Spiritual Healing After Sexual Abuse - Dawn Eden interview by John Burger

 In CWR

Dawn Eden sees herself as a missionary. Herself a victim of sexual abuse as a child, abuse that was healed in part through her journey of faith, she now envisions bringing God's healing to other victims, particularly those who are underserved, such as prisoners. 

Eden, a Catholic convert who grew up Jewish, weaves her story of abuse with those of saints who suffered abuse of various kinds. In My Peace I Give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints, she offers advice on how victims can heal through learning some of those stories, through prayer, and through forgiveness. 

In an interview with Catholic World Report, the author of the 2006 best-seller The Thrill of the Chaste offers suggestions on how the Church can reach out more effectively to victims of abuse, whether that abuse took place in the Church or in the victim’s very own home. 

CWR: What led you to write this book?

Dawn Eden: I myself am a victim of childhood sexual abuse. For me, when I received the grace of faith in Christ at the age of 31, I was instantly healed of the depression and temptations to suicide that had dogged me since my teens and which I later learned were the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by the abuse. But what I discovered during my first years as a Christian, during which I was a Protestant, was that although I had experienced this dramatic healing from the worst aftereffects of the abuse, I still had other effects to contend with, including anxiety, flashbacks, and hyper-sensitivity. And my thought as a new Christian was that the fact that I had not yet received healing from these effects meant that I wasn’t fully surrendered, that I didn’t have enough faith. So I blamed myself for my own seeming failure to be living completely within the light of the risen Christ.

Five years after becoming a Christian I made the decision to become Catholic, and I was received into the Church in 2006, at the age of 37. Once I was a Catholic I knew there was nowhere else to go; I was home. And I also instinctively felt from what I understood of the Catholic faith that somehow the wounds I retained from the abuse, these effects had some kind of meaning in Christ, that they weren’t my fault. But I struggled to understand what meaning these wounds might have.

Two things happened in 2010 that led me to a new and deeper healing. The first was an experience I had on an Ignatian retreat, where for the first time I really began to see my own wounds in light of the wounds of Christ. And I realized, with Christ now being glorified and yet retaining his wounds, that if I united my own wounded heart to the wounded and glorified heart of Jesus, then somehow my wounds could become the crack that Christ’s light could get in. This was a revelation for me because all this time I’d been thinking that my wounds separated me from the love of Christ, that they were simply an obstacle. But this insight made me realize that in fact I could actually find healing in Christ not in spite of my wounds but through my wounds. My wounds could lead me to greater intimacy with God through realizing my dependence upon him for everything, and through personally participating in the victory over sin that Jesus won for me through his passion.

The second insight I received in 2010 was when I picked up a book called Modern Saints by Ann Ball, and that’s where I discovered the story of Blessed Laura Vicuña. Ann Ball describes Bl. Laura, as many people do, as another Maria Goretti. Certainly her story is very similar in that she died while still quite young, in the early 20th century. And she died following being brutalized by a man who sought to sexually victimize her. But in reading Bl. Laura’s story, I noticed a difference in that while Maria was brought up in a devout Catholic home so that the abuse she suffered was truly an intrusion upon her sheltered life, Bl. Laura lived with an abuser for three years. She was abused by her mother’s lover.

And this was very similar to my own experiences as a child. After my mother’s divorce, I was raised by my mother; I was made to live in what was truly a sexually porous environment where I was not protected from adult nudity, from pornography, from graphic sex talk, and where I too was molested by one of my mother’s boyfriends.

What’s more, whereas Maria Goretti, on her deathbed, heroically forgave her abuser, Laura did something additional that was particularly meaningful for me because besides forgiving her abuser, she forgave her mother, who enabled the abuse. She actually offered her life for her mother’s conversion. When I read that, I broke down crying because I realized how relevant it was for me, as I was still needing to forgive my mother for not protecting me. Then I thought if Laura’s story was so healing for me, imagine how it would be for others. And I realized how relevant it would be for others because statistics show that if a child is living in a household where the father is not present and where there is a man in the household who is not the child’s father, that child is 33 times more likely to suffer sexual abuse than in a household where the father is present. So in that sense, Bl. Laura’s story was really modern, with modern relevance, and that was the direct inspiration for my wanting to write a book on healing from childhood sexual abuse through the lives of saints who have suffered such abuse. 

CWR: How can saints help a person overcome the effects of abuse?

Eden: I would say the most common toxic effect of childhood sexual abuse is the misplaced guilt that the child is likely to carry throughout life unless the victim makes a concrete and persevering effort to counter it. Children tend to blame themselves for the evil that others perpetrate upon them. In some ways this misplaced shame and guilt is a survival mechanism, because if the child is abused by a parent or guardian, or if a parent or guardian in some way is enabling the abuse by not protecting the child, then the child may still think, “As bad as my situation is, if this guardian goes away, I will have nobody to protect me.” So, subconsciously, the child thinks, “Therefore I can’t blame my parents or guardian; I have to just blame myself and say I must have wanted it.”

When the adult who has internalized this misplaced guilt learns there is a saint who suffered similar wounds and whom the Church now acknowledges to be in heaven, then the adult can begin to feel free of this guilt and realize “I couldn’t have been responsible for this abuse. This abuse could not have been my sin.” 

CWR: How did you choose which saints to focus on?

Eden: The first thing I did was look for saints who had suffered childhood sexual abuse, and in doing so I looked for saints whose stories were well documented. For that reason I left out St. Dymphna, although she is a very popular saint and I have met people who experienced healing through her intercession. But anyone who tries to find literature on St. Dymphna will discover that all we have are legends.

Now, legends don’t mean that this person didn’t live or wasn’t heroic. But what it does mean is that this person’s story was likely in some way embellished over time—to the point that we can’t say with certainty that these events happened in a particular way, or we can’t verify particular details.

I wanted, rather, for people reading these stories to know that these things really happened. And that’s important too because victims are often told by people who were around at the time of the abuse, “Oh that didn’t really happen. Nobody remembers it in that way.” So to be able to point to saints’ lives and say, “This thing happened to this saint,” and this was independently verified, it helps to validate victims’ own experiences.

Second of all, I looked for saints who had experienced any kind of trauma because most people who have suffered childhood sexual abuse will experience some effect of trauma. It’s important to note that not everyone who has suffered childhood sexual abuse will experience post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD is a constellation of symptoms, and only a minority will have that full-blown disorder. But if you meet anyone who has suffered childhood sexual abuse it is likely that he or she will have experienced at least one PTSD symptom, such as anxiety, depression, temptation to self-harm, flashbacks, hyper-sensitivity.

So saints who have suffered any kind of trauma often provide for us models of coping with the effects of the abuse. In this sense, even saints who didn’t suffer sexual abuse, such as Ignatius of Loyola or Thérèse of Lisieux, can yet teach us a great deal through their lives and spirituality. 

CWR: What do you hope this book will accomplish? How can it be used to help victims?

Eden: The voice that I use in the book is directly speaking to adults who were victimized in childhood, but the overall structure of the book is really designed to provide a model for priests and pastoral caregivers in walking with victims. We live in a “Band-Aid” culture, and what little outreach we have towards victims of abuse tends to be focused on bringing them instant healing. For example, we might have charismatic-type healing Masses or retreat weekends, which are designed to bring victims an infusion of the Holy Spirit that will just turn them around in one night or weekend. Now, I don’t mean, by singling these things out, to say we shouldn’t have such outreach at all. Any effort by Catholics to reach out to the wounded is better than nothing. What’s more, certainly, dramatic healings can happen, and I can vouch for that fact since, as I said, when I first received the grace of Christian faith, I was instantly healed of the temptation to self-harm. And that was huge for me. But after that instant healing there were still effects that remained in me, and without a solid understanding of what the Church teaches on redemptive suffering, the fact that I wasn’t instantly healed of some of my effects actually, unfortunately, led me to blame myself for the effects that remained in me.

And that’s the problem with the “Band-Aid” approach, when we rely too heavily on this idea that grace is going to immediately change the whole person.

What we need to do instead is remember what St. Thomas Aquinas says in the first question of his Summa Theologiae, that grace does not destroy nature. Grace perfects nature, and while we certainly should ask God for healing in faith, we should remember that God does not normally heal every aspect of any illness in a second, in an instant. God’s normal way of working is to plant seeds in us, which unfolds over time. So the priest or pastoral caregiver is to truly, through his or her ministry, participate in the unfolding of God’s grace in the victim’s heart, then this priest or pastoral caregiver needs to himself be patient with God’s grace and to help the victim recognize the incremental steps through which we become conscious of our identity as sons and daughters of God.

It’s those steps that I delineate in the book, and I use the examples of saints to help the victim progress and the pastoral caregiver to walk with the victim to enable God’s healing to unfold over time.

I’m very interested in speaking to prisoners and groups of people who are in recovery. I’ve made a personal consecration of my celibacy to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and I’m in the process of requesting to be called to a diocesan consecration. So my hope is that God is going to use me in a deeper way as a missionary of God’s healing to vulnerable and underserved populations. I have a small fund set up for transportation to prisons and other places where I might be able to do missionary talks. I’ve already spoken to prisoners in Philadelphia and to women convicted of prostitution who are in a rehabilitation program. 

CWR: What can the average Catholic do if he or she encounters someone struggling with a past marked by sexual abuse?

Eden: The first thing is to weep with those who weep. Normally, our first instinct is simply to solve the problem, to push the person to look beyond their pain. But it’s much more helpful to really be present for the person who is suffering, to acknowledge their pain, to affirm that what was done to that person was wrong.

Second, and very importantly, we should pray for that person. And third, when the person is ready, we can do what’s in our power to help that person find both a competent spiritual director who has experience with victims of abuse, and a therapist, preferably a Catholic therapist. In my book, I do recommend both therapy and spiritual direction for victims, and I emphasize the importance of finding a therapist who either is Catholic or at least respects one’s Catholic faith. 

CWR: You became a Catholic in 2006, at the height of the sexual abuse scandal. Was that a hurdle for you, in coming into a Church that was depicted in the media, at least, as full of abusive priests and enabling bishops?

Eden: It did at first make me suspicious of the Church, which is one of the reasons why I delayed entering, because I received Christian faith in 1999, and the scandal broke in 2002. I remember asking Catholics at the time of the scandal about how they could be part of a Church that had these evils within it, and I remember being surprised by the response of my Catholic friends, that they were just as furious about the abuse as anyone. From the way the news reported things, I had just assumed that all Catholics were like Bill Donohue [president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights], simply circling the wagons and assuming that every single accusation against a priest had to be a malicious lie invented by the media or people out to get money from the Church.

So, learning that Catholics themselves were grieving over the abuse itself—not just grieving that the abuse was exposed but that it had actually taken place—helped me become more open to entering the Church.

What really won me was the Church’s consistent witness for the dignity of human life, because abuse is a very soul-destroying experience. It’s a kind of murder. For someone to abuse another person—especially to abuse a child—the abuser has to, in his or her heart, really deny the humanity of this child and just look at the child as an object. So when I saw the Church’s love for human life at every stage, particularly the Church’s unceasing affirmation of the dignity of life in the womb, that was what made me realize that only the truth proclaimed by the Church was capable of protecting children from abuse. The fact that sinful, fallen human beings who are members of the Church yet disobey God’s law does not take away from the truth of the law as proclaimed by the Church. 

CWR: You said earlier that the structure of your new book is “designed to provide a model for priests and pastoral caregivers in walking with victims.” Do you think victims are able to trust priests in the Catholic Church to help them overcome sexual abuse, after such a barrage in the media following the Boston scandal in 2002?

Eden: The best answer I can give you is what a friend said to me recently about the experience of his mother, who left the Church as a teenager after being treated uncharitably by a priest, and returned as an adult. He said it takes just one bad priest to run someone out of the Church, but it takes just one good priest to bring someone back in. And I think that’s exactly right. But most of all, it takes prayer, from all the members of the Mystical Body, for the return of the lost sheep. 

CWR: What are your thoughts on how the Church has responded to the problem of abusive clergy and the cover-up that took place in various dioceses?

Eden: I think there are certain aspects of the response that are very good; for example, the emphasis that any and all abuse by a representative of the Church needs to be reported, not only to the Church but also to the proper authorities.

I think that also there are certain elements of the Dallas Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People that are very positive and needed, such as that a diocesan commission needs to investigate any and all claims of abuse.

At the same time I believe that so much more needs to be done. For one thing, recent cases such as occurred with Bishop [Robert] Finn [of Kansas City, Mo.] show that we need to follow what rules we have in place. This also came up with the recent case with the archbishop of Minneapolis-St. Paul [local media have reported failures by the archdiocese in dealing with clergy who sexually abused children]. We badly need to follow our own rules because the rules are only as good as the observance of them.

What little outreach we’ve had to victims needs to be dramatically improved. First of all, as was pointed out by a victim at the first Vatican conference on abuse, which was held in 2012, it’s very important that we offer spiritual help to victims. Right now, if someone contacts the victim assistance program of a diocese, the victim will be offered psychological help but very little, if any, spiritual help. If we’re not offering spiritual help, we’re not being Church because anyone who is a victim of evil needs to know that God did not will that evil for them, and that God loves them. And how much truer is this for someone who’s been abused by a representative of the Church. So much improvement needs to be done in the area of spiritual help.

Secondly, what little outreach we have to victims is mostly to victims of clergy abuse. It’s understandable that that should be our first priority, but it shouldn’t be our only priority. Here, Bill Donahue is right, in that while we should not at all minimize the grave evil of clergy abuse, it’s true that only a tiny percentage of child sexual abuse is committed by clergy or religious. About half of all childhood sexual abuse takes place in the child’s own home, and the rest of the abuse takes place usually in the private home of a neighbor or family friend or is committed by a teacher or someone else who has the opportunity to be in close proximity to the child, or by a peer.

So if we’re only reaching out to those people who have been victims of clergy abuse, we’re failing to bring the healing of Christ to a large number of people who need it.

Now the statistics on sexual abuse are very under-reported because of the misplaced guilt and shame associated with such abuse. They’re also under-reported because given the comprehensive sexual education that we now have, children are taught from an early age that it’s natural for them to act out sexually. So many people grow up being abused who don’t even mentally write what was done to them as abuse. So when you hear the statistics, which are still quite high—that one out of four women and one out of six adult men report having been sexually abused in childhood—you have to wonder if those numbers aren’t higher, which, I’m sure they are.

And second, those numbers only refer to what is referred to as contact sexual abuse. There are a far greater number of people who have been victimized in childhood by non-contact sexual abuse, such as exposure to pornography, intentional exposure to adult nudity or to graphic sex talk. These things all can have lasting toxic effects when perpetrated upon a child. Just think about some of the things children see on television, including all the sexual violence that you can see day or night on TV. We’re a culture that has grown up with deep wounds. If the Church is going to be Church, we have to come up with a vocabulary for affirming that people are wounded, and pointing them toward the healing that can only be found in Christ. 

CWR: Your first book dealt with chastity. Have you heard of ways in which it has helped young people lead chaste lives?

Eden: The response to The Thrill of the Chaste has been deeply gratifying for me. I still hear very often from people who have read it whose lives were positively affected by it. Perhaps the most beautiful experience of it was when a reader from Ireland invited me to her wedding. I went, and at the end of the speeches, when the bride was speaking, she said none of this would have been possible were it not for one woman here, who wrote this book, because she had been living away from her Catholic faith. Reading The Thrill of the Chaste brought her back to the practice of the faith, motivated her to become a speaker with an Irish-based group called Pure at Heart, which promotes chastity, and then it was through her chastity and pro-life activism that she met her husband, who is also a prominent supporter of pro-life causes in Ireland. It’s very rare for someone, within her own lifetime, to have the opportunity to see the ripple effects of the good things she has put into this world. So that for me was a special gift and grace. 

CWR: What do you think of the way or ways the Church is responding to our sometimes hyper-sexualized culture?

Eden: There’s a need for more artists and writers and media producers to create entertainment that reflects the Catholic world view. Certainly Barbara Nicolosi Harrington[founder of Act One, a training program for Christian screenwriters in Hollywood] is a leader in this regard, and I highly recommend the Internet sitcom Ordinary, which is a Catholic sitcom about the life of a new priest in a parish. It’s done not like those Hallmark Hall of Fame, syrupy shows but with the same kind of entertainment value as TV shows like The Office or Community but without the obscenities or gratuitous sex or violence of such shows.

But we need much more of this because people can really be converted through good books. I was converted through a novel, when a rock musician I was interviewing recommended the novel The Man Who Was Thursday, by G.K. Chesterton. So the more that we make a concerted effort to produce good art that is informed by our Catholic faith, the more we will find ourselves evangelizing the culture in important and needed ways. 

CWR: Let me ask you about your name, Dawn Eden. Is it a pen name?

Eden: My birth certificate says Dawn Eden Goldstein. I was born in 1968, the time of “flower power” (it was the same year as Humanae Vitae as well). My parents liked the sound of the name Dawn Eden. So with the name Dawn Eden as my first and middle name, as a teenager, I realized that it made a good pen name, and so I’ve been calling myself that ever since. 

CWR: When you became a Catholic, did you add another?

Eden: I took the Confirmation name Lucy, not only after the martyr, St. Lucy, but also after St. Lucy Filippini. I’d been really touched by the holiness of a Filippini sister I’d met who had co-written a biography of St. Lucy Filippini, Forever Yes, and I was inspired reading that biography. 

CWR: Besides writing books, what are you doing these days?

Eden: I’m currently a full-time graduate student in theology at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington. I’m finishing up a Sacred Theology Licentiate, which is a pre-requisite that I need to do a Sacred Theology Doctorate in Rome. My hope is to be a professor at a Catholic college. I’m doing my STL on St. Thomas Aquinas and John Paul II on redemptive suffering and looking at how the suffering that we undergo in this life, when united to Jesus’ passion, helps to dispose us for the life of the resurrection. 

CWR: In the book, you describe growing up in a Jewish family where you had heard arguments against belief in Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah. Later you became a Christian and still later, a Catholic. What was it that convinced you that the arguments you had heard growing up were not true?

Eden: I was basically Evangelical. I became Christian through a local community church that was Adventist. I asked the pastor if I could just get a generic baptism—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—and not have to take the Adventist vows.

I really have to thank my mother for sowing the seeds of my conversion. Although my walk with my mother has included the need to forgive her (I should add, by the way, that my mother does not remember all the things that I remember, but those things that she remembers she deeply regrets), by some mystery, it’s also through my mother that I became disposed to faith in Christ—through my mother’s witness—because when I was a teenager and an agnostic it was right at the time that I began to lose my Jewish faith that my mother had a conversion and entered the Catholic Church. She ended up not identifying as Catholic for long, but she retained faith in Christ. Hearing her speak about Jesus as the fulfillment of the promises made to the Jews helped me to overcome obstacles I might have.

Also I really saw that Christian faith effected a transformation in my mother so that she found a certain kind of ground to stand on that she hadn’t had before. She had really been searching all her life and had gone through all of these different New Age beliefs and experimented with different faith traditions before finding the truth of Christ and really accepting Jesus as the Messiah who was promised.

So just seeing the change that faith worked in her made me desire to have that same change in me, even though it took 15 years after my mother’s conversion before I could be fully open to that grace of conversion myself. 

CWR: Are there aspects of your Judaism that survive in your life as a Christian?

Eden: When I first became a Christian I was drawn to the branch of Protestantism that calls itself Messianic Judaism. In this area I was very influenced by my mother, who herself had come to identify as a messianic Jew. Even as a new Catholic I was initially sympathetic to people who were arguing that we needed more Jewish-style prayers in Catholic devotional life and that sort of thing.

Since becoming a Catholic, I’ve learned that there is not just one rite of the liturgy; we have many rites that have been approved, not just the Roman Rite but other rites which are more ancient—the Eastern rites. And what I’ve come to believe is that, with regard to the Catholic prayer life as it has organically developed through the different rites, if you rightly understand what it is that we pray, it is the complete fulfillment of Jewish prayer and it does not need any kind of Jewish prayer to be extrinsically laid upon it. The Catholic Mass, even in its most modern form, as the Mass of Paul VI, when it’s reverently celebrated, fulfills all the aspects of Torah and Temple sacrifice that Moses and the prophets preached about and that God revealed to them. And so I do believe that Catholic prayer life as it stands in the liturgy books is a perfect fulfillment of Jewish faith.

Where I believe the Church has room to improve is in the reception of the Second Vatican Council’s document on relations with non-Christian religions. Nostra Aetate is a tremendously important document that takes in the most essential aspects of Catholic doctrine from the Council of Trent, as well as before and since, and places them in a framework that is relevant to contemporary concerns. Everyone should study this document and really internalize it, in terms of their understanding of the relationship of Jewish faith and Jewish people to Christians, and I think that in this respect Pope Francis is really going to move us forward. 

CWR: You don’t think Nostra Aetate has been fully received by the laity?

Eden: No, it hasn’t. We still suffer from various errors. On the one hand, there’s the extreme replacement theology, a kind of extreme supersessionism, which teaches that because the Church is the New Israel, therefore all God’s promises to the Jews are void, and the Jews are simply enemies of Christ. This is the kind of theology that you see espoused by E. Michael Jones and his supporters, and the Society of St. Pius X, very sadly and tragically. It’s an ideology that has unfortunately been a source of schism in the Church.

On the other side you have ideas like that which were propounded in the early 2000s, in a USCCB document on relationships with the Jewish people, and this document was since corrected, I think, through the intervention of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This other side makes a dual-covenant claim, which is that the Jews have their covenant and we have ours, and if we just leave the Jews alone, then they’ll be saved. And that’s simply not true, and that’s not what the Council teaches. And here is where a right understanding of what Pope Francis is now teaching in his new apostolic exhortation, would be very helpful. Because when the Pope says we are not to proselytize, he doesn’t mean we are not to evangelize. When the Church speaks about not proselytizing Jews, for example, it’s speaking about not singling out Jewish people the way that Jews for Jesus does, for example—not drawing a bull’s eye on someone and saying, “You need to be saved because you are Jewish.” Rather, we evangelize by saying that everyone needs the Good News.  And we can adapt our style of evangelization to different cultures, to their needs, but we will not just say any one particular people who are outside the Catholic Church are in any more need of salvation than any other people outside the Church.

What Marriage Is . . . and What It Isn't - by Robert P. George

In CERC

Marriage is the kind of good that can be chosen and meaningfully participated in only by people who have at least an elementary understanding of it and who choose it with that understanding in mind.

Marriage is an all-encompassing sharing of life.  It involves, like other bonds, a union of hearts and minds — but also, and distinctively, a bodily union made possible by the sexual-reproductive complementarity of man and woman.  Hence it is ordered to the all-encompassing goods of procreation and family life, and it calls for all-encompassing commitment, one that is pledged to permanence and sexual exclusivity and fidelity.  Marriage unites a husband and wife holistically, not merely in an emotional bond but also on the bodily plane in acts of conjugal love and in the children such love brings forth — for the whole of life.  Marriage is a form of relationship — indeed, the form of relationship — in which a man and a woman unite in a bond that is naturally ordered to, and would be fulfilled by, their conceiving and rearing children together.  And those who enter into this form of relationship — the human good of marriage — are truly and fully participants in it even where their bond is not blessed with the gift of children.

To be in such a relationship — a bodily as well as emotional union whose distinctive features and norms are shaped by its orientation to, and aptness for, procreation and the rearing of children — is intrinsically, not merely instrumentally, valuable.  So marriage, though it bears an inherent (rather than incidental) link to procreation, is not properly understood as having its value merely as a means to the good of conceiving and rearing children.  That is why, historically and rightly, infertility is not regarded as an impediment to marriage.  True bodily union in acts fulfilling the behavioral conditions of procreation is possible even where the nonbehavioral conditions of procreation happen not to obtain.  Such union can provide the foundation and matrix of the multilevel sharing of life that marriage is.

These insights into the nature of marriage as a human good require no particular theology.  They are, to be sure, consistent with Judeo-Christian faith, yet ancient thinkers untouched by Jewish or Christian revelation — including Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Musonius Rufus, Xenophanes, and Plutarch — also distinguished conjugal unions from all others, as do many nonbiblical faiths to this day.  Nor did animus against particular persons or categories of persons produce this conclusion, which arose in various cultures long before the modern concept of "sexual orientation."

Nevertheless, today many are demanding the redefinition of marriage as something other than a conjugal partnership.  Indeed, several jurisdictions in the West, including a number of European nations and several American states, have redefined marriage to eliminate the norm of sexual complementarity.  In truth, what they have done is abolish marriage as a legal category and replace it with something quite different — legally recognized sexual-romantic companionship or domestic partnership — to which the label marriage has been reassigned.  So, strictly speaking, we are talking not so much about a redefinition as an abolition of marriage.

When marriage is understood as a conjugal relationship — that is, as a comprehensive (emotional and bodily) union oriented toward procreation and the providing of children with both a mother and a father — it is easy to make sense of its core features as historically understood in Western and other cultures.  But eliminating the norm of sexual complementarity removes any ground of principle for these features.  After all, if two men or two women can marry, then what sets marriage apart from other bonds must be emotional intensity or priority.  But nothing about emotional union or intensity requires it to be permanent, as opposed to deliberately temporary.  Nothing beyond mere sentiment or subjective preference would require it to be sexually "closed" as opposed to "open," or limited to relationships of two persons, as opposed to three or more in "polyamorous" sexual ensembles.  There would be no ground for understanding marriage as a sexual partnership, as opposed to one integrated around any of a range of possible nonsexual shared interests or commitments (for example, playing tennis, reading novels, supporting a certain sports team).  Nor would there be any basis for understanding marriage as a relationship that is inherently enriched by family life and shaped by its demands.  Yet these have always been defining features and norms of marriage — features and norms that make marriage unlike other forms or companionship or friendship (and unlike in kind, not just in degree of emotional intensity).

These considerations buttress my point that what is at stake in contemporary debates about the definition and meaning of marriage is not whether to "expand" marriage to enlarge the pool of people "eligible" to participate in it.  What is at stake is whether to retain and support marriage in our law and culture or to jettison it in favor of a different way of organizing human relationships.

Marriage law shapes our actions by promoting a vision of what marriage is and, therefore, what its norms and requirements are.  In almost all Western jurisdictions, marriage has been deeply wounded by a culture of divorce, the widespread practice of nonmarital sexual cohabitation, the normalization of nonmarital childbearing, and other practices.  None of these had to do with same-sex partnerships or homosexual conduct, nor were or are people who are attracted to persons of the same sex responsible for them.  It was the impact of these practices on the public understanding of marriage that weakened people's grasp of marriage as a conjugal union and made the otherwise inconceivable idea of same-sex "marriages" conceivable.  Still, abolishing marriage as a legal category and reassigning the label marriage to sexual-romantic domestic partnerships would complete the rout, making it all but impossible to carry out the reforms needed to restore the conjugal understanding of marriage and with it a vibrant and healthy marriage culture.  The more we equate marriage with what amounts to a form of sexual-romantic companionship or domestic partnership, the more difficult it will be for people to live by the stabilizing norms specific to true marriage.  This is the lesson of the past forty-five years.  Unless we restore a sound understanding of marriage and rebuild the marriage culture, the erosion of marriage ideals will continue to harm everyone — children, spouses, societies as a whole — but especially the poorest and most vulnerable.  By rewriting the parenting ideal, abolishing conjugal marriage as the legal norm would undermine in our mores and practice the special value of biological mothers and fathers.  Moreover, by marking support for the conjugal view as "bigotry," it would, as we are already seeing in Europe, the United States, and elsewhere, damage religious liberty and freedom of speech and association.

It is important to bear in mind that under any marriage policy some bonds, some types of intimate relationship, will remain unrecognized, and thus some people will remain legally unmarried (however much they would like their relationships to count as marriages under law).  So we need to be able (and ought) to meet people's concrete needs apart from civil marriage.  Moreover, if we reject equating marriage with companionship — and marriage licenses with generic approval — we will see that conjugal marriage laws deprive no one of companionship or its joys and mark no one as less worthy of fulfillment.  True compassion means extending authentic community to everyone, especially the marginalized, while using marriage law for the social goal it serves best — the goal that justifies regulating such intimate bonds in the first place: to ensure that children know the committed love of the mother and father whose union brought them into being.

Just as compassion for same-sex-attracted people does not require redefining marriage, neither does preserving the conjugal view mean making them scapegoats for its erosion.  It certainly isn't about legalizing (or criminalizing) anything.  In all fifty of the United States, two men or women can have a wedding (if they happen to believe in same-sex marriage) and share a domestic life.  Their employers and religious communities are legally free to recognize their unions.  At issue here is whether governments will effectively coerce many other actors in the public square to do the same.  And also at issue is whether government will expand.  Robust support for marital norms serves children, spouses, and hence our whole economy, especially the poor.  Family breakdown thrusts the state into roles for which it is ill-suited: parent and discipliner to the orphaned and neglected, and arbiter of disputes over custody and paternity.

Redefining Means Undermining

Advocates of redefining "marriage" as sexual-romantic companionship or domestic partnership to accommodate same-sex relationships are increasingly confirming the point that this shift erodes the basis for permanence and exclusivity in any relationship.

University of Calgary philosophy professor Elizabeth Brake, for example, supports what she calls "minimal marriage," in which "individuals can have legal marital relationships with more than one person, reciprocally or asymmetrically, themselves determining the sex and number of parties, the type of relationship involved, and which rights and responsibilities to exchange with each."

Judith Stacey, a prominent New York University professor who is in no way regarded as a fringe figure, testified before Congress against the Defense of Marriage Act.  During her testimony, she expressed hope that the redefinition of marriage would give marriage "varied, creative, and adaptive contours...[leading some to] question the dyadic limitations of Western marriage and seek...small group marriages."

In their statement "Beyond Same-Sex Marriage," more than three hundred "LGBT and allied" scholars and advocates called for legally recognizing sexual relationships involving more than two partners.  Such relationships are by no means unheard of: Newsweek reported in 2009 that there were more than five hundred thousand in the United States alone.  In Brazil, a public notary has recognized a trio of people as a civil union.  Mexico City has considered expressly temporary marriage licenses.  The Toronto District School Board has taken to promoting polyamorous relationships among its students.

What about the connection to family life?  Writer E.  J.  Graff celebrates the fact that recognizing same-sex unions would change the "institution's message" so that it would "ever after stand for sexual choice, for cutting the link between sex and diapers."  Enacting same-sex marriage "does more than just fit; it announces that marriage has changed shape."

What about sexual exclusivity?  Andrew Sullivan, a self-styled proponent of the conservative case for same-sex marriage, has now gone so far as to extol the "spirituality" of "anonymous sex."  He welcomes the fact that the "openness" of same-sex unions might erode sexual exclusivity among those in opposite-sex marriages.

Similarly, in a New York Times Magazine profile, same-sex-marriage activist Dan Savage encourages spouses to adopt "a more flexible attitude" about sex outside their marriage.  A piece in The Advocate, a gay-interest newsmagazine, supports my point still more candidly: "Antiequality right-wingers have long insisted that allowing gays to marry will destroy the sanctity of 'traditional marriage,' and, of course, the logical, liberal party-line response has long been 'No, it won't.' But what if — for once — the sanctimonious crazies are right?  Could the gay male tradition of open relationships actually alter marriage as we know it?  And would that be such a bad thing?"

Other advocates of redefining marriage have explicitly proclaimed the goal of weakening the institution.  Former president George W.  Bush "is correct," writes journalist Victoria Brownworth, "when he states that allowing same-sex couples to marry will weaken the institution of marriage....It most certainly will do so, and that will make marriage a far better concept than it previously has been."  Michelangelo Signorile, another prominent advocate of redefining marriage, urges people in same-sex relationships to "demand the right to marry not as a way of adhering to society's moral codes but rather to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution."  He says they should "fight for same-sex marriage and its benefits and then, once granted, redefine the institution of marriage completely, because the most subversive action lesbians and gay men can undertake...is to transform the notion of 'family' entirely."

Those wishing to overturn the traditional understanding of marriage as a male-female partnership increasingly agree that redefining marriage would undermine its stabilizing norms.

A Culture of Marriage

A standard revisionist response to the defense of conjugal marriage like the one I am here proposing is the claim that, even if the traditional position is, from the moral viewpoint, true, it is nevertheless unfair for the law to embody it.  For example, my friend and colleague Professor Stephen Macedo argues that if disagreements about the nature of marriage "lie in...difficult philosophical quarrels, about which reasonable people have long disagreed, then our differences lie in precisely the territory that John Rawls rightly marks off as inappropriate to the fashioning of our basic rights and liberties."  So Macedo and others claim that law and policy must be neutral with regard to competing understandings of marriage and sexual morality.

This claim is deeply unsound.  The true meaning, value, and significance of marriage are fairly easily grasped (even if people sometimes have difficulty living up to its moral demands) in a culture — including, critically, a legal culture — that promotes and supports a sound understanding of marriage.  Furthermore, ideologies and practices that are hostile to a sound understanding and practice of marriage in a culture tend to undermine the institution of marriage in that culture.  Hence it is extremely important that governments eschew attempts to be neutral with regard to marriage and embody in their laws and policy the soundest, most nearly correct, understanding.

The law is a teacher.  Either it will teach that marriage is a reality in which people can choose to participate but whose contours people cannot make and remake at will, or it will teach that marriage is a mere convention that is malleable in such a way that individuals, couples, or, indeed, groups can choose to make of it whatever suits their desires, goals, and so on.  The result, given the biases of human sexual psychology, will be the development of practices and ideologies that truly tend to undermine the sound understanding and practice of marriage, together with the development of pathologies that tend to reinforce the very practices and ideologies that cause them.

The Oxford philosopher Joseph Raz, a liberal who does not share my views regarding sexual morality, is rightly critical of forms of liberalism, including Rawlsianism, that suppose law and government can and should be neutral among competing conceptions of moral goodness.  He has noted, for example, that "monogamy, assuming that it is the only valuable form of marriage, cannot be practiced by an individual.  It requires a culture which recognizes it, and which supports it through the public's attitude and through its formal institutions."  Of course, Raz does not suppose that, in a culture whose law and public policy do not support monogamy, a man who happens to believe in it somehow will be unable to restrict himself to having one wife or will be required to take additional wives.  His point, rather, is that, even if monogamy is a key element in a sound understanding of marriage, large numbers of people will fail to understand that or why that is the case — and therefore will fail to grasp the value of monogamy and the point of practicing it — unless they are assisted by a culture that supports, formally by law and policy, as well as by informal means, monogamous marriage.  What is true of monogamy is equally true of the other elements of a sound understanding of marriage.

In short, marriage is the kind of good that can be chosen and meaningfully participated in only by people who have at least an elementary understanding of it and who choose it with that understanding in mind.  Yet people's ability to understand it, at least implicitly, and thus to choose it, depends crucially on institutions and cultural understandings that both transcend individual choice and are constituted by a vast number of individual choices.

Carta Pastoral da CEP: A propósito da ideologia do género

Difunde-se cada vez mais a chamada ideologia do género ou gender. Porém, nem todas as pessoas disso se apercebem e muitos desconhecem o seu alcance social e cultural, que já foi qualificado como verdadeira revolução antropológica. Não se trata apenas de uma simples moda intelectual. Diz respeito antes a um movimento cultural com reflexos na compreensão da família, na esfera política e legislativa, no ensino, na comunicação social e na própria linguagem corrente.

Mas a ideologia do género contrasta frontalmente com o acervo civilizacional já adquirido. Como tal, opõe-se radicalmente à visão bíblica e cristã da pessoa e da sexualidade humanas. Com o intuito de esclarecer as diferenças entre estas duas visões surge este documento. Move-nos o desejo de apresentar a visão mais sólida e mais fundante da pessoa, milenarmente descoberta, valorizada e seguida, e para a qual o humanismo cristão muito contribuiu. Acreditamos que este mesmo humanismo, atualmente, é chamado a dar contributo válido na redescoberta da profundidade e beleza de uma sexualidade humana corretamente entendida.

Trata-se da defesa de um modelo de sexualidade e de família que a sabedoria e a história, não obstante as mutações culturais, nos diferentes contextos sociais e geográficos, consideram apto para exprimir a natureza humana.

           

            1. A pessoa humana, espírito encarnado

Antes de mais, gostaríamos de deixar bem claro que, para o humanismo cristão, não há lugar a dualismos: o desprezo do corpo em nome do espírito ou vice-versa. O corpo sexuado, como todas as criaturas do nosso Deus, é produto bom de um Deus bom e amoroso. Uma segunda verdade a considerar na visão cristã da sexualidade é a da pessoa humana como espírito encarnado e, por isso, sexuado: a diferenciação sexual correspondente ao desígnio divino sobre a criação, em toda a sua beleza e plenitude: «Ele os criou homem e mulher» (Gn 1,27); «Deus, vendo toda sua obra, considerou-a muito boa» (Gn 1,31).

A corporalidade é uma dimensão constitutiva da pessoa, não um seu acessório; a pessoa é um corpo, não tem um corpo; a dignidade do corpo humano é corolário da dignidade da pessoa humana; a comunhão dos corpos deve exprimir a comunhão das pessoas.

Porque a pessoa humana é a totalidade unificada do corpo e da alma, existe necessariamente, como homem ou mulher. Por conseguinte, a dimensão sexuada, a masculinidade ou feminilidade, é constitutiva da pessoa, é o seu modo de ser, não um simples atributo. É a própria pessoa que se exprime através da sexualidade. A pessoa é, assim, chamada ao amor e à comunhão como homem ou como mulher. E a diferença sexual tem um significado no plano da criação: exprime uma abertura recíproca à alteridade e à diferença, as quais, na sua complementaridade, se tornam enriquecedoras e fecundas.

            2. Confrontados com uma forte mudança cultural

            Reconhecemos, sem dúvida, que, no longo caminho do amadurecimento cultural e civilizacional, nem sempre se atribuiu aos dois âmbitos do humano (o masculino e o feminino) o mesmo valor e semelhante protagonismo social. Especialmente a mulher, não raramente, foi vítima de forte sujeição ao homem e sofreu alguma menorização social e cultural. Graças a Deus, tais situações estão progressivamente a ser ultrapassadas e a condição feminina, antigamente conotada com a ideia de opressão, hoje está a revelar-se como enorme potencial de humanização e de desenvolvimento harmonioso da sociedade.

            No desejo de ultrapassar esta menoridade social da mulher, alguns procederam a uma distinção radical entre o sexo biológico e os papéis que a sociedade, tradicionalmente, lhe outorgou. Afirmam que o ser masculino ou feminino não passa de uma construção mental, mais ou menos interessada e artificial, que, agora, importaria desconstruir. Por conseguinte, rejeitam tudo o que tenha a ver com os dados biológicos para se fixarem na dimensão cultural, entendida como mentalidade pessoal e social. E, por associação de ideias, passou-se a rejeitar a validade de tudo o que tenha a ver com os tradicionais dados normativos da natureza a respeito da sexualidade (heterossexualidade, união monogâmica, limite ético aos conhecimentos técnicos ligados às fontes da vida, respeito pela vida intra-uterina, pudor ou reserva de intimidade, etc.). É todo este âmbito mental que se costuma designar por ideologia do género ou gender.

            A ideologia do género surge, assim, como uma antropologia alternativa, quer à judaico-cristã, quer à das culturas tradicionais não ocidentais. Nega que a diferença sexual inscrita no corpo possa ser identificativa da pessoa; recusa a complementaridade natural entre os sexos; dissocia a sexualidade da procriação; sobrepõe a filiação intencional à biológica; pretende desconstruir a matriz heterossexual da sociedade (a família assente na união entre um homem e uma mulher deixa de ser o modelo de referência e passa a ser um entre vários).

            3. Os pressupostos da ideologia do género

Esta teoria parte da distinção entre sexo e género, forçando a oposição entre natureza e cultura. O sexo assinala a condição natural e biológica da diferença física entre homem e mulher. O género baliza a construção histórico-cultural da identidade masculina e feminina. Mas, partindo da célebre frase de Simone de Beauvoir, «uma mulher não nasce mulher, torna-se mulher», a ideologia do género considera que somos homens ou mulheres não na base da dimensão biológica em que nascemos, mas nos tornamos tais de acordo com o processo de socialização (da interiorização dos comportamentos, funções e papéis que a sociedade e cultura nos distribui). Papéis que, para estas teorias, são injustos e artificiais. Por conseguinte, o género deve sobrepor-se ao sexo e a cultura deve impor-se à natureza.

Como, para esta ideologia, o género é uma construção social, este pode ser desconstruído e reconstruído. Se a diferença sexual entre homem e mulher está na base da opressão desta, então qualquer forma de definição de uma especificidade feminina é opressora para a mulher. Por isso, para os defensores do gender, a maternidade, como especificidade feminina, é sempre uma discriminação injusta. Para superar essa opressão, recusa-se a diferenciação sexual natural e reconduz-se o género à escolha individual. O género não tem de corresponder ao sexo, mas pertence a uma escolha subjetiva, ditada por instintos, impulsos, preferências e interesses, o que vai para além dos dados naturais e objetivos.

O gender sustenta a irrelevância da diferença sexual na construção da identidade e, por consequência, também a irrelevância dessa diferença nas relações interpessoais, nas uniões conjugais e na constituição da família. Se é indiferente a escolha do género a nível individual, podendo escolher-se ser homem ou mulher independentemente dos dados naturais, também é indiferente a escolha de se ligar a pessoas de outro ou do mesmo sexo. Daqui a equiparação entre uniões heterossexuais e homossexuais. Ao modelo da família heterossexual sucedem-se vários tipos de família, tantos quantas as preferências individuais, para além de qualquer modelo de referência. Deixa de se falar em família e passa a falar-se em famílias. Privilegiar a união heterossexual afigura-se-lhe uma forma de discriminação. Igualmente, deixa de se falar em paternidade e maternidade e passa a falar-se, exclusivamente, em parentalidade, criando um conceito abstrato, pois desligado da geração biológica.

            4. Reflexos da afirmação e difusão da ideologia do género

A afirmação e difusão da ideologia do género pode notar-se em vários âmbitos. Um deles é o dos hábitos linguísticos correntes. Vem-se generalizando, a começar por documentos oficiais e na designação de instituições públicas, a expressão género em substituição de sexo (igualdade de género, em vez de igualdade entre homem e mulher), tal como a expressão famílias em vez de família, ou parentalidade em vez de paternidade e maternidade. Muitas pessoas passam a adotar estas expressões por hábito ou moda, sem se aperceberem da sua conotação ideológica. Mas a generalização destas expressões está longe de ser inocente e sem consequências. Faz parte de uma estratégia de afirmação ideológica, que compromete a inteligibilidade básica de uma pessoa, por vezes, tendo consequências dramáticas: incapacidade de alguém se situar e definir no que tem de mais elementar.

Os planos político e legislativo são outro dos âmbitos de penetração da ideologia do género, que atinge os centros de poder nacionais e internacionais. Da agenda fazem parte as leis de redefinição do casamento de modo a nelas incluir uniões entre pessoas do mesmo sexo (entre nós, a Lei nº 9/2010, de 31 de maio), as leis que permitem a adoção por pares do mesmo sexo (em discussão entre nós, na modalidade de co-adoção), as leis que permitem a mudança do sexo oficialmente reconhecido, independentemente das caraterísticas fisiológicas do requerente (Lei nº 7/2011, de 15 de março), e as leis que permitem o recurso de uniões homossexuais e pessoas sós à procriação artificial, incluindo a chamada maternidade de substituição (a Lei nº 32/2006, de 26 de julho, não contempla a possibilidade referida). 

Outro âmbito de difusão da ideologia do género é o do ensino. Este é encarado como um meio eficaz de doutrinação e transformação da mentalidade corrente e é nítido o esforço de fazer refletir na orientação dos programas escolares, em particular nos de educação sexual, as teses dessa ideologia, apresentadas como um dado científico consensual e indiscutível. Esta estratégia tem dado origem, em vários países, a movimentos de protesto por parte dos pais, que rejeitam esta forma de doutrinação ideológica, porque contrária aos princípios nos quais pretendem educar os seus filhos. Entre nós, a Portaria nº 196-A/2010, de 9 de abril, que regulamenta a Lei nº 60/2009, de 6 de agosto, relativa à educação sexual em meio escolar, inclui, entre os conteúdos a abordar neste âmbito, sexualidade e género.

            5. O alcance antropológico da ideologia do género

Importa aprofundar o alcance da ideologia do género, pois ela representa uma autêntica revolução antropológica. Reflete um subjetivismo relativista levado ao extremo, negando o significado da realidade objetiva. Nega a verdade como algo que não pode ser construído, mas nos é dado e por nós descoberto e recebido. Recusa a moral como uma ordem objetiva de que não podemos dispor. Rejeita o significado do corpo: a pessoa não seria uma unidade incindível, espiritual e corpórea, mas um espírito que tem um corpo a ela extrínseco, disponível e manipulável. Contradiz a natureza como dado a acolher e respeitar. Contraria uma certa forma de ecologia humana, chocante numa época em que tanto se exalta a necessidade de respeito pela harmonia pré-estabelecida subjacente ao equilíbrio ecológico ambiental. Dissocia a procriação da união entre um homem e uma mulher e, portanto, da relacionalidade pessoal, em que o filho é acolhido como um dom, tornando-a objeto de um direito de afirmação individual: o “direito” à parentalidade.

No plano estritamente científico, obviamente, é ilusória a pretensão de prescindir dos dados biológicos na identificação das diferenças entre homens e mulheres. Estas diferenças partem da estrutura genética das células do corpo humano, pelo que nem sequer a intervenção cirúrgica nos órgãos sexuais externos permitiria uma verdadeira mudança de sexo.

É certo que a pessoa humana não é só natureza, mas é também cultura. E também é certo que a lei natural não se confunde com a lei biológica. Mas os dados biológicos objetivos contêm um sentido e apontam para um desígnio da criação que a inteligência pode descobrir como algo que a antecede e se lhe impõe e não como algo que se pode manipular arbitrariamente. A pessoa humana é um espírito encarnado numa unidade bio-psico-social. Não é só corpo, mas é também corpo. As dimensões corporal e espiritual devem harmonizar-se, sem oposição. Do mesmo modo, também as dimensões natural e cultural. A cultura vai para além da natureza, mas não se lhe deve opor, como se dela tivesse que se libertar.

            6. Homem e mulher chamados à comunhão

A diferenciação sexual inscrita no desígnio da criação tem um sentido que a ideologia do género ignora. Reconhecê-la e valorizá-la é assegurar o limite e a insuficiência de cada um dos sexos, é aceitar que cada um deles não exprime o humano em toda a sua riqueza e plenitude. É admitir a estrutura relacional da pessoa humana e que só na relação e na comunhão (no ser para o outro) esta se realiza plenamente. 

Essa comunhão constrói-se a partir da diferença. A mais básica e fundamental, que é a de sexos, não é um obstáculo à comunhão, não é uma fonte de oposição e conflito, mas uma ocasião de enriquecimento recíproco. O homem e a mulher são chamados à comunhão porque só ela os completa e permite a continuação da espécie, através da geração de novas vidas. Faz parte da maravilha do desígnio da criação. Não é, como tal, algo a corrigir ou contrariar. 

A sociedade edifica-se a partir desta colaboração entre as dimensões masculina e feminina. Em primeiro lugar, na sua célula básica, a família. É esta quem garante a renovação da sociedade através da geração de novas vidas e assegura o equilíbrio harmonioso e complexo da educação das novas gerações. Por isso, nunca um ou mais pais podem substituir uma mãe, e nunca uma ou mais mães podem substituir um pai.

            7. Complementaridade do masculino e do feminino

É um facto que algumas visões do masculino e feminino têm servido, ao longo da história, para consolidar divisões de tarefas rígidas e estereotipadas que limitaram a realização da mulher, relegada a um papel doméstico e circunscrita na intervenção social, económica, cultural e política. Mas, na visão bíblica, o domínio do homem sobre a mulher não faz parte do original desígnio divino: é uma consequência do pecado. Esse domínio indica perturbação e perda da estabilidade da igualdade fundamental, entre o homem e a mulher. O que vem em desfavor da mulher, porquanto somente a igualdade, resultante da comum dignidade, pode dar às relações recíprocas o carácter de uma autêntica communio personarum (comunhão de pessoas).

A ideologia do género não se limita a denunciar tais injustiças, mas pretende eliminá-las negando a especificidade feminina. Isso empobrece a mulher, que perde a sua identidade, e enfraquece a sociedade, privada dum contributo precioso e insubstituível, como é a feminilidade e a maternidade. Aliás, a nossa época reconhece – e bem! – a importância da presença equilibrada de homens e mulheres nos vários âmbitos da vida social, designadamente nos centros de decisão económica e política. Mesmo que essa presença não tenha de ser rigidamente paritária, a sociedade só tem a ganhar com o contributo complementar das específicas sensibilidades masculina e feminina.

            8. O "génio feminino"

Nesta perspetiva, há que pôr em relevo aquilo que o Papa João Paulo II denominou "génio feminino". Não se trata de algo que se exprima apenas na relação esponsal ou maternal, específicas do matrimónio, como pretenderia uma certo romantismo. Mas estende-se ao conjunto das relações interpessoais e refere-se a todas as mulheres, casadas ou solteiras. Passa pela vocação à maternidade, sem que esta se esgote na biológica. Nesta, entretanto, comprova-se uma especial sensibilidade da mulher à vida, patente no seu desvelo na fase de maior vulnerabilidade e na sua capacidade de atenção e cuidado nas relações interpessoais.

A maternidade não é um peso de que a mulher necessite de se libertar. O que se exige é que toda a organização social apoie e não dificulte a concretização dessa vocação, através da qual a mulher encontra a sua plena realização. É de reclamar, em especial, que a inserção da mulher numa organização laboral, concebida em função dos homens, não se faça à custa da concretização dessa vocação, e se adotem todos os ajustamentos necessários.

            9. O papel insubstituível do pai

Não pode, de igual modo, ignorar-se que o homem tem um contributo específico e insubstituível a dar à vida familiar e social, cumprindo a sua vocação à paternidade, que não é só biológica, assumindo a missão que só o pai pode desempenhar cabalmente. Talvez o âmbito em que mais se nota a ausência desse contributo seja o da educação, o que já levou a que se fale do pai como o “grande ausente”. Isto pode originar sérias consequências, tais como desorientação existencial dos jovens, toxicodependência ou delinquência juvenil. Se a relação com a mãe é essencial nos primeiros anos de vida, é também essencial a relação com o pai, para que a criança e o jovem se diferenciem da mãe e assim cresçam como pessoas autónomas. Não bastam os afetos para crescer: são necessárias regras e autoridade, o que é acentuado pelo papel do pai.

Num contexto em que se discute a legalização da adoção por pares do mesmo sexo, não é supérfluo sublinhar a importância dos papéis da mãe e do pai na educação das crianças e dos jovens: são papéis insubstituíveis e complementares. Cada uma destas figuras ajuda a criança e o jovem a construir a sua própria identidade masculina ou feminina. Mas também, e porque nem o masculino nem o feminino esgotam toda a riqueza do humano, a presença dessas duas figuras ajudam-nos a descobrir toda essa riqueza, ultrapassando os limites de cada um dos sexos. Uma criança desenvolve‑se e prospera na interação conjunta da mãe e do pai, como parece óbvio e estudos científicos comprovam.

            10. A resposta à afirmação e difusão da ideologia do género

            A ideologia do género não só contrasta com a visão bíblica e cristã, mas também com a verdade da pessoa e da sua vocação. Prejudica a realização pessoal e, a médio prazo, defrauda a sociedade. Não exprime a verdade da pessoa, mas distorce-a ideologicamente.

As alterações legislativas que refletem a mentalidade da ideologia do género -concretamente, a lei que, entre nós, redefiniu o casamento - não são irreversíveis. E os cidadãos e legisladores que partilhem uma visão mais consentânea com o ser e a dignidade da pessoa e da família são chamados a fazer o que está ao seu alcance para as revogar.

Se viermos a assistir à utilização do sistema de ensino para a afirmação e difusão dessa ideologia, é bom ter presente o primado dos direitos dos pais e mães quanto à orientação da educação dos seus filhos. O artigo 26º, nº 3, da Declaração Universal dos Direitos Humanos estatui que «aos pais pertence a prioridade do direito de escolher o género de educação dos seus filhos». E o artigo 43º, nº 2, da nossa Constituição estabelece que «o Estado não pode atribuir-se o direito de programar a educação e a cultura segundo quaisquer diretrizes filosóficas, estéticas, políticas, ideológicas ou religiosas».

De qualquer modo, a resposta mais eficaz às afirmações e difusão da ideologia do género há de resultar de uma nova evangelização. Trata-se de anunciar o Evangelho como este é: boa nova da vida, do amor humano, do matrimónio e da família, o que corresponde às exigências mais profundas e autênticas de toda a pessoa. A esse anúncio são chamadas, em especial, as famílias cristãs, antes de mais, mediante o seu testemunho de vida.

Fátima, 14 de novembro de 2013