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 Maria Antonietta Macciocchi
Maria
Antonietta Macciocchi’s life is a passionate journey in search
of the truth. Her greatest preoccupation has always been
the defense of human dignity , and more concretely, the
dignity of women, within the standards of democracy and
human rights.
The daughter of Italian anti-fascists, ever since she was
a child she participated with a group of women in
the resistance in Rome.. At the end of World
War II, Macciocchi committed herself to the reconstruction of her
country. She started a committee in Naples that took in
from the streets ten thousand children and youth who were
hungry, abandoned and without a future. Later, she founded
AICF (Acción Internacional contra el Hambre) in Paris.
Her intense public
life is characterized by a continuous search for the most
positive answers to the questions facing women.
As a member of the military in the Italian Communist
Party, she was elected the deputy of Naples in 1968.
Very soon afterwards, however, she rebelled against the dogmas
of communism, daring to denounce its internal anti-democratic mechanisms in
her book, Lettere dall’interno del PCI. Similarly, while returning
from a trip to China in 1971,she fearlessly uncovered the
atrocities of the communist regimen in the networks of the
Camorra of Naples . She was expelled from
the communist party the following year because of her directness.
Besides
being a political activist, Macciocchi is a prestigious intellectual.
She is a professor of Political Sciences at the Universities
of Paris-Vincennes and La Sorbonne. In 1979 she was
elected deputy of the European Parliament, where she worked
ardently in favor of human rights. The reports about
abolishing the death penalty, the objection of conscience or the
investigation of the disappearances in Argentina and Chile during this
time are attributed to her. Besides the newspaper Noi
donne, she also ran Vie nuove, the first publication
of political thought run by a woman, that was
famous for its criticism of Soviet dogmatism. In
fact, after the fall of the Soviet party, in the
early 90’s she traveled to Albania, the last “Red Region”
in Europe. There her articles, which were photocopied and distributed
among university students, encouraged the student riot that would overrun
the streets of Tirana.
Besides being a “leftist woman” who
is sincere and open while searching for the truth regarding
the human being, Maria Antonietta Macciocchi defines herself as a
“feminist.” But she denounces, with the same clarity with
which she denounced the injustice of the fascist totalitarians and
communists, a feminism that reduces the liberation of the woman
to a war against men. She herself declares:
“I have
made polemics of the old feminism, because it was too
radical and full of hatred towards men. That feminism
which says to the woman: ‘the uterus is yours’ and
converts her into a factory. Men and women live
in a difficult moment in history, and the problems of
one are the problems of the other. The liberation
of women is not a war against man, but against
the humiliation that power submits her to. I preach
a feminism based on the genius of the woman, on
her great intellectual capacity in all fields” (1).
When asked about
the powers that enslave a woman, she affirms without
a doubt that the media increasingly degrades feminine dignity
as time goes on: her opinion is that the woman’s
body is “supermarketed.” Sex has been turned into a
business, and the woman is threatened by images that repeatedly
tell her that she will be satisfied and happy when
she buys a new car, a refrigerator, or the latest
perfume.
In the context of her ardent search for
the truth regarding the dignity of women (which she
did not find in the imperial ideologies in the twentieth
century), Maria Antonietta vigorously read John Paul II’s apostolic letter
“Mulieris Dignitatem,” published in 1988. This document caused her
to discover deeper and more revolutionary thoughts about women than
she had found during her phase of intellectual sophistication.
The reading of this document led her to write
a book called Women According to Wojtyla (2).
A phrase from
John Paul II’s Letter caught her eye: “God
entrusts the human being to her [ woman].” (n. 30).
Wojtyla opened Maria Antonietta’s eyes to a fascinating
truth: the dignity of the woman is intimately related with
the love that she receives because of her femininity, and
also, with the love that she, in turn, gives.
In this way the truth about the person and love
is confirmed: woman can find herself only through giving
love to others, and that giving is what constitutes her
true vocation. The “feminine genius,” the moral strength of
the woman, her spiritual strength, is such that God
entrusts to her the good of man, and thus,
the good of all humanity. The woman is made
strong through her awareness of self-giving, always and
in every circumstance, even in the midst of social
discrimination(3).
In this day and age, the progress of science and
technology can bring about a loss of sensitivity toward man,
toward all that is essentially human. That is why
humanity, especially today, waits for the manifestation of that
“feminine genius” that will assure sensitivity toward man in all
circumstances, for the simple reason that he is
human. It is not in vain that it is
the woman who receives life, welcoming it however it comes,
loving each and every new human being, in and for
itself.
In the words of Macciocchi, “Unexpectedly, traditions acquire meaning, cultural
and religious values are re-conquered, and insights like the idea
of ‘that which is divine in women,’ come to light.
The feminine human history is a blank page that is
yet to be written. We mustn’t cry over a
golden age of socialist equality between men and women that
hasn’t been any more than a trick and a degrading
lie. History begins again and other values appear vividly
before our eyes for the Third Millennium”. These
values of the dignified woman are linked to the love
that she communicates, her unity with man (which does
not annul the diversity between the two), and her
vocation to transmit and protect life.
…………………………………………
NOTES
(1)“The World”, Society, 27.12.1994
(2)The Women
According to Wojtyla, Pauline Editions, Madrid 1992.
(3)“John Paul II on
The Genius of Women” (United States Catholic Conference, www.nccbiscc.org/ ph:
1-800-235-8722/USA; +202-722-8716/out of country); John Paul II: “Mulieris Dignitatem”,
“Love and Responsibility”. |
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