Conclusion

Woman in Christian Tradition
by George H.Tavard, University of Notre Dame Press, 1973, pp. 226-229.
Republished on our website with the necessary permissions

In the course of this volume, I have abstained from venturing outside a strictly theological point of view. I would not claim, however, to have reached the anthropology of the last two chapters without the help of philosophical reflection, and so by way of conclusion I will indicate briefly which contemporary nontheological trends I find particularly congenial to my way of thinking.

Let us begin with the person who is undoubtedly the universal father of contemporary thought, Karl Marx.

In the writings of the younger Marx one major point about woman deserves to be remembered. This is the idea that the primary test of man's relationship to nature (understanding by this term the material elements of his surroundings and the other human beings who together with him constitute the human species), and therefore of man's relationship to himself as part of nature, is no other than his relationship to woman:

In the relationship to woman as the prey and the handmaid of communal lust, is expressed the infinite degradation in which man exists for himself; for the secret of this relationship finds its unequivocal, incontestable, open and revealed expression in the relation of man to woman and in the way in which the direct and natural species relationship is conceived. The immediate, natural and necessary relation of human being to human being is also the relation of man to woman... .(1)

Marx's starting point itself remains excessively masculine. For although he refers to man's relation to woman, he omits the correlative importance of woman's relationship to man in order to test her own place in relation to nature, to mankind, and to herself. Once this has been corrected, however, the fact remains that a human being's relationship to persons of the other sex provides a criterion of his relationship to himself, to his own sex, and to mankind as a whole. Thus, one's concept of feminity holds the key both to personal behavior and to theoretical anthropology, whether this is conceived as descriptive of existing behavior or as normative of moral attitudes and orientations.(2)

More recent philosophical writings about woman have highlighted an element of major importance. Mme Yvonne Pellé-Douel, starting her study from phenomenological considerations, insists on the difference between "nature" and "culture."(3) Nature is the datum with which man starts and is confronted. Culture is the human superstructure built upon the basis of nature. Once this distinction has been understood, it is obvious that nature in the form of a natural law cannot be considered a normative limit to human activity and behavior, however much it may constitute a de facto limit in the actual situation of a given man. Like the wider problem of anthropology, the problem of womanhood must be raised at the two levels of nature and of culture. Womanhood is a datum of nature; and its natural function is sufficiently described anatomically and observed physiologically. As a cultural development, however, womanhood can only be what mankind makes it to be. This in turn can be looked at from a descriptive standpoint, as is commonly done by ethnologists and sociologists, who observe the data of the diverse human civilizations, or from a normative angle which attempts to determine what womanhood ought to become in the ongoing process of culture. On account of its possibilities as normative reflection, a theology of womanhood, or a theological anthropology, would be of interest even to unbelieving philosophers, Insofar as these desire to record the achievements that culture has added and is able to add to nature.

Modern psychology offers us an element of major importance, namely Carl Jung's typology of animus and anima. As analyzed in Two Essays in Analytical Psychology,(4) anima is the unconscious aspect of man's soul, in which he compensates for his one-sided masculine image and behavior with hidden, but real, feminine features. Reversely, animus is woman's unconscious male counterweight to her own femininity. Animus typifies the masculine and roughly corresponds to the conventional male figure of a given society, whereas anima typifies the feminine and roughly fits the conventional image of woman in society. It is of paramount importance that, whereas animus and anima characterize respectively male and female personality, each nurses its reverse and counterpart in its unconscious depths. Thus a man's concept of woman unknowingly corresponds to his own unconscious, while a woman's concept of man corresponds likewise to her own unconscious. This is to say a concrete human being is exclusively neither male nor female. He is constituted by a more or less unstable mixture of the two principles. Virile elements are active in the psyche of woman, as feminine elements reside in man. To an extent that can hardly be exaggerated, human balance rests in the conscious integration of animus by woman and of anima by man, an incorporation which is often facilitated by marriage, when the person selected fits the interior image of the other sex present and active in one's soul.

In the light of this, one may well hold, with Edith Stein, J. J. Buytendijk, Michael Müller, and many others, that masculinity and femininity are not aspects of humanity, but rather ways of being human.(5) Each is a complete way and, perfect in itself, conveys an adequate experience of being human. Yet each is never by itself. For it implies a relationship to, and a contrasted share in, the other way. The way of being human of which, according to the predominance of the characteristics of one sex, one is not usually aware is confined to the unconscious, where it is nonetheless active. Accordingly, the two ways are not exclusive. The ideal human being does not choose one way over against the other. He rather lives one way at the primary level; and he shares the other, thus living it at a secondary level.

This psychological approach shows a certain convergence with both the existentialist reflection of Simone de Beauvoir and the anthropology of other authors working in the perspective of structuralism.(6) In all these schools of thought, no typology of womanhood determines woman's being. Whatever typology of the yin and the yang may be discovered in human experience illustrates aspects of all human beings, who are all male and female in a certain sense and to a certain degree. The existentialist doctrine that man and woman are what they make themselves to become is correct enough as an analysis of fact, though singularly unhelpful as a norm of conduct. For it is not enough to be free; one should also know what to do with freedom. Simone de Beauvoir's identification of the man-woman relation with the master-slave relation results from an unacceptable oversimplification of the facts.

On the contrary, I find a great deal in common between the conclusions to which the present theological investigation leads me and the reflection of Abel Jeannière. Here, all determinism as to what woman is or ought to be has been abandoned. Yet we are not left in existential darkness. It is in her relationship to man that woman discovers herself as woman; and she does not exist as woman except in that relationship. Likewise, man does not exist as man except as related to woman. Womanhood and manhood jointly point up the relational structure of mankind. Each person is fully a human being in this relationship. Whereas the fundamental relationship of master and slave (with its concrete forms: rich and poor, capitalist and worker, governor and governed) is disjunctive; that of man and woman is unitive. This analysis does not lead directly to a description of womanhood; yet it places the problem of womanhood in the context of a sexual anthropology.

Finally, although theology should not attempt to be sociology, it cannot ignore the situation in which woman lives in the contemporary world. For this reason many assumptions made by past theologians should not be discarded.

The Fathers of the Church could not foresee what far-reaching changes the evolution of society would entail in the situation of man and woman and what requirements would ensue for the proper location of a theological anthropology. Likewise, the tenets of ancient and medieval science and psychology should no longer dominate a theology of womanhood, even when these conclusions or some of them were shared by Thomas Aquinas, have been embodied in canon law and in sacramental theology, and still largely dictate or inspire the general attitude of the Church's magisterium toward woman and her function in the Christian community. The conquests of the feminist movement cannot be questioned. Woman is politically and socially equal to man; she enjoys the same civic and legal rights; all careers are, in principle, opened to her. It is up to woman herself—and by this I mean, not to woman as an abstract idea, but to each woman—to make her choice among the opportunities that are available and to orient her life and career in her own way. Discriminations that continue to divide men and women in politics, business, and social life must eventually go; and the sooner the better. The theological question does not lie at that level.

The theological problem consists in reevaluating for today and tomorrow the models of womanhood that have been proposed in the Church. Although we cannot be satisfied with the solutions of yesterday, we will still find in Christ himself, in whom "all the jewels of wisdom and knowledge are hidden" (Colossians, 2:3), the principles of Christian anthropology. The proclamation of Christian freedom is as old as the Gospel.

Notes

1. Karl Marx, Economic and Political Manuscripts, 1844, in Erich Fromm, Marx’s Concept of Man (New York, 1961), p. 126. The great predecessor and adversary of Marx, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865) held a very different view of woman: “half-way between man and monkey” (quoted in Abel Jeanniere, Anthropologie sexuelle [Paris, 1969], p. 26); “If you wish to marry, remember that the first condition for a man is to dominate his wife and to be the master” (quoted in Yvonne Pellé-Douel, Etre femme [Paris, 1967], p. 241, n. 8).

2. The Marxist concept of the family has not in fact followed the insights of the younger Marx. See Friedrich Engels, Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigentums, und des Staates (1884); August Bebel, Die Frau und der Sozialismus (1883). For a full study of the nineteenth century philosophy on woman, one would have to consider the brief but significant remarks of Hegel, Die Philosophie des Geistes, nos. 518-534 (Hegel’s Werke, VII/2, pp. 393-403); Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechtes, nos. 158-181 (ibid., VIII, pp.

3. Yvonne Pellé-Douel, Etre femme, with bibliography pp. 261-267.

4. Collected Works of C. G. Jung, VII (London, 1953).

5. Edith Stein, Frauenbildung und Frauenberufe (Munich, 1956); J. J. Buytendijk, La Femme (Paris, 1954); Michael Müller, Grundlagen der katho-lischen Sexualethik (Regensburg, 1968); Elizabeth Gössmann, Die Frau und ihr Auftrag (Freiburg, 1961); Mann und Frau in Familie und Oeffentlichkeit (Munich, 1964); Michael Schmaus and E. Gössmann, Die Frau im Aufbruch der Kirche (Munich, 1964); Françoise Danniel and B. Olivier, La Gloire de l’homme, c’est la femme (Paris, 1964); “Conception chretienne de la femme,” Lumière et Vie, no. 43, 1959. I have been unable to find P. Idigoras, La Femme dans l’ordre sacré (Lima, Peru, 1963).

6. Simone de Beauvoir, Le Deuxieme Sexe, 2 vols. (Paris, 1949). See also Claude Levy-Strauss, Les Structures élèmentaires de la parenté (Paris, 1967); Marcel Mauss, Sociologie et anthropologie (Paris, 1950); Abel Jeannière, Anthropologie sexuelle (Paris, 1969).

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