The Vatican acts...

I have been remiss in not acknowledging the Pontifical Council on Culture’s change in artwork for its outline document on women’s culture.  Without fanfare, explanation or apology, the council switched the cover art a few weeks ago.   We may never know what swayed the seemingly recalcitrant Pontifical Council leader, Cardinal Ravasi…  Was it the uber-orthodoxy’s concerns about female nudity or those expressed about female bondage conveyed by Man Ray’s “Venus Restored,” their original cover art choice, that tipped the scales?

I waited to write about this because I’m still uncertain if the new artwork is an improvement or not.  Instead of a nude, headless woman’s torso in ropes, the report cover now sports Petrus Christus’ 15^th century painting, “Our Lady of the Dry Tree.”  Yes, it is now the Virgin Mary…the clergy’s default, prevalent, unrealistic image of women.  Instead of celebrating the councils’ action, I shook my head and sighed at the predictability: women were first portrayed as naked “T & A” and then as the Virgin Mary.

Many if not most clergy imprison themselves to seeing women as either a virgin or a whore with no middle ground in how they identify women.  Therefore, I’m not surprised that their mental limitation manifested itself in their art choices.  Should we call it a “win” that they didn’t leap to the Marian image first?

However, their mental limitations also manifested themselves via their writings.  The council’s working document speaks about the body as a key factor in one’s identity.  It continues by describing feminine identity thusly: “So the feminine identity is the point of convergence of daily fragility, of vulnerability, mutability and multiplicity between emotive interior life and exterior physicality.”

Putting this in everyday language, the council believes that feminine identity is a combination of being fragile (on a daily basis), being vulnerable, being changeable, and being varied … all intermingled between internal emotions and external physical appearance.  I’m not sure if using less academic language helps in the statement’s understandability.  But it perhaps helps one determine if the statement reflects a convergence of the clergy’s daily misogyny, pseudo-chivalry, immutability, and hegemony harbored in their interior thoughts and manifested in their exterior actions more than it describes feminine identity.

Let’s start with “daily fragility.”  What exactly is that?  The definition of “fragile” is “easily destroyed; not strong or sturdy; vulnerable.”  I don’t know what women the council members interact with, but regardless of poverty or wealth, sickness or health, most women I know possess and exhibit tremendous strength and grit.  To portray women as egg-shell thin porcelain dolls constantly on the brink of being smashed to smithereens…every single day…perhaps projects how the council members wish women were but does not reflect who they actually are.  Aha…now we’re getting somewhere with regards to women’s identity.  It’s not what council members desire it to be and they can’t unfetter themselves from being enslaved to their own ideas long enough to confront truth.

“Vulnerable” is a synonym for “fragile” so I have to deduct points for redundancy, repetition and saying the same thing more than once.

Not sure where the council was going with the “mutability” angle.  Yes women change over time…as do men…but it’s not like women are the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or anything.  Oh, that’s right; we couldn’t be because the TMNT are kick-ass crime-fighters not dainty little teacups that need to be packed in bubble-wrap. 

Maybe the council was thinking more “go-go Gadget” kind of mutability but alas he’s a guy so that’s doubtful.  From the report the only noteworthy physical change for women is plastic surgery…not puberty, not menstruation, not menopause, not pregnancy.  These are perennial clergy favorites so they really caught me off guard with the plastic surgery thing.

Tip of the hat on “multiplicity.”  However, I’d appreciate if the Catholic hierarchy (and its cheerleaders) would stop trying to shoe-horn all women into the same mould.  That's kind of anti-multiplicity.  Other than including the word “multiplicity” this document did little to break from centuries old stereotypes that hinder the variance implied by “multiplicity.”

Here’s the thing, and granted I’m a woman and thus ineligible to be a member of this august group of men pontificating about women.  Nonetheless, I’m very capable of telling you about my identity.  Why?  Because the bodily component that most influences my identity is not my uterus, not my breasts, not my hair, not my face. It is my brain…you know that biological entity that you completely did not mention in your section about women’s biology.

Newsflash: the average human female uterus is about 102 cubic centimeters and weighs about 200 grams (about .44 ounces) while the average human female brain is about 1130 cubic centimeters and weighs about 1.5 kg (about 3.3 lbs).  I’m trying to figure out why you think ½ pound of flesh should influence my identity more than something in my body that is 7.5 times larger.

So, no, my identity is not my naked torso; It’s not the inner organs housed by my naked torso; it’s not me scrambling to be the Virgin Mary; it's not me sitting in a dry tree; it’s not a frail frightened little bunny; it’s not even that of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, Rafael of TMNT fame, or Inspector Gadget.  My identity is quite simply this.  I am a child of God, endowed with many gifts and a functioning brain, who walks with God, and walks as God not the hierarchy sees fit.  I am equal to – no better or worse than – any other child of God and my possibilities should not be limited by humans.  The fact that the church hierarchy limits or tries to limit my possibilities is something for it to address within its ranks.  And as long as the hierarchy continues to limit women’s possibilities, I am called to assert my non-fragile self upon their hegemonic praxes to reject what is insupportable within Christianity.  That is my identity and you are welcome to include it as an addendum to your little report.

The Vatican responds...

Several women complained to the Vatican’s Pontifical Council on Culture about using the sculpture “Venus Restored” (see previous blog article for a picture) as cover artwork for its working document on women’s culture.  One of my friends received the following response today signed by Cardinal Ravasi, the Council’s head.

I have received your objection to the use of “Venus Restored” by the artist Man Ray on the Pontifical Council for Culture’s website to illustrate the working document of the Plenary Assembly on “Women’s Cultures: equality and difference”.   While registering your complaint, we have chosen not to remove the image, as we believe it speaks clearly for one of the central points of our document: many women, alas, are still struggling for freedom (bound with rope), their voices and intellect often unheard (headless), their actions unappreciated (limbless).
Gianfranco Ravasi

First, I appreciate that Cardinal Ravasi at least responded to my friend, though he has not yet responded to my complaint.  But let’s look at his response for a moment.

He defends using the artwork saying it speaks clearly to the issue of women’s voices and intellect often being unheard…  kind of like the intelligent women’s voices being ignored by him on this very topic...

In two simple sentences Cardinal Ravasi encapsulates the hierarchy’s historical role in binding women, ignoring their voices and under-appreciating them.  We objected but our voices were unappreciated and ignored in favor of being bound to his decision.  Richer irony there never was than him dismissing intelligent women’s concerns as unfounded at the same time he envisions himself as some sort of knight in shining armor advocating for greater appreciation of women's intellectual contributions.

My 50 years of experience and observations indicate the intellectual contributions from women the hierarchy most appreciates tend to be ones that echo, promote, adulate or enshrine the hierarchy's contributions.  Women's intellectual contributions that challenge the hierarchy's ideas and worldview usually suffer dehumanizing non-acknowledgement, dismissal, scorn, censure or are outright demonized.  Currently the hierarchy often ascribes the term "radical feminist" to women offering intellectual contributions differing from those of the hierarchy.  Unless women grab their pom-poms and perform perky cheers about the hierarchy's intellectual contributions, they stand little chance of being heard and even less chance of being appreciated. 

Cardinal, you have no women members on your council.  Why?  If the plight of unheard female voices troubles you, the council should be led by a woman and have a majority of women members.  The total absence of women members immediately nullifies the council’s and your personal credibility because you chose to continue the hierarchy's male hegemonic praxis of excluding women.

Rather than include women you make this strange comment that women are “directing the dance” which male council members will perform.   Cardinal, your response to intelligent women’s concerns punctuates that women are not directing any of your dance steps.  If we were, that statue would be gone and an apology would be posted.  But, no, you send what comes across as condescending patronizing statements instead, “There, there you ignorant woman…what do you know of your own plight?  Me and my fellow male celibate buddies know women’s plight much better than you do.”

Sir, many intelligent women are shouting at you, “THAT STATUE IS OFFENSIVE!  STOP USING IT!!”  Help me understand why you think your opinion should carry more weight than ours?  Please elaborate on your credentials as a woman and if you have none, then your opinion is secondary to ours.  Furthermore, if you insist that your opinion must prevail, then you have gag and rope firmly in your hand, twisting and tightening them around women. 

Yes, Cardinal Ravasi, we understand that this statue expresses demeaning treatment women endure now and have endured throughout history because, you see, we have experienced it often at the hands of the church's hierarchy, of which you are a high-ranking member.  Our dilemma as second class citizens has many roots in the male hegemony of the church's hierarchy that espouses in the church and endorses in society the marginalization of women. The lack of women members on your council exemplifies how at ease the hierarchy is with discriminatory and degrading practices. That's what makes the artwork so offensive.  Women have long suffered at the hands of the hierarchy the very injustices you say the artwork in question provocatively portrays.

The wounds the hierarchy inflicts and has inflicted upon women are too numerous and raw to endure abiding it, as a primary source of injustice, to use artwork that gut-wrenchingly captures the state to which such injustices reduce women.  Furthermore, the hierarchy’s lack of self-awareness as perpetrator of injustices against women and delusional self-portrayal as benefactor and defender of women adds to the artwork's absolute and infallible contextual offensiveness and inappropriateness.  It is time for admission, penitence, apologies and altered behaviors, not perpetuation of the hierarchy's sins by marginalizing women's voices on this topic.Your inability or unwillingness to hear women on this accentuates what progress we can expect to arise from any council about women led by you, does it not?

If a group of slaveowners held a conference about the culture of slaves and depicted slaves in chains with lash marks from the whip to promote their conference's proceedings, would you expect the slaves to appreciate the artwork?   Would you think it was contextually appropriate?