Liberating Womanhood

by Msgr. Charles M. Mangan

Besides being the Solemnity of the Assumption, August 15, 2008, is also the 20th anniversary of Mulieris Dignitatem, the apostolic letter of the Servant of God John Paul II regarding, as the title in English states, “the dignity and vocation of women on the occasion of the Marian Year.”

In that document the Holy Father emphasized that, in recent years, the dignity and vocation of women was a subject that had obtained “exceptional prominence” (no. 1). Thus, with the conclusion of the Marian Year as a backdrop, he wished to contribute to the discussion, convinced that the Church has much to offer about such a pivotal topic.

It was no accident that the pontiff chose the Marian Year—and the Solemnity of the Assumption—to make a statement about the meaning of womanhood. The Blessed Virgin Mary is cherished as “the ‘woman’ of the Bible” (no. 2). The maiden of Nazareth “intimately belongs to the salvific mystery of Christ, and is therefore also present in a special way in the mystery of the Church” (ibid.).

Since Our Lady has a unique significance in the life of the Church, we may claim—without any stretch—that so, too, does she in the life of each member of the Church. Each baptized person—man or woman, boy or girl—and indeed, every member of the human race, inherits “the exceptional link between this ‘woman’ and the whole human family” (ibid.).

True Freedom: Mary’s Fiat

Two decades after the publication of Mulieris Dignitatem, we turn our attention again to the Woman and her meaning for women today. The key to understanding Our Lady’s significance for women is rooted in a concept that was close to the heart of the Servant of God John Paul II: freedom. He never tired of singing the merits of true liberty—both for the individual as well as for the State. He often stressed the splendor of human freedom and how critical that it be respected by persons in authority and used well by all persons.

Free from original sin, Our Lady was the first so-called liberated woman. Her fiat at the Annunciation sprang from the responsible exercise of her God-given liberty as a free woman in responding to the Lord. Mary was not coerced to become the Mother of Jesus Christ. Rather, she used her inner freedom as a daughter of God, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to declare her consent to the divine plan.

Throughout her earthly life, whether in Egypt with her husband, Joseph, where they sheltered the Child from His adversaries back in Israel, in Cana where she approached her Son on behalf of the newlyweds, on Calvary where she singularly and unmistakably cooperated with Jesus in His redeeming sacrifice that reconciled the human race to His Beloved Father, or in the Cenacle where she, along with the Apostles, the holy women, and some other disciples of Jesus, prayed for the promised outpouring of the Holy Spirit, Mary was really free, employing her liberty in adoration of Almighty God and in service of her brothers and sisters.

The freedom of Our Lady is readily observed again, this time at the end of her earthly existence, when she was assumed body and soul by God into heavenly glory. She repeated her fiat anew as the Lord gently drew her from this life to the next.

Now in paradise, Mary stands out with Jesus as the sign of freedom. The souls and gloried bodies of the Son and His Mother are the living result of what happens when one’s liberty is used for the furthering of the kingdom of God. Where Jesus and Mary are now in glory, we hope to follow.

Social Schizophrenia

What Mary represents for contemporary women is another possibility in contrast to the picture of womanhood that is often handed to the women of today and labeled as normative. From more than a few sectors of Western society, women are urged to be overly aggressive—even, perhaps without using the word, masculine—without concern for the beautiful delicacy and femininity for which women are loved and esteemed.

Some persistent voices tell women that they may say, wear, and do anything they want because they must express themselves without fear of offending and without the need to advert to traditional Judeo-Christian principles. The stark insistence that women require abortion and contraception in order to be whole is a slap in the face to the Creator who made them whole, without such sinful crutches that do nothing for the growth in holiness of women.

Women have been noticeably and continually short-changed in our modern era. They have been ignored and lied to repeatedly.

Some years ago, the Dominican theologian Walter Farrell perceptively analyzed the importance of how women are viewed and treated in society: “. . . the status of woman, any woman in any age, is a concrete expression of the philosophy of life on which the citizens of that age proceed in the living of life . . . the life of woman is one of the most vivid and accurate of all the norms of judgment of an age and its philosophy . . . there is nothing in an age that so sharply mirrors its philosophy as the lives of its women.” [1]

How does our era consider women? Our world exhibits a marked misconception in this regard—in effect, a duality that can only be termed schizophrenic.

There are regions in which women are held to be like goddesses. This hedonistic theory contends that no whim or desire, no matter how base, should be denied them. What is paramount is their physical pleasure. The bodies of women, which are to be pampered at all costs, are what matters, not their immortal souls. Therefore, motherhood should be foregone because it demands sacrifice from women.

In other localities, women are treated as mere chattel. They have been stripped of their personal rights and are virtually no higher on the class ladder than slaves. Women have no voice in their own destiny, having been cruelly reduced to servants.

In both cases, the first by excess and the second by defect, women are treated as objects.

Mary, Our Model

Our Lady is the necessary corrective to our erroneous understanding of women and their dignity. She was the free Woman who spent herself in service of God and neighbor. She willingly earmarked her liberty for service, not self-aggrandizement.

During this year when the Church celebrates the 150th anniversary of Our Lady’s appearances to St. Mary Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes, we cannot help but to pray for a fresh, purified comprehension of womanhood.

For that to occur, to take a cue again from Fr. Farrell, what is desperately needed is “even a hurried glance at womanhood’s model, Mary, the Mother of God. There we can see not only what woman can be but what she is . . . Mary’s perfection is brought out from the confused detail of her age by the application of these basic tests of any woman’s life: sanctity, virginity, marriage, the evaluation of the infant . . . Mary, then, is the exemplar for women, not only in so far as she is the holiest of women, but also as the most womanly of women, the most free, winning the highest possible place in the hearts and minds of men.” [2]

The Mother of God—our Mother—enlightens the path leading to a better appreciation of women. The Servant of God John Paul II has shown the way. Now is the hour to pray that women will embrace their dignity as free daughters of the Lord, be respected and liberated from innumerable forms of degradation and strive for the sanctity that characterizes the Woman who intercedes for us and awaits us in heaven.

[1] A Companion to the Summa, Volume IV (New York, NY: Sheed & Ward, 1951), p. 135.
[2] Ibid., pp. 138–139

Msgr. Charles M. Mangan is a priest of the Diocese of Sioux Falls, SD, a member of CUF’s advisory council, and a frequent contributor to Lay Witness. He currently works in Rome as a member of the Vatican’s Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and for Societies of Apostolic Life.

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