I agree with both Rick and Susan that Saturday's Lumen Christi/Christian Law Professor' Fellowship annual conference was a wonderful and energizing experience. Of course I thought the contributions by MOJ'ers Susan and Patrick Brennan were highlights, and I'm certain Michael Scaperlanda's contribution would have been a similar highlight had the schedule not been rearranged to delete it! But I was struck most vividly at this conference by a sort of epistemological insight that is probably self-evident to those of you who have been engaged in inter-religious dialogue for a long time. It seemed to me that all three of the panels highlighted very distinctly fundamental differences between the Catholic and Protestant perspectives on some basic theological or anthropological notions -- such as how original sin affects our ability to perceive the truth. The different faith traditions seem to offer entirely different angles of approach to the issues -- different starting points and different prisms through which the concepts were examined. And yet, despite these differences, we all seemed to be tending toward the same sorts of final conclusions about the topics we were addressing. I've never seen that demonstrated so vividly before, and I found it quite exhilerating.
As Susan explained, my contribution to the Christian Feminism panel was an exploration of the philosophical foundations of the concept of complementarity. Borrowing heavily on the work of Sister Prudence Allen, I described the evolution of philosophical thought about gender relations as weaving back and forth between the unisex view (no difference, total equality) to the polarity view (significant differences, either men or women superior to the other). Complementarity represents a third view, a view largely developed through the work of Catholic philosophers, which posits both significant differences between men and women AND fundamental equality. The philosophical foundations for complementarity were set down by (1) Catholic phenomenologists, the von Hildebrands and St. Edith Stein and (2) Catholic personalists, the Mauritains, Mounier & Marcel. Of course, both schools of thought heavily influenced the most significant philosopher of complementarity, Pope John Paul II. While JP2's complementarity is, of course, deeply enriched by his theology of the body, I argued that there's a need to elucidate the philosophical, as well as the theological, arguments for complementarity, if we want to make the concept more accessible to non-Catholic Christians and secular feminists.
I also tried to develop more concretely what JP2 thought the complementarity means for the development of the "new feminism" that he challenged women to pursue, and why he thought that "new feminism" was particularly necessary for the transformation of culture to support life. I argued that many of the goals of "new feminism" and many of the issues JP2 suggested were the particular province of the "genius of women" were the same sorts of issues that are the logical subjects of much of Christian legal theory. I suggested that the list of topics identified in paragraphs 32 and 33 of Ex Corde Ecclesia as of particular concern to Catholic Universities might identify the core issues for both Christian legal theory and the new feminism.
I also threw in a couple of observations about the topic of mutual obsession by Susan and me these days -- the need to rehabilitate the image of Mary as an empowered icon of feminism and the need to explore the ways in which Mariology could enrich Christian legal theory.
The dialogue between Susan and our fellow panelist Marie Failinger, who presented a stirring Lutheran critique of secular feminist legal theory, was really exciting. It provided just a glimpse of what I expect we're going to see at the upcoming University of St. Thomas Law Journal symposium on "Restructuring the Workplace to Accommodate Family Life" in Minneapolis on March 16. That conference is going to continue the dialogue between feminists approaching these issues from the faith perspective -- like Susan, Marie, and Sr. Prudence Allen -- and feminists approaching them from the secular perspective -- like Joan Williams of UC Hastings, Kathy Baker of Chicago Kent, and Michael Selmi of George Washington. And we're going to be addressing more general workplace barriers to family life, like immigration laws (Michael Scaperlanda) and effects of poverty on the working poor (Gregory Acs of the Urban League) and family wage (Allan Carlson of the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society). It's going to be great. Save the date. I'll post further details as soon as we have them on our website.
Lisa
