The 2007 UNICEF report on the empowerment of women drew criticism from the Cardinal Van Thuan International Observatory (logo alongside) for being too ambiguous regarding gender roles.The UN report, entitled "Women and Children: The Double Dividend of Gender Equality," argues that the when women are given more opportunities to succeed, children will prosper.
Bernadette Corteses, in an article posted last week on the observatory's Web site, said that although the social doctrine of the Catholic Church would agree with UNICEF's goal of "promoting equality and empowering women in the family," the report goes too far when it makes a distinction between sex and gender.
The UNICEF report makes this distinction by acknowledging that men and women are physically different, but states that the behavior patterns of men and women, what they refer to as gender roles, are merely cultural constructions.
Biologically, says the report, it is undeniable that "females have two X chromosomes and males have one X and one Y chromosome." "Gender roles," however, "are not inborn, but rather learned."
Corteses wrote that the Church believes empowering women "in work and in politics is very important because it produces a double dividend: Fulfilling the rights of women and going a long way towards realizing those of children as well."
She explained, however, that when a distinction is made between sex and gender, dangerous ambiguities enter into society and an understanding of marriage. Separating gender from sex, continued Corteses, opens the door "for a purely historical, relative, artificial vision of being male and female, which has a negative impact on children themselves."
Cortese continues that according to Pope John Paul II's encyclical "Centesimus Annus," children have the right "to a human ecology whose fundamental structure is the family founded on marriage."
"To respect the sexual humanity of man means 'to respect the natural and moral structure with which he has been endowed,'" Cortese explains, quoting the encyclical. This cannot happen when sex and gender are viewed as distinct realities.
Cortese added: "The anthropological vision of UNICEF is undoubtedly deficient."
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Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.
The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Sotto Voce