What I
have just said does not go against her participating in other aspects of social
life including politics. In these spheres, too, women can offer a valuable
personal contribution, without neglecting their special feminine qualities.
They will do this to the extent to which they are humanly and professionally
equipped. Both family and society clearly need this special contribution, which
is in no way secondary to that of men.
Development,
maturity, emancipation of women should not mean a pretence of equality, of
uniformity with men, a servile imitation of a man's way of doing things. That
would not get us anywhere. Women would turn out losers, not because they are
better than men or worse, but because they are different.
In
terms of fundamentals, one can in fact speak of equal rights which should be
legally recognised, both in civil and ecclesiastical law. Women, like men,
possess the dignity of being persons and children of God. Nevertheless, on this
basis of fundamental equality, each must achieve what is proper to him or her.
In this sense a woman's emancipation means that she should have a real
possibility of developing her own potentialities to the fullest extent — those
which she has personally and those which she has in common with other women. Equal
rights and equal opportunities before the law do not suppress this diversity,
which enriches all mankind. They presuppose and encourage it.
Women
are called to bring to the family, to society and to the Church,
characteristics which are their own and which they alone can give: their gentle
warmth and untiring generosity, their love for detail, their quick-wittedness
and intuition, their simple and deep piety, their constancy... A woman's
femininity is genuine only if she is aware of the beauty of this contribution
for which there is no substitute and if she incorporates it into her own life.
To
fulfil this mission, a woman has to develop her own personality and not let
herself be carried away by a naive desire to imitate, which, as a rule, would
tend to put her in an inferior position and leave her unique qualities
unfulfilled. If she is a mature person, with a character and mind of her own,
she will indeed accomplish the mission to which she feels called, whatever it
may be. Her life and work will be really constructive, fruitful and full of
meaning, whether she spends the day dedicated to her husband and children or
whether, having given up the idea of marriage for a noble reason, she has given
herself fully to other tasks.
Each
woman in her own sphere of life, if she is faithful to her divine and human
vocation can and, in fact, does achieve the fullness of her feminine
personality. Let us remember that Mary, Mother of God and Mother of men, is not
only a model but also a proof of the transcendental value of an apparently
unimportant life.
