Document criticised as being about world no longer existing

The former EU Commissioner and Italian MEP Ms Emma Bonino has said in reference to the new Catholic Church document on women, that the Vatican was writing about a world which no longer exists.

"This letter could easily have been written by an imam of al-Azhar," she said referring to Islam's Sunni institution of religious learning in Cairo.

"To be fair to the Catholic Church, no religion is a great friend of women," Ms Bonino told the Corriere della Sera newspaper. "They pay you a lot of compliments but when push comes to shove they ask you to stay in your place: wife, nurse, mother and grandmother."

Ms Frances Kissling, president of the Catholics for a Free Choice group, said she thought she had passed through a time warp. "I thought for sure I was in the 1960s and Archie Bunker had been appointed theologian to the Pope," she said, referring to a character in an American television series who opposed any form of women's rights.

The document had been published "as the world's women begin their preparations for a 10-year analysis of the UN women's conference held in Beijing in 1995". Then, "the Vatican was seen as an obstacle to international policy that improves women's lives. Early reports indicate that the document rehashes the same false charges and stereotypes about feminism, including the charge that feminism is hostile to men.

"The reality is that it is the Vatican that is hostile to women's full inclusion in the Church itself," Ms Kissling said.

"Until the Vatican addresses its own exclusion of women from leadership, it is hard to believe anyone will take seriously its views on women."

Father Thomas Reese SJ, editor of America, a weekly Catholic magazine published in the US, said: "Although most American feminists would express their ideology differently than the Vatican, on the practical level they are on the same page [in terms of equality in education, politics, workplace\] except on abortion and women priests.

"If there are differences it is probably on the relationship between men and women in the family, not in society. Here the Vatican is much more positive on the role of women as mothers and wives," he said.

"For the Vatican, the ideal is that a father be paid well enough so that a mother can stay home and raise the kids. When the Vatican expresses doubts about mothers working, they are thinking of Polish women shovelling snow and Hispanic women cleaning toilets."

Father Reese said when feminists promoted women in the workplace, they were thinking of women lawyers, CEOs and politicians. The Vatican saw daycare as a necessary evil for mothers who had to work, "not as an institution of feminine liberation".