept ignorant of a wide range of issues affecting the physical, psychological and economic well-being of their families. Many of the problems result from the Western technological culture claiming to be an absolute form, and imposing its legal and ethical norms. Women's traditional labour is invisible in this culture, so its rights do not benefit African women. In the conflicts of cultural values, between Christianity, Islam, Arabic and African cultures, women's concerns always come last. She summarises:
Material and economic poverty are the experience of many mothers. What makes the latter thoroughly unacceptable is that the system often shields the fathers from the 'poverty' that could be associated with their paternity. 89
Marie Therese Van Lunen Chenu's contribution is a series of meditative observations on motherhood, in the light of the changing debate on sexual morality in the early sixties. These are based on her own experience both of motherhood and of this period in the Church's life. In these matters, the Church is a source of provocation and hurt for her, and she cites an example of this as the model of motherhood presented in Mulieris Dignitatem. Women today need "to discover 'the hidden word' beneath the patriarchal order", to expose the contradiction between the model of "paternity/maternity" which the Church still advocates, and the "new" way of conceiving parenthood in the light of changes in sexual morality. 90 She notes how in Christian tradition,the Father is portrayed as creator, the mother as transmitter. She is outraged by traditional teaching which describes God as having "created woman for maternity". She responds: "It is not the women for, it is the women who can wonderfully!". 91 She meditates on childbirth, rejecting the Judaeo-Christian physicalist interpretation of paternity/maternity. She focuses on the opportunities for mutual sharing between woman and man. She sees pregnancy as a mutual learning process:
It is the foetal child or the embryonic mother who has lost herself in the tranquillity of the womb? 92
In an absorbing contribution, Ivone Gebara outlines the patriarchal nature of spiritual motherhood and points to new ways forward. Spiritual motherhood, the tradition of experienced women religious directing, guiding and being responsible for less experienced members of the community, has been a further extension of the Church's inability to define women in any other way. Motherhood in religious communities has been seen positively in general, but the body still lurks as an ever-present reality to be feared. Just as physical motherhood is legitimized by marriage, so is spiritual motherhood by a vow of chastity, poverty and obedience. This gives women:
The power to beget - spiritually - daughters and sons for God through the gift of their lives and the conscious immolation of their bodies. 93
This is a patriarchalized idea, happening as it does within a structure which requires "Father's" approval.
Gebara then looks at three ways in which this tradition is being broken by the "iconoclasts of spiritual motherhood." In her continent of Latin America, the first stone was thrown by the rising numbers of the poor, a historical fact which penetrated institutions. Religious communities responded to this situation, and in the response traditional patterns of religious life were broken down. The second critical force was a deep questioning of the hierarchical/patriarchal model of the Church, so that the Church could no longer impose patriarchal spiritual motherhood, which had been justified
on the basis of a-historical, otherworldly ideas, treating the metaphors of other ages as reality. 94
The third critical force was the feminist movement, which sought to reject patriarchy's influence on women's communities. Gebara then raises questions about the role of spiritual motherhood in the light of this iconoclasm. Here she finds a parallel to the experience of institution in the distinction intuition/institution. She finds an intuition behind the historical, institutionalized forms of spiritual motherhood. This is the idea of the religious life as a "creative liturgy" - a dream to be fulfilled. Institutionalizing this dream has suffocated it: the Church wanted to control it, but returning to this intuition provides the way forward for spiritual motherhood.
In "Mother-Daughter-God" Johanna Kohn-Roelin makes a connection between psychology and theology. She quotes Eva Gottschald:
We meet God through our mother and both - mother and God - are frightening, incomprehensible... nothing can be hidden from our parents or God. 95
She looks at the role of masculine language about God in patriarchy seeing it not only as external oppression, but as internal self-oppression, handed down through generations. She notes the contradiction between the Church's idealisation of motherhood and its reality in the lives of women, citing Mulieris Dignitatem as an example of the former. This ideal is against "deviant" mothers, for example, the unmarried or lesbians, and does not give women power either politically in society, or sacramentally within the church. She accepts Nancy Chodorow's account of the acquisition of femininity as a process of socialization for motherhood, and goes on to look at subsequent problems. The struggle for separation from the mother can result in development of a psuedo-autonomy and counter-identity, which results in approval-seeking so that identity is affirmed: this leaves women open to exploitation. She is wary of fathers simply taking over the mother's traditional role: an over-intensive mothering role in either sex results in problems with individuation for the children. She links with this theology by saying:
Theology is concerned with the socialization of women because it is concerned with how to speak about God. 96
With J. B. Metz, she asserts language about God can no longer proceed at the expense of speaking about humans. Images of God say more about the human than God, a mystery recognised in the Old Testament's prohibition of idol worship. In the New Testament, the message of salvation is conveyed in male terms. All theology therefore needs to attempt to formulate language about God which contains:
all the pressures that psychically deform women and make them socially second-class beings. 97
Theology's goal must be to transform Christian tradition, so that women and men might achieve their own identity, free from all forms of oppression. Women especially need to be able to identify themselves with symbols for God so that they "can experience themselves and recognise themselves as God's images." 98
Dorry de Beijer's contribution looks at women in the new reproductive technologies, and two particular views of motherhood which arise here. Firstly, she notes that feminists make the connection between the technical control of nature and the social control of women (and other groups). The woman as mother is the primary image of this connection. This is a characteristic of patriarchal ideology: the relations between humans and their environment are broken, dualisms are set up. Patriarchy views the human (i.e. male) as a self sufficient individual acting independently of the environment. The woman as mother is viewed as good feeding soil, a nurturing environment, but with no active role in the process while the male is abstracted from this environment:
women are reduced to being a passive environment for the foetus... a technical product with certain socially desirable characteristics and qualities. 99
The second view is held specifically within the context of reproductive technology. Women here are treated as critical consumers, with great stress placed on ability to defend their rights and make decisions by evaluating scientific information. Ambivalent feelings are viewed as an unwarranted side effect, rather than an indication that rational ability does not constitute a morally sound decision. Both of these views of motherhood have in common a focus on the development of the foetus and its quality, rather than developing the relationship between the foetus and its mother: again the patriarchal tendency to distance and separate. Moral problems for women involved in reproductive technology derive in de Beijer's view from the conflict between these two models of motherhood. What is needed is a return to an understanding of the closeness/distance from the foetus as experienced by the pregnant woman.
An account of the Christian perception of motherhood would not be complete without mention of Mary, the Roman Catholic Church's ideal of motherhood. In this section I will briefly survey only some of the ways in which the cult of Mary as mother has been both expressed and criticised.
Marina Warner identifies the connection between Mary and women as subjects in the emergence of the Franciscan movement. Mary's traditional silence, modesty and humility were characteristic of her spiritual state until Francis of Assisi translated them into a physical and social condition. The Franciscan emphasis was on poverty and humility and Mary became interpreted along these lines, shown in, for example, the appearance of the Madonna of humility in art in the mid fourteenth century. Brought off her throne and into art portraying her as an ordinary woman, Mary's humility and submission became instantly recognisable as feminine qualities, especially in the culture of the Mediterranean countries where this cult grew up.
Machismo, ironically enough, is the sweet and gentle Virgin's other face. 100
Such ideas quickly became widespread, as religious ethics were so interwoven with culture, and this is evidenced in medieval handbooks on housekeeping. Yet Warner notes the paradox:
How could religion that averred the female sex's greater inclination to evil attribute to them all the Christian virtues in greater measure than men? 101
Child-bearing is the key to this: women's greater sin moves them out of the public realm into the private, where they can excel as wives and mothers. Christianity helped to perpetuate women's inferiority by such a narrow definition of womanliness as is shown in Mary, and by praising it highly. Humility as a quality is made up of both contempt for Eve and an idealisation of women's submissive nature.
The cult of Mary's Milk was popular in early Christianity. It symbolised the full humanity of Jesus, and was a powerful metaphor for the gift of life, in a time when it was the only means for a baby to survive. The incarnation is that
whereby the Christian soul is perpetually nourished and sustained by grace, of which Mary's milk is a sublime epiphany. 102
In Christian teaching, however, suckling, as an aspect of child-bearing is a result of Eve's sin and the Fall. The repercussion of this for Mary was that she was seen as a parallel figure to Christ: such a humble association with humanity is parallel to Christ's becoming human. By the end of the Renaissance the popularity of this cult was reduced, owing principally to conflict with ideas about Mary's Immaculate Conception: if she were preserved from the stain of original sin, this is incompatible with her suckling Jesus, if this is viewed as punishment. When the Roman Catholic Church describes breast feeding as "natural" and therefore the only option for women, the mystical idea of the milk of the Mother of God is used as an oppressive structure in the social world.
As the mater dolorosa, and in the cult of Mary's Sorrows,
the Virgin was the instrument mediating bafflement at the Mystery of the Redemption into emotional understanding. 103
She focuses human feelings at Golgotha. Mary's role in the rebirth of Easter is that of Mother. Christians become members of the Church in Christ and children of Mary: she is the locus of the link between incarnation and atonement. Although as mater ecclesiae, she actively participates in the death of her son, this is not considered a priestly action by Roman Catholicism. Yet in her role as Christ's mother, she has a crucial place in the economy of salvation.
Catholic tradition does not allow Mary to be associated with sin in view of her relationship with God and Jesus. Warner notes the importance of harlot saints who fulfil the role of being examples of restored sinners. Mary Magdalene is the other side of the Church's dualistic attitude to women and sex. Both are viewed in sexual terms: Mary as virgin and Mary Magdalene as whore:
Together, the Virgin and the Magdalene form a diptych of Christian patriarchy's idea of women. 104
Mary of Egypt in the fourth century is another example of a harlot saint: she is portrayed very similarly to Mary Magdalene in iconography. These saints are double-edged: while illustrating the Church's belief that no one except Satan is beyond redemption, they also preserve the characteristic Christian correlation between women and the flesh.
The Immaculate Conception was defined as dogma in 1854 by Pius IX, thus making impossible any interpretation of the incarnation as Christ fully embracing humanity. It renders his only human parent totally free from sin, by her perfected resistance to it. Its precise meaning has often been obscure to non-theologians, yet it became popular as a way of describing Mary's purity. The cult has not taken the theological implications seriously; yet this theology has been a great obstacle to ecumenism. The dogma logically extends the existing ideas of the Virgin Birth of Christ and belief in the Virgin's Assumption. These two beliefs change the nature of childbirth and bodily corruption for Mary, and as they are the punishments for sin, the obvious corollary is Mary's sinless character. This has caused great problems for Protestantism, Greek and Russian Orthodoxy because in this cult Mary is adored alone, on account of who she is, not what she does. This sets her apart from the human race, denying is the common bond of humanity with her. Non-Catholic forms of Christianity see original sin not as inherited, but as human weakness: to deprive Mary of this robs her of her full humanity and the wonder of her achievement:
the lesson of the doctrine is that the ideal cannot be incarnate in a creature who is like everyone else. 105
Warner describes Mary in the Immaculate Conception as a symbol and instrument of dualism: she is made perfect by overcoming the natural laws of child-bearing, so that this perfection denies the goodness of the created order. In summary, Mary as a symbol runs counter to the central Christian doctrine that humans are redeemed by God:
As the icon of the ideal, the Virgin affirms the inferiority of the human lot. Soaring above the men and women who pray to her, the Virgin conceived without sin underscores rather than alleviates pain and anxiety. and accentuates the feeling of sinfulness. 106
In the Concilium volume already referred to, Els Maeckelberghe looks at the significance for the Roman Catholic Church of the twin images of 'Mary' as mother and 'Mary' the Virgin. ('Mary' denotes the complex imagery and symbolism that the name signifies). She uses two methodological approaches. Firstly, she asserts that Rich's distinction between experience and institution is vital to the study of 'Mary'. The official dogmas about 'Mary' are not necessarily the way she is universally accepted. At the level of experience, the person on the receiving end of the symbol must be taken into account: Maeckelburghe's thesis is that the sex of the recipient determines how the symbol, here 'Mary', is interpreted. Her second methodological approach is a sexual analysis, which investigates what 'Mary' means to women and men separately. She posits that for men, the institution and experience of 'Mary' are closely linked, with virginity as the central theme, while for women the institution and experience are much further apart, with motherhood as the central theme.
She explores this in terms of psychoanalysis, deriving from the work of M.P.Carroll. Sons who grow up in a family in which the father figure is not sufficiently present have a strong sexual orientation to their mothers. This leads to an ambivalence about their maleness and compensatory aggressive behaviour. Sexual desire for the mother must be suppressed. Carroll sees this as the origin of Marian devotion: Mary as "The canalization of sexual desires". 107 In Carroll's view this is the source of the importance of 'Mary's' virginity for men. It masks her identity as mother: in her virginity she can remain the object of male fantasies. But her virginity as mother means that she is not to be associated with sexuality: hence for Maeckelberghe, the construction collapses. While doubting that Carroll's hypotheses provide the explanation for the emergence of the cult of the Virgin, they do offer insights into much Marian devotion, which is then instantly recognisable for its sexual overtones. Caroll's third hypothesis regarding why women are attracted to the cult of 'Mary' is obscure for Maeckelberghe: she suggests it is a substitute for desire for sexual contact with the father, and to realise the longing to have a child.
Feminist psychologists such as Chodorow show the importance for women of the feeling of continuity and identification. Maeckelberghe suggests 'Mary' for women is experienced in this way, rather than as a sexual object, as she is with men. Returning to Rich's distinction, Maeckelberghe asserts that women identify with 'Mary' for very different reasons than those put forward on the institutional level. They might see her as "that woman with the difficult son" 108 - seeing her foremost as a woman, not an idealised figure. The differences in 'Mary' for both sexes seem then to be supported by psychoanalytic theory. 'Mary' as an object for men is acceptable in itself, but has been made a problem for women as this image of 'Mary' has been made normative and held up to women as an example.
It has been painted by a patriarchal, white, heterosexual, Western, celibate male hand.
Maeckelberghe calls for a listening to women's perceptions of Mary, so that she can again become a friend to the Christian community. However,
stepping outside the vicious celibate circle can only take place if women are taken seriously as the hermeneutical centre of interpretation of being the Church today. 109
Critique of Mary, as the Roman Catholic Church's model of perfect motherhood is included here as it illustrates further Adrienne Rich's distinction between the institution and experience of motherhood: the non-inclusion of women's experience in formulation of dogmas and symbols results in an idealised, unattainable model for the institution. Mary is the locus of many patriarchal concepts which feminists criticise, for example, the devaluation of women's bodies and sexuality; the characterisation of femininity as passive and obedient and the subsequent exaltation of the female to counteract her powerlessness; and confinement to a domestic, mothering role. This chapter shows the range and depth of feminist critiques of the Church's attitude to motherhood. The links with feminist theory, such as the work of Adrienne Rich and Nancy Chodorow are clear in some of the writing, but only implicit in most. The way these writers are concerned to transform the Church's attitude demonstrates that a theological perspective on the role of women in the family and motherhood which takes account of feminist critiques is possible without being absolutist and universalist.
So far, I have been primarily concerned with discussing various positions on the place of women as mothers and in the family, high-lighting the very different approaches of official Roman Catholicism on the one hand, and sociologists, secular and Christian feminists on the other. In this final chapter, I will attempt to draw some conclusions from this material, and I hope to point the way to a renewed, feminist theological perspective. I will discuss issues raised in previous chapters and then examine the methodological implications which would seem to follow from the material, and which may be able to serve as a guide for developing a feminist theological perspective on a range of possible issues.
Much of the analysis has involved comprehensive criticism of the official Roman Catholic theological perspective, but in Chapter Four I indicated that these criticisms need not render all theological perspectives invalid. On the contrary, I would hold that it is essential that women are able to come to a critical awareness of their lives and position in wider society which can hold together feminist insights and religious concerns. This is of crucial importance for women who have developed as humans in the context of a Christian community, and who have a self-understanding which involves the concept of relationship with God.
There seems to be a basic distinction between the two broad ways of approaching these questions. This is illustrated by the distinction between institution and experience made by Adrienne Rich. She uses it, as I have discussed in Chapter Three, to categorise different understandings of motherhood. However, it would seem to apply more broadly to methods of arriving at a position on the role of women. The official Roman Catholic position clearly uses deductive argumentation. The norm involved in this position is principally that of obedience to the divine law. This is eternal, objective and universal, and human beings are created to participate in and obey it. The role of a theological perspective is therefore to make this law accessible to human minds, to provide rules to live by. The role of women as mothers and in the family is argued a priori from these rules. In such a perspective,the divine order and the world appear as two separate spheres, meeting only at the edges. On this view absolute propositions derived from the divine order can be imposed upon the world, and no account of social, cultural or experiential factors need affect these propositions. Historical reality is effectively ignored, and an institution is created.
Sociologist and feminist perspectives, however, characteristically use inductive argumentation. The principal norm involved is lived experience, which forms the central basis for any position on appropriate roles for women in society. Absolute statements and rules to live by are generally rejected in favour of an understanding of social reality characterised by relativity. Lived experience is viewed as determined and regulated by social, cultural and economic factors which render a universalist stance invalid. Roles are not given by laws exterior to the world, but are socially constructed, argued for in an a posteriori manner. Historical reality is taken seriously as having a hand in determining such roles. I hope to show by discussing issues from previous chapters that this latter approach, which is the one I would argue is the only possible option in the light of the twentieth century historical consciousness, may be used as the basis for a theological perspective on the role of women in the family and society.
In Part Three, the discussion of the role of women as workers in production highlighted gender segregation, in which women perform low-paid, low status jobs which often correspond very closely to their role in the family as wives and mothers. The official Roman Catholic position requires women's work to be secondary to, and not intrusive to this role. Here, this theological perspective is associated with views which devalue women's capacities as workers, and these views are institutionalized in the economic system. Social, economic and theological factors conspire to ensure women do not have equal access to employment in practice. (Theoretical equal access may now have been achieved in most sectors of employment except, notably, the Church; this access is, however, circumscribed by the social, economic and theological pressures on women.) Feminists affirm the right of women to resist these expectations, and the right to choose their type of employment based on knowledge of their own strengths and weaknesses, not on those predicated on them by patriarchy.
I would argue this must be part of any theological perspective on the role of women. Ideas of Christian love and service are only meaningful if they involve the commitment of both sexes, not just women. Self-fulfilment is not possible without self-giving, yet many women's experience is of a self-giving which totally eclipses their own self-fulfilment. If women and men are created equally in the image of God (Gen. 1:27), and if traditional roles for women and men are seen as socially constructed (and not biologically determined or theologically necessary), then a renewed theological perspective could affirm and promote women's right of equal access to employment. Most importantly, such a perspective would need to take seriously women's hopes, desires and aspirations for themselves - in short, must listen to women's lived experience.
The theme of motherhood has been central throughout my discussion. The official Roman Catholic position on the role of women in the family can be described, in summary, as motherhood. This has the status of a natural destiny, a biological given, to which women must subject themselves as part of obeying the divine law. Motherhood in the fulfilment of what it is to be a woman, and God has created this situation. Any deviation from it is therefore contravening God's purposes and will inevitably result in sin. The sociological and feminist critique of such traditional views of motherhood have been discussed in detail in Chapter Three. Centrally, motherhood is not a biological given, but is a social construction. This is evidenced by wide cultural differences in mothering. Nancy Chodorow's identification of the reproduction of mothering as principally a social and psychological reality, also deals a sharp blow to the traditional view. Children, and therefore future society, would be better served by equal parenting, not by the maintenance of the institution of motherhood.
Any theological perspective on the role of women as mothers cannot legitimately start from principles, but must start with lived experience. This experience may involve feelings of anger, depression and isolation. It may bring with it many feelings which are alien to an idealised picture of a happy mother creatively responding to her children. It may not embrace the traditional picture of a family based on a heterosexual relationship. All these cannot be viewed as deviations from an a priori constructed ideal, but they constitute what being a mother means in the twentieth century. A renewed theological perspective must be able to grapple with this diversity. Such a perspective will involve an understanding of what it is to be human (an anthropology) which affirms that all humans come to self-understanding as persons, male or female, having equivalent human natures. Definition of certain characteristics as female and male, recognised by feminists as socially and not biologically or innately constructed, is rejected in favour of a holistic view of human nature, which integrates the public and private, political and domestic arenas and which promotes an integrated self-understanding. This self-understanding can be said to represent the image of God in humanity, given equally to women and men, and can involve an awareness of relationship with God. It is on the basis of this self-understanding that women may come to interpret their experience of motherhood as an aspect of what it means to be made in the image of God. On this view, women's roles are not narrowly defined by principles, but follow from women's self-understanding, based on their own experiences of living in the world.
In Section Four I pointed to some of the problems Mary as a symbol has presented for women. However, Ruether offers some alternative thoughts on mariology which may give some meaningful theological insights into what it means to be a mother. 110 Mary's motherhood is a free choice: her free consent to pregnancy is an act of faith. In this way, Mary becomes a symbol for the believing community, and women's own child-bearing may symbolise this faith in God within a Christian community. Mary becomes a co-creator of humanity with God; her roles is mirrored every time a woman gives birth. Mary makes possible God's coming into humanity to liberate humanity; yet she is also an object of this liberation, representing the oppressed. Women may come to understand their own experiences of childbirth as liberating, and by bringing new human life into the world, make possible God's liberation of others through that human life. None of these insights are absolute, or constitute what it means to be a mother, but such an interpretation of theological tradition may provide a context in which women may come to self-understanding through their own experiences.
The official Roman Catholic position affirms a very narrowly defined expression of sexuality. Only heterosexuality can be viewed as approved by the divine law, and then it must be within marriage and directed to procreation of children. Although the position shifts from procreation being the sole purpose to a recognition of the psychological and relational benefits of sexuality, the Church still prohibits sexual acts which involve an interventional avoidance of the procreative outcome. If sexuality is viewed as an essential aspect of what it means to be male and female in the world, then such a position is untenable. A feminist position would suggest that this circumscribing of women's sexuality is an important factor in the oppression of women. Barrett and McIntosh made such a claim, as I noted in Chapter Two, when they attributed the root cause of unequal power relationships in the family to the imbalance in the evaluation of female and male sexuality. A renewed theological perspective would need to affirm a much broader concept of sexuality, while retaining the importance of fidelity to a chosen partner and ideas of interpersonal responsibility and reciprocal care.
It is in this connection that I find Nancy Chodorow's analysis problematic. Her book, discussed in Chapter Three, is full of potentially revelatory insights into the possible causes of the nature of the relationship between women and men. However, it is clear that her central presupposition is that "normal" development involves attainment of heterosexuality. In this she is as guilty as the Roman Catholic position in assuming a unitary experience of sexuality. She gives no account of homosexuality, and by implication, from her psychoanalytic description of personality development, homosexuality appears as an abnormal or deviant outcome. This criticism clearly cannot be ignored when thinking about her insights into heterosexual development, and I wonder whether it should call the validity of her whole account into question.
On a view which stresses the human capacity to come to self-understanding through personal experience - a self-understanding based on a concept of integrated humanity made in the image of God, rather than narrow definitions of femininity and masculinity - sexuality can be conceived in terms of a continuum of orientation, rather than narrow definitions of homosexuality or heterosexuality. An integrated self-understanding demands that humans are true to their own experiences of their orientation as sexual beings, and these experiences, on our definition of what it means to be human, are all part of the image of God. This is not to affirm all forms of expression of this orientation as in the image of God; criteria for deciding this would need to be rooted in concepts, for example, of love for neighbour, of respect for personal dignity, and of responsibility to and for others, so that sexual expression divorced from love or personal relationship may be viewed as less adequate forms of sexual expression.
This discussion of issues raised in previous chapters clearly implies some methodological conclusions about what is involved in arriving at a feminist theological perspective such as I have tried to outline. Criticism of the official