Church teaching and Sexism

This is such a controversial area that we have a section entitled: 'Is Christianity sexist?', which looks at both sides of the debate. Here we present some Church teachings about women:

Catholic Church

The Roman Catholic Church sees sexism as a social sin. There are many examples of the Church making statements about the importance of women in the church:

“The history of Christianity would have had a very different development if it had not been for the generous support of many women... who played an effective and precious role in spreading the Gospel. Their witness cannot be forgotten.”

Pope Benedict XVI

"The Church desires to contribute to upholding the dignity, role and rights of women.

Thank you, women who are mothers! You have sheltered human beings within yourselves in a unique experience of joy and travail. This experience makes you become God's own smile upon the newborn child, the one who guides your child's first steps, who helps it to grow, and who is the anchor as the child makes its way along the journey of life.

Thank you, women who are wives! You irrevocably join your future to that of your husbands, in a relationship of mutual giving, at the service of love and life.

Thank you, women who are daughters and women who are sisters! Into the heart of the family, and then of all society, you bring the richness of your sensitivity, your intuitiveness, your generosity and fidelity.

Thank you, women who work! You are present and active in every area of life-social, economic, cultural, artistic and political. In this way you make an indispensable contribution to the growth of a culture which unites reason and feeling, to a model of life ever open to the sense of "mystery", to the establishment of economic and political structures ever more worthy of humanity.

Thank you, consecrated women! Following the example of the greatest of women, the Mother of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word, you open yourselves with obedience and fidelity to the gift of God's love. You help the Church and all mankind to experience a "spousal" relationship to God, one which magnificently expresses the fellowship which God wishes to establish with his creatures.

Thank you, every woman, for the simple fact of being a woman! Through the insight which is so much a part of your womanhood you enrich the world's understanding and help to make human relations more honest and authentic."

Pope John Paul II

The Catechism says:

2333 ... The harmony of the couple and of society depends in part on the way in which the complementarity, needs and mutual support between the sexes are lived out.

2334 'In creating men "male and female", God gives man and woman an equal personal dignity.' 'Man is a person, man and woman equally so, since both were created in the image and likeness of the personal God.'

2335 Each of the two sexes is an image of the power and tenderness of God, with equal dignity though in a different way...

Church of England

The first woman to be ordained in the Anglican Church was as long ago as 1944, although it was 50 years later that the Church of England first ordained women in 1994. There are still no female bishops in the Church of England (as of 2011), although the Synod has agreed there should be. However, with female clergy around the world, women are contributing to the teachings of the church:

"God, the creator of everything, is both male and female.”

Rev. Nan Peete