{"id":25500,"date":"2010-04-17T18:14:30","date_gmt":"2010-04-17T22:14:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/2010\/04\/john-paul-ii-and-the-devel\/"},"modified":"2010-04-17T18:14:30","modified_gmt":"2010-04-17T22:14:30","slug":"john-paul-ii-and-the-devel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/2010\/04\/john-paul-ii-and-the-devel\/","title":{"rendered":"John Paul II and the Development of a &#8220;New Feminism&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/Sr%20Sara%20Butler.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"MARGIN: 0px 0px 20px 20px; FLOAT: right\" class=\"mt-image-right\" alt=\"Sr Sara Butler.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/assets_c\/2010\/04\/Sr Sara Butler-thumb-200x185-6193.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"185\" \/><\/a>The April 2010 issue of <\/em>Inside the Vatican<em> (18:4) published a special&nbsp;commemorative issue&nbsp;observing the papal death of John Paul II and the papal election of Benedict XVI. The editor asked various&nbsp;people to write their&nbsp;memories of one of the popes. Sister Sara Butler, MSBT, a professor of dogmatic theology at St Joseph&#8217;s Seminary -Dunwoodie, New York, offered her thoughts on Pope John Paul&#8217;s contribution to feminist thinking. Sister Sara is a published author and a member of the Anglican-Roman Catholic Dialogue and the International Theological Commission. Sister remembers:<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Looking back over the papacy of the Servant of God John Paul II, I find myself especially grateful for the initiative he took in addressing the feminist critique. The Pope did this in his <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.vatican.va\/holy_father\/john_paul_ii\/letters\/documents\/hf_jp-ii_let_29061995_women_en.html\">Letter to Women<\/a><\/em> (1995), his apostolic letter <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.vatican.va\/holy_father\/john_paul_ii\/apost_letters\/documents\/hf_jp-ii_apl_15081988_mulieris-dignitatem_en.html\">On the Dignity and Vocation of Women<\/a><\/em> (<em>Mulieris dignitatem<\/em>, 1988), and his ground-breaking catecheses on the &#8220;theology of the body.&#8221; He not only acknowledged the positive contributions of feminist scholarship and offered needed clarifications and correctives in response to their objections; he also spelled out his own appreciation of the &#8220;genius&#8221; of women and took steps to promote their increased participation in the Church and in the social order. Since the Pope&#8217;s death, we are already beginning to see the fruits of his recommendation that Catholic women undertake to develop a &#8220;new feminism,&#8221; consistent with Catholic doctrine (<em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.vatican.va\/holy_father\/john_paul_ii\/encyclicals\/documents\/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae_en.html\">Evangelium vitae<\/a>,<\/em> par 99). In my opinion , it is hard to overestimate the contribution Pope John Paul II made to meeting this contemporary challenge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The April 2010 issue of Inside the Vatican (18:4) published a special&nbsp;commemorative issue&nbsp;observing the papal death of John Paul II and the papal election of Benedict XVI. The editor asked various&nbsp;people to write their&nbsp;memories of one of the popes. Sister Sara Butler, MSBT, a professor of dogmatic theology at St Joseph&#8217;s Seminary -Dunwoodie, New York, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/2010\/04\/john-paul-ii-and-the-devel\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">John Paul II and the Development of a &#8220;New Feminism&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2014,1701,1959,2393,1799,2013],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25500"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25500\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communio.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}