DR WILBERT GOBBO, WOMEN DOING THEOLOGY
Wilbert GOBBO
Sign up for access to the world's latest research
Abstract
This ecclesiastical discourse on women became a pillar to sustain and strengthen the patriarchal social order of the West, and even today can be traced in the collective imagination of femininity. It is true that Christianity did not invent patriarchy, but it is also that Christian theologies have contributed to nurturing and strengthening it for centuries. Why? Perhaps because the Church itself adopted the order in its internal structure, although Jesus called women and men to a community of equal disciples. If we review the history of Christianity is that very early limited the participation of women in apostolic preaching, in ministries, in education and theology, they ran until the exclusion of these areas. Thus, women and theological creation became incompatible and contradictory realities. To justify these restrictions on women, the Church used for centuries a theological anthropology as a "theology of women" which remains, in many respects, still in force in their official teaching. Generally gives the same spiritual dignity and the same deep vocation to man and woman, but are given a fundamentally different essence to each, man or woman. This essentialization of difference generates different charisms and the tasks of the woman must "make appear this hidden life with Christ in God, which is the essence of our religion" in the words of Father Henry, while the man "he governs , can be a priest, teaches…" The distribution of gifts and tasks, according to sex, women locked up in the private sphere, whether at home or in monastic closure, and excluded her, by divine decision, participation in the areas of intellectual production, decision-making and power in the Church. 2.1.3.1 The conceptual and social framework of the birth of Christian feminist theology From a historical perspective, the conceptual and social frame of reference of contemporary feminist theology consists of four traditions and one theologico-ecclesial event: a) the discourse and political ideals of the Enlightenment; b) Feminist critique and the reconstruction of gender paradigms; c) Liberation theology; d) The ecumenical movement; and e) The Second Vatican Council.
