by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
(March 5, 2008) Pope Benedict XVI affirmed Church teaching on the role of women in every aspect of society when he received the credentials of former Harvard law professor, Mary Ann Glendon, as the eighth U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See on February 29.
Ambassador Glendon said the core of the relationship between the U.S. and the Holy See is “a common vision rooted in respect for the dignity of every man, woman and child. Both the U.S. and the Holy See have a long history in which faith and reason have been inseparably united in the quest to make that vision a reality. . . . As the U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, it will be my responsibility, and my privilege, to work side-by-side with the Holy See in pursuing these noble goals.”
She succeeds outgoing Ambassador Francis Rooney and is the second woman appointed to the post in the 24 years of formal diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the Holy See. Ambassador Corinne Claiborne Boggs served from 1997 to 2001.
Ambassador Glendon’s already impressive resume includes the March 2004 appointment by Pope John Paul II as President of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, making her the first woman to head a major pontifical academy.
She was also the first woman to lead a Vatican delegation to a major U.N. conference when, in 1995, she was appointed to head the Vatican delegation to the U.N. Conference on Women in Beijing.
Ambassador Glendon has also served as a consultant to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on International Policy and from 2001 to 2004, she served on the President’s Council on Bioethics, which advises the U.S. President.
In addition to teaching at Harvard, she has been a visiting professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University and the Legionaries of Christ’s Regina Apostolorum Athenaeum, both in Rome. No stranger to Rome, the 69 year old married mother of three expressed her happiness “at the prospect of being in the same city with my eldest daughter and three of my six grandchildren.”
In her address to the Holy Father, she referred to the U .S. and the Holy See as “solid and valuable partners dedicated to making the people of our world safer and more hopeful. As I take up my position as the eighth U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, I want to reaffirm the invaluable nature of that relationship in the quest for freedom, justice, peace and human dignity throughout the world.”
Pope Benedict used the occasion to praise the efforts of so many U.S. citizens and government leaders who, like Ambassador Glendon, have worked “to ensure legal protection for God’s gift of life from conception to natural death, and the safeguarding of the institution of marriage, acknowledged as a stable union between a man and a woman, and that of the family.”
The appointment of Ambassador Glendon, who has been an outspoken critic of modern feminism, abortion, and same-sex marriage, has won her much criticism from U.S. abortion and homosexual advocates.
Jon O’Brien, president of the pro-abortion Catholics For a Free Choice, told LifeSite News that, “Dr. Glendon’s stance on many matters of importance is not representative of Americans’ views on these issues, let alone those of American Catholics”. He added, “Her appointment comes at a time when the global community needs more critics of the Vatican’s policies on sexual and reproductive rights.”
In an article announcing her appointment, the Boston Globe referred to her as “an antiabortion scholar and an opponent of gay marriage.” They referred to her 1987 book, Abortion and Divorce in Western Law, as being “critical of the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that established a legal right to abortion.”
However, Ambassador Glendon has never been known to cower in the face of opposition to Church teaching. As she once told an Associated Press reporter, “the challenge of the Church is to keep abreast of changes, not dumb down its doctrine to the spirit of the age.”
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