Some may perceive Mulieris Dignitatem as an ode to motherhood that, for the most part, leaves out those women who are not biologically mothers, but also not consecrated virgins—a camp which describes an increasing number of women, including myself. Though I have yet to marry and become a mother, and also have not made a promise of lifelong celibacy, I can say with confidence that the insights of Mulieris Dignitatem have made an essential contribution to my self-understanding as a woman in the modern world.
Through my teens and first post-college decade, I was a victim of much of the typical twenty-something angst over questions of personal identity, freedom, independence, fulfillment and self-worth. Before I encountered the work of Pope John Paul II as a young person in search of answers to these questions, I was lost. I was a practicing Catholic and I had faith that the Church must have these answers, but his writing was where I finally found them, and where I had many an “aha” moment about what it means to be a woman.
True to my sex, I was always particularly concerned with the very personal aspect of these issues, the personal experience of precious things like interior freedom and self-worth. I experienced Pope John Paul II’s approach to these problems in Mulieris Dignitatem as an exquisitely refined affirmation of the importance of my desires, and I found in it both a foundation and road map for braving the world as a young woman.
The pope addressed my several angsts in the following ways:
First, he used words like “self-realization.” He showed that he understood the way I was thinking and worrying about these things. “Being a person,” he wrote, “means striving towards self-realization (the Council text speaks of self-discovery), which can only be achieved ‘through a sincere gift of self.’”
Many years after first encountering this concept of self-discovery through self-gift, it seems to me elementary and obvious. But that encounter marked the beginning of hope in me—it concretized the yearning for personal fulfillment and connected the dots between it and self-gift. This was huge; popular culture drives a wedge between these two things which my twenty-two year old self had been unable to overcome. The pope turned that perceived divide on its head.
Second, in the context of self-realization through self-gift, the pope addressed the special entrustment of humankind to woman, clarifying for me what is specifically valuable about femininity. This is a theme which the Women’s Section for the Pontifical Council for Laity chose to focus on at their recent seminar in Rome, which coincided with the 25th anniversary of Mulieris Dignitatem. “Women are now present in every space of society, of social life, political life, economic life, and it’s great that it’s happening like that,” says Ana Cristina Villa Betancourt, head of the Council’s Women’s Section, “But what else can they give? What contribution can they make now that they are present (in these places) to help reverse this anthropological crisis of our times? Because, if it’s true that God entrusts the human being to the woman, she can do more. She can do something. And maybe, if she’s aware of (this) special gift … she can be more present and more incisive in intervening in different ways to change things for the better.”
What is uniquely feminine and, therefore, a unique contribution women can make to the world? The pope offers some provoking suggestions in Mulieris Dignitatem. He says that it is in woman’s nature to respond to love given, as the bride responds to the love of the bridegroom. If woman is to be an initiator of loving action in the world, then, it is critical that she rest in the love of Christ the Bridegroom before she can respond to the world’s needs.
This is how Jesus explodes the closed-in, insecure worlds of the women he meets. As the pope poignantly recounts, in the stories of the woman at the well and Mary Magdalene, Jesus brings these women to self-discovery precisely through seeking them out in love, so that their self-perception as beings in desperate need of the love of men is turned on its head. Instead, they discover the paradigm of Christ who seeks them first, making them loveable and able to love.
By her nature, woman has a special “in” on God’s life of love. “Christ speaks to women about the things of God,” writes the pope, “and they understand them; there is a true resonance of mind and heart, a response of faith. Jesus expresses appreciation and admiration for this distinctly ‘feminine’ response, as in the case of the Canaanite woman (cf. Mt 15:28). Sometimes he presents this lively faith, filled with love, as an example. He teaches, therefore, taking as his starting-point this feminine response of mind and heart” (15).
But if woman is unaware of her unique capacity, it will go to waste. “A woman is strong because of her awareness of this entrusting, strong because of the fact that God “entrusts the human being to her,” always and in every way, even in the situations of social discrimination in which she may find herself. This awareness and this fundamental vocation speak to women of the dignity which they receive from God himself, and this makes them ‘strong’ and strengthens their vocation” (30).
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So what is the “something more” that woman can give, as Ana Cristina Villa Betancourt asks? The answer seems to have something to do, as the pope suggests, not only with her special capacity to “tune in” to God’s love and receive it, but also with the awareness of this capacity. In the many areas of life in which women now serve, perhaps the “more” that they can do is to live with greater awareness of their special responsibility to bring truth and love to others with the sensitivity of the feminine heart.
In my own experience, the more I am able to live with this awareness, the more I am fulfilled. The enlightening words of Mulieris Dignitatem on these issues have been an immeasurable gift to me as a woman seeking to know her fundamental vocation.
Anna Krestyn is a freelance writer and Director of Religious Education at St. Lawrence the Martyr Catholic Church in Alexandria, VA. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in liberal arts from Thomas Aquinas College and worked as a publishing assistant at Catholic Answers in her native California before moving to northern Virginia to pursue pastoral work.
