April 2006



P R A Y I N G    W I T H    T H E    C H U R C H    

INTENTION : That the individual, social, and political rights of women may be respected in every nation.

The communications media today plays a dominant role in shaping the values and attitudes of a new culture. Unfortunately the culture propagated is not the exaltation but the exploitation of women. It does not treat women as persons but as objects of pleasure and power. Motherhood is often penalized rather than rewarded; it is certainly an injustice that such women should be discriminated against, economically or socially, precisely for following that fundamental vocation of theirs. Furthermore, they are often undervalued and ridiculed.

It is against this backdrop the Church draws our attention to the many positive attributes women have in the furtherance of a "civilization of love".

This "civilization of love" will manifest itself in a radical affirmation of the value of life and of the value of love for which women are especially qualified and privileged. With regard to life women enjoy a unique capacity for connecting with the mystery of life's transmission. With regard to love, they have the capacity to bring to every aspect of life that essential quality of femininity which consists in objectivity of judgement, in the capacity to understand in-depth the demands of interpersonal relationships which favour the processes of humanization which mark the "civilization of love."



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