Editorial, Marinella Perroni, Vice-president
The Italian theological environment, like the other scientific and academic fields, finds many obstacles to accepting the “Gender
Question”. It seems that such a question has not yet impinged on the common way of looking at life; has made any contribution to an effective linguistic transformation; nor aided the development of new ways of thinking and
acting within society, in spite of the push given by women. Italian culture has always offered strong resistance to a process already carried out in other European countries: in this sense, we can speak both of an Institutional
and an Individual resistance.
In
spite of this, within the academic, civil and religious institutions,
the female presence has gone on increasing: such a presence
has pointed out key themes and questions to help the intellectual,
political and religious debate among all women in the world. Such
presence raised its voice within and outside the institutional, philosophical
and religious fields. Its own “karstic” connotation has contributed to
establishing and strengthening relationships, discrediting
prejudices and maturing new convictions, to opening the way to
discussion and pointing out new perspectives: in short, to deepening
women’s self-awareness of the widening of mentality and sensitivities
in the Italian environment.
Against
such a background we have to identify the distinctiveness of the
ESWTR’s Meeting in Naples in 2007: for the place in which
it will be held, for the theme, for the persons involved in its
realization. The cities developed over the centuries around Vesuvius,
the inhabitants living in such a wonderful and at the same time a
dangerous area, located
between the sea and the volcano, are “living metaphors” of a particular
way to see life, marked by confidence and disenchantment, happiness and
melancholy, geniality and illogicalness. The thinking of the
theological research
as a privileged ambit for “re-thinking” families, societies and the
churches as “living communities” does not mean, maybe, to install
ourselves between the fascination of the sea and of the coast, the
sun’s colours
and its warmth, the sober impressiveness of this volcano, which reminds
us how weak the border is between life and death, the building and the
destruction, the land’s luxuriance and hell’s fire?
Italian
female theologians are a multiform reality as well. Only a few of them
belong to the academic world and, in this case, are mostly
bound to religious institutions. Many of them teach religion in the
schools, are involved in the catechesis or in social and political
activities. Among them we find nuns, sisters or lay women who, in spite
of their educational
or academic qualifications, are forced to work in different social and
professional ambits. Among them there are independent female
theologians and other ones who are members of ESWTR; very often their
work is not adequately
well-known and appreciated.
Yet,
just as this beautiful and awful land, in recent decades Italian female
theologians have opened many different paths which can
contribute to the development of a theology able to speak of God to a
world absolutely different from that in the past: all that will be
possible thanks to the strengthening of the relationships with the
European colleagues.
Prof. Dr. Marinella Perroni, Vice-President of the ESWTR
President of the Coordinamento Telologhe Italiane
