Pope Benedict XVI is not preaching social justice regarding same-sex marriage in civil law

Pope Benedict has been quoted in news reports as saying, "People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given them by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being."

 

As mentioned, existentialist thinkers and post-modernist thinkers may dispute the idea that they have a nature. But Nussbaum does not dispute this claim. So why doesn't Pope Benedict agree with Nussbaum in favoring same-sex marriage as a civil right?

 

In his 2012 Christmas address, Pope Benedict also referred to man and woman as a "duality" (his term).

 

But does this duality mean that there is a male human nature and a female human nature?

 

I don't think so. I think that the stereotypical duality of man and woman is best understood as two enduring aspects of human nature, both of which are in both male human persons and female human persons.

 

In his book THE DUALITY OF HUMAN EXISTENCE: AN ESSAY ON PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION (1966), David Bakan of the University of Chicago refers explicitly to this duality in human nature. He uses the stereotypical terminology of agency and communion to describe this duality in human nature. In other words, each person needs to work to activate both his or her capacity for agency and his or her capacity for communion. More recently, Vicki S. Helgeson of Carnegie Mellon University has worked with Bakan's terminology about agency and communion in research she reports in her 700-page textbook THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GENDER, 3rd edition (2009).

 

However, when Pope Benedict speaks of the duality of man and woman, he seems to be assigning agency to male human persons alone and communion to female human persons alone.

 

In conclusion, Pope Benedict XVI is not preaching social justice regarding same-sex marriage in civil law, but social injustice.

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