Why is a woman important for the church? Women’s role in the church and its importance for christian faith from Edith Stein’s essays on woman.

Abstract

The role and importance of women in the Catholic Church is a subject that must be necessarily consider at this time of our history, particularly due to the fact of being embedded in the context of a largely female ecclesial community and a western society that has taken important steps in the path of justice and gender equality. This paper, therefore, seeks to speak not only about this evident reality, but to wonder –from Edith Stein’s ideas and the paradigmatic figure of Mary the Nazarene- if it is possible to make a new reading of women’s current role starting from a theology that puts its attention in the nature of the One and Triune God and, from there, to question the current conditions and structures of the Church for the women of our time.