Vatican push for women brooks shaky start

In this March 4, 2013 file photo Italian Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi waves to reporters as he arrives for a meeting, at the Vatican. A new Vatican initiative to actually listen to women hit a sour note before it even got off the ground when an Internet promotional video featuring a sexy blonde was so ridiculed that it was quickly taken down. But the initiative is going ahead, and an inaugural meeting this week will study women's issues in ways that are utterly new for the Holy See. The latest initiative comes courtesy of Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, an academic who quotes Nietzsche as easily as Amy Winehouse and has no fear of courting controversy as he raises the Vatican profile in sport, art and even atheist circles at the helm of the Vatican's culture ministry.
In this March 4, 2013 file photo Italian Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi waves to reporters as he arrives for a meeting, at the Vatican. A new Vatican initiative to actually listen to women hit a sour note before it even got off the ground when an Internet promotional video featuring a sexy blonde was so ridiculed that it was quickly taken down. But the initiative is going ahead, and an inaugural meeting this week will study women's issues in ways that are utterly new for the Holy See. The latest initiative comes courtesy of Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, an academic who quotes Nietzsche as easily as Amy Winehouse and has no fear of courting controversy as he raises the Vatican profile in sport, art and even atheist circles at the helm of the Vatican's culture ministry.

A new Vatican outreach initiative to listen to women hit a sour note before it even got off the ground: The sexy blonde in its Internet promo video came under such ridicule that it was quickly taken down.

But the program is going ahead, and an inaugural meeting this week will study women's issues in ways that are new for the Holy See.

No, there is no talk of ordaining women priests.

But the working paper for the Pontifical Council of Culture's plenary assembly on "Women's Cultures: Equality and Difference" speaks about opening the church's doors to women so they can offer their skills "in full collaboration and integration" with men.

It denounces plastic surgery as a form of "aggression" against the female body "like a burqa made of flesh." And it acknowledges that the church has for centuries offered women "ideological and ancestral left-overs."

This is difficult territory for the all-male Catholic Church hierarchy, as even Pope Francis has faced criticism for being a bit tone deaf as far as women are concerned.

The pontiff has sincerely praised the "feminine genius." But he has also elicited cringes, as when he recently welcomed female members of the church's most prestigious theological commission as "strawberries on the cake."

Few people doubt the seriousness of Francis' pledge to appoint women to key Vatican decision-making jobs once his bureaucratic change is complete. Nor do they question his sincerity when he says: "Women can ask questions that we men just don't get."

But, as Vatican commentator David Gibson recently pointed out, Francis can also sound like the 78-year-old Argentine churchman that he is -- "using analogies that sound alternately condescending and impolitic, even if well-intentioned."

The Vatican has made progress in recent years, appointing laywomen to some Vatican offices and giving women's issues as a whole more ink with the monthly women's insert of the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano.

But many would argue that much remains to be done when the recently ousted Vatican high court judge, Cardinal Raymond Burke, complains that the church has been "assaulted" by radical feminism and that the shortage of priests is due to an overly "feminized" church.

The latest initiative comes courtesy of Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, an academic who quotes Nietzsche and Amy Winehouse with equal ease as he raises the Vatican profile in sport, art and even atheist circles at the helm of the Vatican's culture ministry.

Ravasi's first major foray into women's issues, however, was criticized -- at least in the English-speaking world.

Just before Christmas, his office launched the #lifeofwomen crowd-sourcing initiative to promote the Wednesday-Saturday plenary meeting and invite women around the globe to send in a 60-second video of their lives for possible inclusion in a montage to be screened at the "big meeting of cardinals and bishops."

In the video, Italian actress Nancy Brilli asked her viewers how often they ask themselves "Who are you? What do you do? What do you think about yourself as a woman?"

The criticism was swift and harsh.

"What were they thinking at the Vatican?" wrote Phyllis Zagano of Hofstra University in the liberal National Catholic Reporter. "Aside from the obvious -- sexy sell has long gone by the boards in developed nations and is totally unacceptable in predominantly Muslim countries -- the fact of the matter is that highlighting a stereotypical spokeswoman is not the way to ask for women's input."

Critics noted that the women the Vatican might most want to hear from might not have a smartphone to send in a clip.

The English version of Brilli's promo was yanked, though the Italian one remains on the ministry's website.

In the end, some 250 videos were sent in. A good number came from activists advocating for women's ordination.

Consuela Corradi, a sociologist at Rome's Catholic LUMSA university, was one of 15 women who advised Ravasi on the initiative. She complained that criticism of the video was unfair.

"If we had chosen an ugly woman, would that have changed the message? I don't think so," she said. She said the women consultants were entirely responsible for penning the working document.

Often such working drafts become the basis for a final document that is adopted by the full membership of a Vatican office at the end of a plenary meeting. Ravasi, though, hasn't said what he'll do with it.

A Section on 02/01/2015

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