engleski

(Auto)Perception by Women and Men of their Position in the Church in Croatia

The increasingly present awareness of gender equality and gender perspectives in modern society, which has particularly marked the early twenty-first century, has been an unavoidable challenge for the Church and its theology. Unlike the Church and its theology in the western countries, which has been reacting to that challenge since the 1970s, this topic is only now starting to be discernible as a serious issue in the Church in Croatia. This article presents the results of an empirical study conducted by the agency Target in 2005 at the request by the Split-based Franciscan Institute for the Culture of Peace. It indicates that a considerable proportion of the Croatian population, both women and men, are satisfied with the current situation in the Church with respect to gender equality. A higher percentage of priests express their satisfaction with the existing situation than of the other groups of respondents, while nuns show the highest level of sensitivity towards gender inequality. This probably results from the fact that nuns are closely tied to church structures, in both their lifestyle and their activities, and therefore have more opportunity to perceive the inequality of women in the Church and feel it more strongly than do women belonging to general population. The fairly high percentages of women and men from the general population who take a neutral position on many of the questions asked seem to indicate that lay persons in the Church are not used to reflecting on the mentioned under discussion, or on the issues of their faith and their role in the Church in general. The willingness of not only nuns, but also priests, to reconsider the issue of gender relations in the Church, which is also evident in this research, is a sign of hope for the Church in Croatia, which will need to model the gender discourse which increasingly shapes society and to offer an example of developing a culture of equality and of partnership-based unity between women and men. The process of sensitizing lay believers to these issues must be integrated with their general education in theology and catechism, and requires systematic promotion through different types of adult catechesis.

Equality of the sexes in the Church; gender perspective; gender roles; religious women and the women's issue; adult catechesis

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