According to the Vatican, gender doesn’t exist. Well, as least they ignore the theory of gender as socially constructed roles and stick to the belief that gender equals biological sex.
This advances the sexism in the Catholic church. For instance, a key argument against the ordination of women in the Catholic church was once that women and men inherently have different attributes that make men fit for the priesthood and women less so.
And while it would be politically incorrect to assert these views in today’s society, a new report shows that the Vatican still thinks that the sexes are inherently different and does not take time to examine how gender is constructed and informed by societal stereotypes.
This report is on sin.
Confessions carried out by Fr. Roberto Busa, a Jesuit scholar, were studied and it was determined that the top sins for men and women differed. For men, the top sins were lust, gluttony, and sloth. (i.e. sex, food and laziness). For women, the top sins were pride, envy, and anger (self-explanatory).
Msgr Wojciech Giertych, theologian to the papal household, reaffirmed the study’s findings:
“Men and women sin in different ways…When you look at vices from the point of view of the difficulties they create you find that men experiment in a different way from women.”
This information is pretty much useless unless we apply it to how gender roles are constructed in today’s world. We have to ask why the top sins for men and women differ and why each sin made the list.
But the Vatican isn’t ready to do that. You see, by acknowledging that gender is socially constructed, the church hierarchy would also have to let go of some power by acknowledging that women aren’t inherently different from men.
The men at the Vatican are not that dim.
