Catholicism and the Sexes

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course engages critically and charitably with the discipline of women’s and gender studies from a Catholic theological perspective, examining the tensions and intersections between these two domains. The work of Catholic philosopher Prudence Allen provides the backdrop of the course, namely her framework for categorizing different approaches to conceptualizing the sexes based on the criteria of equal dignity and differentiation. We will use (and modify) this basic schema in considering various historical and contemporary approaches to the nature and relationality of the sexes. We will revisit ancient cosmologies, compare pre-modern approaches (e.g. Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Hildegard), trace the querelle des femmes (“the woman question”) debates of early modernity, and consider modern and contemporary conceptions of sexual difference that arise in the era of feminism. After following this historical arc, we will move into an in-depth, comparative analysis of concurrent 20 th - 21 st century developments in 1) secular gender theories (e.g. Beauvoir, Butler, Bettcher) and 2) Catholic theology of sexual difference (e.g. Stein, von le Fort, von Balthasar, John Paul II, and Catholic “new feminism”). With this substantive foundation in place, the course will culminate by considering “live questions” and controversies about men and women in our current cultural context, both within the Church and across society as a whole. A recurrent theme of this course is that the claims one makes about gender arise from underlying assumptions about the nature of reality as a whole. These foundational assumptions must be teased out and clearly articulated in the process of meaningful dialogue and reaching conclusions on normative questions. This process of “framework articulation” will be an integral part of course lectures, class discussions, and written assignments.