L’OSSERVATORE ROMANO: Paola Franchina – I am catholic, but not an echo
I am a woman in the Catholic Church. Why, as a woman, do I choose to remain so, despite the marked, and at times subtle, imbalance of symbols and power between the sexes?
The mere perception of a widespread female presence does not coincide with real access to decision-making spaces. The two dimensions can coexist: on the one hand, a broad participation of women in pastoral, educational, and charitable activities; and, on the other, a limited influence in governance roles and formal levels of responsibility.
The point, therefore, is not only visibility nor numerical presence, but the quality of participation and the institutional recognition of the capacity to contribute to decision-making processes. In other words, the issue concerns power, and not simply being present in ecclesial life, but having effective access to the spaces where power is exercised and distributed.
There is a significant gap compared to contemporary society. The waves of feminism have progressively expanded women’s presence in public and institutional spaces, whereas in the Church this process appears markedly slowed. The ecclesial institution remains anchored to a patriarchal model, in which female participation is broad at the operational level but limited in decision-making centers. The gender gap cannot be bridged through individual exceptions; after all, it is insufficient for a male leader to appoint trusted women to positions. Without a structural transformation of rules and mechanisms of power, the system remains unchanged and the imbalance persists. At times, patriarchy allows a woman to access positions of leadership, provided she operates within models inherited from and defined by the masculine, without challenging the overall structure.
The Coordinamento delle Teologhe Italiane [Coordination of Italian Women Theologians] represents a significant space in which women’s voices find those who really listen. This is a distinct space where Christian women develop collective self-awareness. In this context, they rediscover themselves and, starting from their concrete experience, elaborate a form of female political thought. This space recalls the image evoked by Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own, where she argues that for women to carry out creative work, they need both material and symbolic autonomy, which together represent a place in which to develop thought and action. In this way, the abstract language of a neutral universal is avoided, and lived experience is privileged. By doing so, women unmask the supposedly generic masculine that claims to stand as universal.
As observed in the Book of Genesis, the masculine word (’îš) does not merely name the woman (’iššâ), but ends up defining her within a symbolic and social horizon that confines her. A paradigmatic example of this dynamic is the Marian-Petrine model, in which Christ is the Bridegroom and the Church the Bride. This is such a simplification of something so complex that, by structuring difference in spousal terms, tends to reduce the plurality of female and male roles and experiences into hierarchical polarities.
If the spousal metaphor is often used – and at times overused– in the Church, Linda Pocher, a Salesian sister and theologian, in one of her letters employs instead the metaphor of a toxic relationship. In this relationship, the message of the other party is ignored and the position of strength is used to preserve what one does not wish to question. In the Church, asymmetry of power is often maintained and theologically justified; while certain theological frameworks become tools for not listening to women’s appeals. The image of a toxic relationship highlights that no theological argument can hold when there is no willingness to listen.
Gender theologies challenge this construction, while exposing the structural functioning of patriarchy and clericalism. They show how Balthasarian theology can be instrumentalized to reinforce male dominance, and they reveal the illusion of the so-called “feminine genius,” which idealizes women, rendering them angelic, harmless, and ultimately insubstantial. In the Catholic Church, these dynamics are intensified, since the image of women is largely mediated by the male voice of priests, by celibate men whose representation of women often passes through the lens of a maternal ideal.
If, on the one hand, there is an attempt to domesticate women’s voices, the Bible reminds us that woman is meant to be kenegdô, which is one who stands alongside man, capable of engaging him, meeting his gaze, and participating in the construction of power in a reciprocal way. This concept suggests relationships grounded in equality and shared responsibility, which breaks hierarchical polarization and calls into question the male symbolic order.
Mary’s “yes” is not the submissive echo of a command, but a rupture within the patriarchal order. Her body and her word become spaces of autonomous decision, not objects of control. In addition, Joseph relinquishes the power legitimized by male law, and opens himself to listening as he does so. This is not submission; instead, it is an exodus from patriarchy. Women can transform processes of marginalization into opportunities to bring back to the center what has been relegated to the margins, all the while deconstructing the patriarchal symbolic horizon that imprisons both men and women. The emergence of women’s voices in the Church challenges the linear identification between biological sex and gender, and opens symbolic spaces in which new configurations of meaning can take shape.
Why do I remain Catholic? A fundamental teaching of the Second Vatican Council is that the Church is the people of all those who believe in the Gospel, who have been baptized, and who desire to live it. I remain in the Church because I am the Church, in communion with my sisters and brothers. I remain in the Church, but I strive to make my voice heard: a voice that is not an echo; instead, my voice is raised as an act of resistance and of love.
by Paola Franchina
Lecturer and theologian
Thanks to Paola Francina for her article, which l found engaging, interesting and balanced. I dream of a Church in which we, women, are not defined by men, but are regarded as equal human beings in our own right and as such, should automatically be engaged in all aspects, and at all levels, in the life of the Church – guided by the Spirit and in accordance with our gifts and abilities. Surely as one Body in Christ, men and women, together, should be involved in decision-making at all levels, which involves having power. However, the emphasis on “power” makes me uneasy. I wonder if full and equal “participation” and/or full and equal “membership” are more meaningful goals …and deeper desires?