Sex and gender roles in the Catholic Church

Sexual practices of these cultures were affected by the Christian concept of male, female equality. The sexual act, according to the Church, is sacred within the context of the marital relationship that reflects a complete and lifelong mutual gift of a man and a woman. One that precludes the polygamy and concubinage common to cultures before the arrival of Christianity. The equality of men and women is reflected in the Church teaching that the sexes are meant by divine design to be different and complementary, each having equal dignity and made in the image of God.

Historical overview

Roman Empire

Social structures at the dawn of Christianity in the Roman Empire held that women were inferior to men intellectually and physically and were "naturally dependent". Athenian women were legally classified as children regardless of age and were the "legal property of some man at all stages in her life." Women in the Roman Empire had limited legal rights and could not enter professions. Female infanticide and abortion were practiced by all classes. In family life, men, not women, could have "lovers, prostitutes and concubines" and it was not rare for pagan women to be married before the age of puberty and then forced to consummate the marriage with her often much older husband. Husbands, not wives, could divorce at any time simply by telling the wife to leave. The spread of Christianity changed women's lives in many ways by requiring a man to have only one wife and keep her for life, condemning the infidelity of men as well as women and doing away with marriage of prepubescent girls. Because Christianity outlawed infanticide and because women were more likely than men to convert, there were soon more Christian women than men whereas the opposite was true among pagans.

Europe

Middle Ages

The church defined sin as a violation of any law of God, the Bible, or the church. Common sexual sins were premarital sex, adultery, masturbation, homosexuality, and bestiality. Many influential members of the church saw sex and other pleasurable experiences as evil and a source of sin when in the wrong context, unless meant for procreation. Also, any non-vaginal sex (oral, manual, anal) is sinful. The church considered masturbation a sin against nature because the guilty party was extracting sexual pleasure outside of the context of proper use. Also, law required clerics to avoid any sort of sexually tinged entertainment. However, canon law did allow sex in a marriage, as long as it intended to procreate and not just provide pleasure, even though some saw sex, even in marriage, as sinful and impure. Jeffrey Richards describes a European "medieval masculinity which was essentially Christian and chivalric".

Sexual regulation by the church accounted for a great amount of literature and time. The church saw regulation as necessary to maintain the welfare of society. Canon law banned premarital sex, lust, masturbation, adultery, bestiality, homosexuality, and any sort of sex outside of marriage. Adultery was broken up into various categories by the Statutes of Angers: prostitution and simple fornication, adultery, defloration of virgins, intercourse with nuns, incest, homosexuality, and incidental matters relating to sex such as looks, desires, touches, embraces, and kisses. Adultery was typically grounds for divorce for a man if his wife fornicated with another, but adultery was not seen as a crime, just as a sin. Prostitution, although within the category of fornication, was less concrete in the law. Because the medieval canon law originated as an "offshoot of moral theology" but also drew from Roman law, it contributed both legal and moral concepts to canonistic writing. This split influence caused the treatment of prostitution to be more complex. Prostitution, although sinful, was tolerated. Without the availability of a prostitute, men could be led to defloration of a virgin. It was better to tolerate prostitution with all of its associated evils, than to risk the perils which would follow the successful elimination of the harlot from society. The church recognized disordered sexual desire as a natural inclination related to original sin, so sexual desires could not be ignored as a reality. Although the law attempted to strictly regulate prostitution, whorehouses abounded disguised as bathhouses or operated in secret within hotels and private residences. "Outside the official public brothels, prostitution in the public bathhouses, the inns and the taverns was common knowledge and was tolerated. Much of the church's efforts were put toward controlling what was going on sexually in a marriage, especially regarding when a married couple could have sex. Sex was not allowed during pregnancy or menstruation, right after a child birth, on Sunday, Wednesday, Friday, or Saturday during each of the three Lents, on feast days, quarterly ember days, or before communion. The church also denounced "unnatural" sexual relations between those of the same sex and also married couples. Also, upon marrying, a couple could not enter a church for thirty days.

Although the church developed very strict regulations on sexual activity that needed to be carried out to sustain the institutional and psychological structure of the Middle Ages, it had a hard time properly enforcing these regulations. Most violations occurred in the privacy of the bedroom, so the only witnesses to the sin were the guilty parties themselves, and they did not usually confess to such crimes. Also, the problem was widespread. Not only did the common people deviate from the rules, but the clerics themselves did not follow their own laws. In order to convict, accusation was required, and people did not usually have enough proof to back up an accusation, as law basically required a confession, and there was always a chance that if there was not enough proof, the accuser would be charged with false accusations. Even though the system was not foolproof, the church did produce a large number of institutions to inform the public of the law of sexual practice, and also had an extensive system of courts to deal with sexual misbehavior.

Sexual offenses were punished in a variety of ways during the Middle Ages. There were numerous prosecutions for adultery, fornication, and other sexual offenses, but fornication was the most frequently prosecuted. Fornication was seen as a serious sin and a canonical crime and those convicted were required to "pay fines and court costs", and they were often subject to public humiliation. Public humiliation ranged from public confessions and requesting the forgiveness of the community (often by kneeling at the entrance of a church and begging those who entered for mercy), to public whippings in the churchyard or marketplace, to being paraded around the church "bare-chested and bearing a lighted candle before Sunday Mass". Some offenders were made to wear special clothes while others were flogged. Numerous offenders had to fast or abstain from meat, wine, and sex for a set period of time. Other "punishments [ranged] from the cutting off of hair and pillory to prison and expulsion." Those convicted of more serious sexual offenses were subject to removal from office, confinement in a monastery, or a forced pilgrimage.

Not all punishments were equal; punishments for sexual crimes differed between genders and social classes. When convicted of adultery, it was more likely that males would be fined in church courts rather than publicly flogged like the convicted females. However, when the males began to be more strictly punished, the punishment for females also became more severe. While males were now publicly whipped, females had their heads shaved and were subject to expulsion from their homes, separation from their children, and the confiscation of their dowry. The wounds of the male would heal over time, but the woman was reduced to "penury". She would often be forced to live in poverty for the remainder of her life. In one case, a woman was accused of sleeping around and was ordered to rid herself of guilt in front of seven witnesses. Her male counterpart, however, was subject to no punishment whatsoever. When a woman of a higher social status was convicted of the same crime, she was not required to purge herself of her guilt in front of any witnesses. The woman of a higher social class was allowed to repent in private. Common prostitutes of the time period were banned from churches, but there was little to no prosecution of their "male clientele". However, the priests of the higher classes were punished most severely for sexual crimes. They were stripped of their rank, position, and income. The wife and children of the priest were thrown out of their house, and the priests could be thrown in a monastery for the remainder of their lives and their wife and children enslaved.

Latin America

It was women, primarily Amerindian Christian converts, who became the primary supporters of the Church. Slavery and human sacrifice were both part of Latin American culture before the Europeans arrived. Spanish conquerors enslaved and sexually abused Indian women on a regular basis. Indian slavery was first abolished by Pope Paul III in the 1537 bull Sublimis Deus which confirmed that "their souls were as immortal as those of Europeans" and they should neither be robbed nor turned into slaves. While the Spanish military was known for its ill-treatment of Amerindian men and women, Catholic missionaries are credited with championing all efforts to initiate protective laws for the Indians and fought against their enslavement.

The missionaries in Latin America felt that the Indians tolerated too much nudity and required them to wear clothes if they lived at the missions. Common Indian sexual practices such as premarital sex, adultery, polygamy, and incest were quickly deemed immoral by the missionaries and prohibited with mixed results. Indians who did not agree to these new rules either left the missions or actively rebelled. Women's roles were sometimes reduced to exclude tasks previously performed by women in religious ceremonies or society.

Africa

By and large the largest obstacle to evangelization of Africans was the widespread nature of polygamy among the various populations. Africa was initially evangelized by Catholic monks of medieval Europe, and then by both Protestants and Catholics from the seventeenth century onward. Each of these evangelizing groups complained "incessantly" about African marriage customs. Priestly celibacy is often reported as a problem in Africa today, where "large numbers of priests feel celibacy is simply incompatible with African culture." "It is widely reported that priests routinely live double lives, keeping "secret" families in homes far from their parishes."

Mexico

During the time Spain owned Mexico (pre-independence) Mexico adopted the style of Spain's Catholicism where women were normatively established as weak. "During the beginning of church history ecclesiastical authorities found in the creative fashioning of gendered language an important means by which to reaffirm the patriarchal norms that underlay the institution's power and authority". In the case of the patriarchal system that developed over many centuries in the Church, normative definitions of masculinity and femininity took on added significance as guarantors of institutional stability which ensured the ongoing functioning of the institution, but, when contested or undermined, threatened the entire sacred enterprise. Women were "excluded from the public sphere [of the church] and held in the private realm of home and family life"; "the Church, the school, and the family all converged in assigning women this role."

In Mexico during 1807, people "cited women's behavior as a root cause of social problems" and thought that it would lead to the break-down of New Spain. In this time period women were inferior to men and the inequality of gender was used as a source of power in their sermons. In colonial and early-independent Mexico, male archbishops would use language "that either explicitly invoked patriarchal social norms or creatively reinforced them through adaptations of tropes of masculinity and femininity". Studies show how "the Church likewise played a role in shaping women's marriage choices, both through canonical rules of consanguinity among marriage partners and by means of the ostensible limits imposed by its expectation that marriage be contracted freely by both parties".

During the Cold War, the influence of communism "became a central political battle and a common cause for the Church and the Mexican Women". Prior to the Cold War, women were confined to the private sphere in the homes of the family. "In the face of an alleged Communist ideological offensive, [this notion of women being confined to the private sphere] became an issue of public concern", As a result, women "created new forms of political participation, and they acquired an unprecedented sense of political competence" as well as involvement in the church. Women were "made aware of their own potential in the public sphere".

A common woman-figure in the Mexican Catholic Church was "derived from the position of the Virgin Mary, or from her more vernacular representation, the Virgin of Guadalupe." The Virgin Mary was held as a "role model" for women and young girls and was distinguished for her "passivity, self-denial, abnegation and chastity." The Church disseminated a religious, maternal, and spiritual role component of the Virgin Mary "that governed attitudes and symbols sustaining women's status."

Women of Nahua

The indigenous Nahua women in colonial times were significantly noted for their lack of power and authority in their roles compared to men in the realm of the Catholic Church in Mexican society. It is seen that "Nahua women's religious responsibilities in Mexico City lay between the officially recognized positions of men in the public arena and women's private responsibilities in the home." They were denied the officially sanctioned power that should have actually been offered to the Nahua women. Their lack of authority resulted in occasional outbreaks in violence due to frustration. "In at least one-fourth of the cases, women led the attacks and were visibly more aggressive in their behavior toward outside authorities." And they were unable to become nuns in the Catholic Church society. The women were only to "be recipients of God’s divine favor and protection if they followed the tenets of the Catholic Church"; the rules and regulations for women were evidently more strict and rigid than those for men.

Women of Vela Perpetua

There is specific evidence for a woman-dominated, church-oriented organization called The Ladies of the Vela Perpetua. This "predominantly female lay organization whose central purpose is to keep vigil over the Blessed Sacrament overnight" was a unique because of "its implicit challenge to the Church's rigidly hierarchical gender ideology: the constitution of the Vela Perpetua mandated that women, and only women, were to serve as the officers of this mixed-sex, lay, devotional organization." Scholars suspect that the woman-led organization "was predominately found in the small towns and cities of the central-western states of Guanajuato, Michoacán ́and Jalisco (a part of Mexico known as the Baj ́io)." During this time, "female leadership meant something virtually unheard of in Catholic lay societies: women were in a position to 'govern men'." Even though Vela Perpetua was founded in 1840, their reverse gender role legacy was neither celebrated nor recognized until much later in time.

According to research form scholars, "We do not and cannot know for certain who first conceived the idea of the female-led Vela Perpetua." However, it is known that this institution was composed of devout mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers alike. These ladies brought a sense of "feminization" that they had been historically denied in the realm of the Catholic Church which surrounded their lives. Because the sense of social and religious freedom that was provided, others in surrounding communities "looked to the Vela as a way to support the Church and to claim a kind of religious citizenship – greater equality and greater power within the Church." Some men were angered over these non-traditional church ways and "four years [after the Vela Perpetua was founded] the first separate Vela for men was founded." Despite the creation of a separate Vela for men, "several of the women's Velas were singled out for praise by the bishop for their efficient organization."