A more welcoming home

“European women are a more than ever important lay resource, now that the multicultural, multiethnic and multi-religious challenge is transforming the face of our society. At such a delicate and challenging a time for the growth of the European Union, we women theologians want to question ourselves about the role that religion can play to promote a fruitful interplay between freedom of faith and laicity”, says Marinella Perroni, biblical scholar and chairwoman of the Coordination of Italian Women Theologians (CTI) in explaining the meaning of the 1st International Conference of European women theologians, held on Rome in recent days on the theme “Women theologians: in what Europe?” The three-day conference, organized by the CTI, was attended by 150 women theologians from 20 countries and various Christian traditions, and with some Jewish and Islamic representatives also present. “We women theologians accept the challenge of engaging with a pluralist Europe – said Perroni in her inaugural speech -. We can no longer think in a monocultural context. We must dialogue in a multiform reality”. After having for centuries transmitted the faith within the family institution, she concluded, “women are prepared to assume greater responsibility and authority in the various spheres of knowledge and power, in the civil and ecclesial institutions”. These aspirations have given rise to the project to create a European Centre of women theologians for the interpretation of Scriptures in the three monotheist religions – Christianity, Judaism and Islam. LIVING IN THE SAME HOME. “A conference of women theologians that restores to the centre the God who is love, as presented by Pope Benedict XVI in his first encyclical, in order to construct together the common European home in a journey of truth, dialogue, justice and peace”: that’s the recognition and hope expressed by Archbishop BRUNO FORTE of Chieti-Vasto, chairman of the Commission for the Doctrine of the Faith of the Italian Bishops’ Conference. The metaphor of the “European home” recurred several times. “Promoting dialogue between women serves to restore to theology the role of an interlocutor alert to the current transformation of social life and helps to turn Europe into a more welcoming home”, said MARINELLA PERRONI . The German theologian BARBARA HALLESLEBEN used a provocation: “We are the housewives who make the common European home hospitable by welcoming guests and sharing their joys, sorrows, fears and hopes”. ADRIANA VALERIO , chairwoman of the European Society of Women for Theological Research, spoke of the difficulties encountered by women theologians in Europe: “the recognition of their value, the integration of their contribution into academic life, and the visibility of their scientific and pastoral work”. Nonetheless – said Valerio – there is in Europe “a lively presence of women who express an astonishing interdisciplinary creativity and an extraordinary capacity to find points of observation and encounter, beyond all differences”. GOD DOES NOT DISCRIMINATE. “The male-dominated interpretation of the Scriptures is the result of a process of inculturation and has no theological foundation. In this sphere, men and women have equal status”, declared the Norwegian Catholic theologian KARI ELISABETH BØRRESEN . In her analysis, “an erroneous interpretation of the biblical text, for example, of the principle according to which man was created in the image and likeness of God, where ‘man’ is understood as male, has reinforced cultural and ecclesial ‘androcentricity'”: a male-dominated conception of the Church and the world. Hence the need, she suggests, to rethink a “millenarian interpretation” without ignoring “dialogue with the other religions and, in particular, with Islam”. Women theologians of the three monotheist religions agreed in saying there is no androcentricity in Holy Scripture. “From a theological point of view – confirmed the Indonesian Islamic theologian LILY MUNIR – Islam is not misogynous. According to the Koran, no human being is superior to any other; men and women are equal before God and this is an absolute commandment”. In the historical tradition, however, a male-dominated interpretation of the Koran came to the fore. It was founded on “three mistaken theological premises”: that God had first created man and woman was an ontological derivation; that woman was created by man and for man; and that woman was responsible for the expulsion from the terrestrial paradise”. The same motivations were allegedly at the origin of the sex discriminations in Jewish religion, according to the Jewish philosopher FRANCESCA ALBERTINI : “The diversities between men and women, in the Bible, are not religious or spiritual, but social, political and juridical”. Hence the need for a systematic dialogue between women theologians of different faiths and cultures, because – concluded the Italian Catholic theologian CETTINA MILITELLO – “women can steer the Church community towards new paradigms of co-existence and communion in a multiethnic, multicultural and multi-religious Europe, in a spirit of self-giving and mutual acceptance”.