What Difference Do Women Make? Retelling the Story of Catholic Responses to Secularism
What Difference Do Women Make? Retelling the Story of Catholic Responses to Secularism
The boundaries drawn by secularism have limited religion to the “private” realm, not merely the arena of conscience and belief but also family structure, intimacy, and (women’s) sexuality. The Catholic Church, particularly through the intellectual and administrative influence of John Paul II, has advanced its counter-cultural stance on these issues based on the realist personalist philosophy of Jacques Maritain. However, if we introduce women as thinkers and protagonists into the story of the Catholic responses to secularism in Europe, how does it change? Not only women, but what happens if we pay attention to how gender and sexuality are threaded into the narrative? What differences emerge? Looking to the life and works of Raïssa Maritain, especially her celibate marriage and adoptive kinship network, we see a personalist and deeply Christian understanding of intimacy that consciously distances itself from heterosexual, procreative complementarity.
Keywords: complementarity, friendship, gender, individualism, Jacques and Raïssa Maritain, personalism, Roman Catholicism
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