A MEASURE OF GREATNESS On John Paul II's twenty-five-year papacy
Ross, Susan A
Susan A. Ross When Karol Wojtyla was elected pope in 1978,1 was a fourth-year graduate student, beginning work on my doctoral dissertation. Some twen-ty-five years later, I am now one of the senior...
...A few years later, as the late (and perhaps not so lamented) pastoral letter on women's concerns was still being debated in the United States, I heard a story about one of the bishops involved in drafting the letter...
...Humanity, and women in particular, are the receptive brides of Christ...
...They were in for a surprise...
...We (that is, feminists and John Paul II) have shared a concern for bodily integrity, for a sense of realism that sees what we as embodied persons are given as the material out of which and with which we act...
...I can understand how he may see himself in this way-his interest in the beauty and wonder of "woman," in Mary the representative of the feminine whom he so admires as a model of womanhood and humanity-could lead him to say that he, of all people, is a feminist in that feminism is a celebration of the feminine...
...Then, in Washington, D.C., Sister Teresa Kane, as president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, addressed the pope with words that beseeched him to listen to the voices of women crying out for change in the church...
...While there are certainly some feminist theologians for whom the ideas of John Paul II have little if any relevance- perhaps only as illustrations of all that feminism fights against-some others, such as myself, see the situation in more complex terms...
...He is right that consumerism and a lack of respect for women plague our world, particularly those of us in the West...
...Still, I wonder whether the church under his papacy has been sufficiently attuned to the workings of the Spirit, who blows wherever the Spirit wills, and whose light cannot be extinguished-perhaps, speaking through the voices of women...
...For these students, John Paul II has been pope longer than they have been alive...
...I am old enough to remember four previous popes, but assessing John Paul II's papacy is a much more difficult task than summing up John XXIII (Vatican II) or Paul VI (the aftermath of Vatican II and Humanae vitae...
...He had gone to Rome as part of the process, and had been sternly admonished for giving the impression that the bishops were to learn from women's experiences...
...While John Paul II's output has been nothing if not prodigious, one cannot but notice how much of his writing has concerned issues relating to embodiment and sexuality, from Love and Responsibility (first published in 1960) to the collection of writings and addresses published as The Theology of the Body in 1997...
...Womanists and mujeristas challenge European and American women to rethink these issues from the perspective of poor women, women of color, women whose issues of identity concern not only gender, but also race, class, sexual orientation, ability, and social location...
...When the Vatican issued its statement on the ordination of women in 1977, many of us were concerned about the theology of "symbolic representation" that seemed to be so central to the document...
...The Holy Father sat with his head buried in his hands as Kane spoke strongly and courageously...
...Joan of Arc, and other notable women of church history...
...Yet a greater sense of the complexity of this embodiment-one that has arisen from women's reflections on how it has been shaped not only by physical but by social limitation and possibility, by our language, and by our history-seems to be missing from John Paul II's side of the conversation...
...For it is also true that the last twenty-five years have been marked by the official church's resistance to the voices of women, as many of us have come to see our experiences in ways that are not always consistent with official church teaching...
...So much more has happened in these twenty-five years: the increasing globalization of the church, the fall of communism, the growth of nationalism, the dangers of capitalism...
...The bishops were the teachers, he was told, and not the learners...
...It is the assumption that womanhood can be defined in certain ways that are already, and even better, understood by the church than by women themselves that is the sticking point...
...Not long after, the pastoral letter was "tabled...
...Some twen-ty-five years later, I am now one of the senior faculty members at my institution, teaching students many of whose parents are younger than I am...
...Rosemary Ruether's New Woman/New Earth- still in my judgment one of the most significant works of feminist theology-had been published three years earlier, linking sexism with racism, anti-Semitism, and ecological devastation...
...Some clear and consistent themes emerge from these writings: the goodness of the body, the essential differences between men and women, the distinctive gifts of women, the mutual gift of self in sexuality that precludes artificial contraception, the model of Christ and church as bridegroom and bride, and Mary as the model of womanhood and dis-cipleship...
...John Paul II has taught us a great deal, and the world is changed because of his presence...
...What, then, we asked, did it mean for women to be made in the image of God and baptized as full members of the church...
...I mention these incidents to remind us where feminist theology was in 1978, as Cardinal Wojtyla ascended to the papacy...
...During John Paul II's papacy, this language has receded, to be replaced by the language of bridegroom and bride...
...This proposal was met with puzzlement and concern by my new employers who reminded me that I had been hired to teach "systematic theology...
...I will leave it to others to reflect on such issues...
...In 1978, feminist theology was just beginning to discover its own identity...
...My concern is the impact of the papacy of John Paul II on women in general and on theologies of and by women in particular...
...One of John Paul II's main concerns has been to understand more fully the mystery that is womanhood...
...Sidney Callahan once recounted how, at a meeting in Rome, John Paul II had declared himself to be a feminist...
...As I consider John Paul II's twenty-five-year papacy, I am left with this juxtaposition of speaking and listening, of teaching and learning, a conversation that has not always been mutual...
...John Paul's insistence on the goodness and integrity of the body and sexuality is a welcome and needed voice to counter those forces that see our bodies as merely instrumental...
...One of my strongest memories of John Paul II's papacy comes from his first visit to the United States...
...Mary, always obedient, is the model for humanity...
...Yet this is precisely what feminism-at least the feminism that characterizes the work and writings of women activists and academics over the last thirty years- is not...
...Huge and adoring crowds greeted him in every city he visited...
...Because of my own interest in issues relating to women, embodiment, and sexuality, I have read much of John Paul II's work on these and other issues...
...This idea suggested that only men could fully image Christ since Christ was a male...
...Yet his message is not one that I can wholeheartedly accept...
...When I asked Anne Carr, one of my dissertation readers, what to say in response, she wisely counseled me to say simply that this would be a course in systematic theology, looking at God, Christ, the person, sin, grace, church, etc., from the perspective of women...
...He too had an interest in the same issues that concerned feminists-marriage, family, sexuality, the body-as well as the consequences of unfettered capitalism and the evils of socialism...
...Feminists reject the idea that there is a "feminine" identity that women are "given" by virtue of their being born female...
...While we have some profound disagreements, his work cannot be ignored...
...When I began teaching in 19801 was given the opportunity to offer a course in "whatever I wanted" (along with two other set introductory-level courses), so I decided to put my newfound interest in feminist theology to work by teaching a course in "Women and Religion...
...The brave students who signed up for the course expected to learn more about the Blessed Mother, St...
...Yet not all feminists agree on what women's identity is, nor can they agree on what to call the movements for the advancement of women...
...He too put his ideas in writing...
...In 19781 did not consider doing a dissertation on feminist theology, and only as I finished the dissertation four years later did I realize that my work on the relationship between aesthetic and religious revelation had some feminist theological implications...
Vol. 130 • October 2003 • No. 17
