Believing in Two

 Believing in Two is the title of the September 2021 issue of the magazine Women Church World, published as a supplement to L'Osservatore Romano. This issue seeks to explore spiritual relationships between men and women in the mission of the Church. 

The theme of the issue is introduced in an article entitled Equality:

... in the September edition of Women Church World we are taking a journey to explore great spiritual friendships between men and women. These articles demonstrate that common and co-responsible work, as an inclusive “combination”, has always been fruitful in the life of the Church. In fact, it is often precisely these “couples” who have initiated innovative processes.

The male-female pairings treated in the issue are those of Hans Urs von Balthasar and Adrienne von Speyr ( A double mission in the Church); Romana Guarnieri and Giuseppe de Luca (The "singular friendship"..);St Clare and St Francis (Clare's gift); Raissa and Jacques Maritain (Between Faith and Reason); St Jane Frances de Chantal and St Francis de Sales (The social force of friendship); Armida Barelli and Agostino Gemelli (Culture in action). There is also a discussion of the standing of St Scholastica (in relation to St Benedict) and St Clare (in relation to St Francis), as being independent saints, not just women subordinate in some way to their respective siblings (To be saints without living in the shadow of saints).

In our own times, a defence of the complementarity between male and female is part of the Church's mission with regard to marriage and an authentic understanding of human sexuality. But Believing in Two draws our attention to another aspect of this complementarity, namely its spiritual dimension in terms of charisms in the life of the Church. We should expect to be able to see it in our own experience of life in the Church.

These relationships of the masculine and the feminine reflect the spousal relationship between Christ (masculine) and the Church (who, in the figure of the Virgin Mary, is feminine). There is, therefore, a rich ecclesial and theological theme to be developed from these, and the many other, examples of masculine/feminine complementarity.