c. 2004 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ Asserting an inherent difference between the sexes, the Vatican on Saturday restated its ban on the ordination of women and attacked feminist attempts to minimize biological differences between men and women.

“From the moment of their creation, man and women are distinct, and will remain so for all eternity,” the new Vatican document said. It said this should be seen not “as a source of discord to be overcome by denial or eradication, but rather as the possibility for collaboration, to be cultivated with mutual respect for their difference.”

In the 37-page letter, “On Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World,” the Vatican urged women to model their role on the Virgin Mary’s virtues of “listening, welcoming, humility, faithfulness, praise and waiting.”

The letter said women “play a role of maximum importance in the church’s life” because they live the traits of Christ’s mother “with particular intensity and naturalness.”

“In this perspective one understands how the reservation of priestly ordination solely to men does not hamper in any way women’s access to the heart of Christian life,” it said.

The letter, written by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and personally approved by Pope John Paul II, has been sent to bishops throughout the world.

Although it did not mark a shift in the Vatican’s view of the role of women, the document’s emphasis on biological and psychological differences between men and women appeared aimed primarily at stemming the drive by homosexual and lesbian couples in the United States and Europe for the full rights of marriage.

It warned, for example, against an equality that makes “homosexuality and heterosexuality virtually equivalent in a new model of polymorphous sexuality.”

Ratzinger, the Vatican’s highest authority on doctrine and morals, said he intended the letter to serve “as a staring point for further examination in the church as well as an impetus for dialogue with all men and women of good will” on developing “ever more authentic relationships.”

But the prelate made clear that any discussion must start from a recognition of “the difference and reciprocity” of the sexes rooted in “the biblical vision of the human person.” Sexuality, he said, “cannot be reduced to a pure and insignificant biological fact” but is a “fundamental component of personality.”

“The obscuring of the difference or duality of the sexes has enormous consequences on a variety of levels,” Ratzinger said. “This theory of the human person, intended to promote prospects for equality of women through liberation from biological determinism, has in reality inspired ideologies which, for example, call into question the family in its natural two-parent structure of mother and father and make homosexuality and heterosexuality virtually equivalent in a new model of polymorphous sexuality.”

Ratzinger also attacked feminists who believe that “women, in order to be themselves, must make themselves the adversaries of men. Faced with the abuse of power, the answer for women is to seek power.”

“Every outlook which presents itself as a conflict between the sexes is only an illusion and a danger,” he said. “It would end in segregation and competition between men and women and would promote a solipsism nourished by a false concept of freedom.”

While women have an “irreplaceable role” in the family and “in all aspects of family and social life involving human relationships and caring for others,” their perspective is also needed in the wider world, he said.

“Women should be present in the world of work and in the organization of society,” Ratzinger said. “Women should have access to positions of responsibility which allow them to inspire the policies of nations and to promote innovative solutions to economic and social problems.”

The prelate called on society to value women who devote themselves to their families and to provide an “appropriate work-schedule” so that those who seek careers do “not have to choose between relinquishing their family life or enduring continual stress.”

“The witness of women’s lives must be received with respect and appreciation as revealing those values without which humanity would be closed in self-sufficiency, dreams of power and the drama of violence,” Ratzinger said. “Women too, for their part, need to follow the path of conversion and recognize the unique values and great capacity for loving others which their femininity bears.”

DEA/LF END POLK