What the Church teaches about women: entrusted with the human person

ICreated equal, and created woman

The teaching starts on the first page of Scripture, and it starts with equality.

St John Paul II drew the plain conclusion in his apostolic letter Mulieris Dignitatem (On the Dignity and Vocation of Women, 1988): "both man and woman are human beings to an equal degree, both are created in God's image" (MD 6). The Catechism teaches the same: God made man and woman fully equal as persons, and each has a dignity that no one gives and no one can take away, because it comes straight from God (CCC 369).

With equal dignity though in a different way. Both halves of that sentence matter. The Church will not let womanhood be treated as a lesser kind of humanity, and she will not let it be erased into sameness either. In John Paul II's words, the personal resources of femininity "are certainly no less than the resources of masculinity: they are merely different" (MD 10).

IIWhat sin broke, and what Christ restored

After the Fall, Genesis records that the woman is told of her husband: "he shall have dominion over thee" (Genesis 3:16, Douay). Mulieris Dignitatem reads that line as the wound, not the design: a break in the original unity of man and woman, in which "domination takes the place of 'being a sincere gift'" (MD 10). The same section is blunt about who is harmed: "whenever man is responsible for offending a woman's personal dignity and vocation, he acts contrary to his own personal dignity and his own vocation."

Then watch how Christ treats women in the Gospels. They travel with Him and support His mission from their own means:

At the Resurrection they go first. "The women are the first at the tomb. They are the first to find it empty" (MD 16). Mary Magdalen is sent to the Apostles with the news — "I have seen the Lord, and these things he said to me" (John 20:18, Douay) — and for this, John Paul II notes, she came to be called "the apostle of the Apostles" (MD 16).

IIIThe genius of women

The phrase you may have heard is the feminine genius. It comes from these documents, and it does not mean a talent for décor or a gentler tone of voice. In his 1995 Letter to Women, John Paul II located it first in the order of persons: "Perhaps more than men, women acknowledge the person, because they see persons with their hearts" (Letter to Women 12).

Mulieris Dignitatem goes deeper and names what may be the centre of the whole teaching:

He adds at once that God entrusts every human being to every other — but that this entrusting concerns women in a special way, "precisely by reason of their femininity" (MD 30). That is a charge, not a compliment. It is also why the same letter ends with thanksgiving: the Church "gives thanks for all the manifestations of the feminine 'genius'" and for "all the fruits of feminine holiness" (MD 31).

IVEvery vocation, not one

The Church does not speak to one kind of woman. When the Second Vatican Council closed on 8 December 1965, St Paul VI's message to women was addressed to "women of all states—girls, wives, mothers and widows, to you also, consecrated virgins and women living alone." Mulieris Dignitatem sets out two paths, motherhood and virginity for the Kingdom, and finds between them "a profound complementarity": in both, a woman is a bride who gives herself, and in both she is a mother, by the body or "according to the Spirit" (MD 21). Her dignity is not measured by which path is hers.

That is why the Church's gratitude in MD 31 runs through every state of life: mothers, sisters, wives, women consecrated to God, women who watch over the human persons in the family, women who work professionally, "'perfect' women and ... 'weak' women". No woman reading this falls outside it. (For more, see Spiritual motherhood in this library.)

VMary, the measure

Everything above meets in one woman. The Council teaches that Mary is a type of the Church "in the order of faith, charity and perfect union with Christ" (Lumen Gentium 63). John Paul II called her "the highest expression of the 'feminine genius'" and explained what her queenship means: she served, and "For her, 'to reign' is to serve! Her service is 'to reign'!" (Letter to Women 10).

This is the pattern the Church holds out to every woman: not power taken, but a self given, and a dignity no one can confer or remove because it comes from God. Her own song says it best.

VIWomen the Church calls teachers

The Church gives the title Doctor of the Church to saints whose teaching she commends to the whole Church. Four of them are women:

• St Teresa of Avila — proclaimed by St Paul VI on 27 September 1970.
• St Catherine of Siena — proclaimed by St Paul VI on 4 October 1970.
• St Thérèse of Lisieux — proclaimed by St John Paul II on 19 October 1997, for the "little way" which, in his words, "everyone can take, because everyone is called to holiness" (Divini Amoris Scientia).
• St Hildegard of Bingen — Benedictine abbess (1098–1179), proclaimed by Benedict XVI on 7 October 2012. In his apostolic letter he wrote that naming her a Doctor has "an extraordinary importance for women".

A Carmelite reformer, a lay Dominican who counselled popes, a young nun who died at twenty-four, and a twelfth-century abbess who preached in cathedral cities. None of them was given a smaller Gospel because she was a woman.

VIIWhere to begin

• Read Mulieris Dignitatem sections 29–31 slowly. They are short and they are addressed to you.
• Pray the Magnificat tonight: Mary's own words for what God has done in a woman who said yes.
• Begin the Thirty Days — a free month of short daily readings on these truths, with one practice and one prayer each day.