Friday, January 05, 2007
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, RIP
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese - scholar, author, member of the editorial boards of First Things and Women for Faith and Family (among many) - died on January 2, 2007. Born in Boston in 1941, she spent her academic career writing and speaking about women's issues and was awarded the Cardinal Wright Award from the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars in 2003, given annually to a Catholic judged to have given outstanding service to the Church.
In 1995 Elizabeth Fox-Genovese was received into the Catholic Church. She recounted her conversion story in the April 2000 issue of First Things. In that account, she included a typical reflection on woman and her particular vocation to charity and service.
Sad as it may seem, my experience with radical, upscale feminism only reinforced my growing mistrust of individual pride. The defense of abortion especially troubled me because of my inability to agree that any one of us should decide who has the right to live. But my engagement with faith drew me into more general reflection about the importance of charity and service in the life of the Christian. Initially, I had shied away from the idea of the imitation of Christ and even from the entreaty in the Universal Prayer to "make me holy." Such aspirations struck me as the ultimate presumption: who was I to pretend to holiness, much less the imitation of our Savior? Gradually, those fears began to dissipate, and I found myself meditating upon the Gospels’ teaching on service, above all, that "the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to offer his life as a ransom for all." Having been received in the Church on the day after the feast of the Immaculate Conception, I also pondered the Holy Mother’s response to the Annunciation: "Let it be done unto me according to Thy Word."
The injunctions to charity and service unmistakably applied to all Christians, but it was difficult to deny that, since the moment of the Virgin Mary’s response to the Angel Gabriel, they applied in a special way to women. Her example, as Hans Urs von Balthasar has reminded us, offers the exemplary embodiment of faith. "Faith is the surrender of the entire person: because Mary from the start surrendered everything, her memory was the unsullied tablet on which the Father, through the Spirit, could write His entire Word." It is incontestable that, throughout most of history, women have suffered injustices and abuse that cry out for redress. It is no less incontestable that the path to justice and dignity for women—the recognition of their equal standing with men as human persons—cannot lead through the repudiation of the most basic tenets of our faith. No amount of past oppression can justify women’s oppression of the most vulnerable among us—or even our repudiation of our own specific vocation as women.
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Requiescat in pace
In 1995 Elizabeth Fox-Genovese was received into the Catholic Church. She recounted her conversion story in the April 2000 issue of First Things. In that account, she included a typical reflection on woman and her particular vocation to charity and service.
Sad as it may seem, my experience with radical, upscale feminism only reinforced my growing mistrust of individual pride. The defense of abortion especially troubled me because of my inability to agree that any one of us should decide who has the right to live. But my engagement with faith drew me into more general reflection about the importance of charity and service in the life of the Christian. Initially, I had shied away from the idea of the imitation of Christ and even from the entreaty in the Universal Prayer to "make me holy." Such aspirations struck me as the ultimate presumption: who was I to pretend to holiness, much less the imitation of our Savior? Gradually, those fears began to dissipate, and I found myself meditating upon the Gospels’ teaching on service, above all, that "the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to offer his life as a ransom for all." Having been received in the Church on the day after the feast of the Immaculate Conception, I also pondered the Holy Mother’s response to the Annunciation: "Let it be done unto me according to Thy Word."
The injunctions to charity and service unmistakably applied to all Christians, but it was difficult to deny that, since the moment of the Virgin Mary’s response to the Angel Gabriel, they applied in a special way to women. Her example, as Hans Urs von Balthasar has reminded us, offers the exemplary embodiment of faith. "Faith is the surrender of the entire person: because Mary from the start surrendered everything, her memory was the unsullied tablet on which the Father, through the Spirit, could write His entire Word." It is incontestable that, throughout most of history, women have suffered injustices and abuse that cry out for redress. It is no less incontestable that the path to justice and dignity for women—the recognition of their equal standing with men as human persons—cannot lead through the repudiation of the most basic tenets of our faith. No amount of past oppression can justify women’s oppression of the most vulnerable among us—or even our repudiation of our own specific vocation as women.
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Requiescat in pace
Labels: women
