Document Recommends Cultivation of 'Feminine Values': Vatican Rejects Combative Feminism, Seeks 'Active Collaboration' for Men and Women

Beginning of article

In a critique of what some in Rome regard as American-style feminism, a new Vatican document has rejected systems of thought that, in its view, blur differences between men and women and regard women as adversaries of men.

A related tendency to see gender as culturally constructed, the document warns, has generated "a new model of polymorphous sexuality," which reflects an "attempt to be free from one's biological conditioning."

As an alternative, the document proposes a biblically based vision of male/female "active collaboration," positing that men and women have profound differences rooted in human nature that are complementary rather than competitive.

In one intriguing theological assertion, the document says that male/female differences are so fundamental that they will endure even in the afterlife. The distinction is seen as "belonging ontologically to creation, and destined therefore to …