Many women feel that men simply do not listen to them. There is no substitute for such listening. More than anything else it will bring about change. Unless we listen, any action that we take in this area, no matter how well intentioned, is likely to bypass the real concerns of women and reinforce male dominance. Listening, in a spirit of partnership and equality, is the most practical response we can make and is the foundation for our mutual partnership to reform unjust structures.
Scholarship has a special role to play here.
In a discreet nod to the unfinished business facing the Catholic Church, the Congregation remarks, the change of sensibilities which this involves will inevitably have implications for Church teaching and practice. In this context we ask Jesuits to live, as always, with the tension involved in being faithful to the teachings of the Church while at the same time trying to read accurately the signs of the times. Clearly, the Congregation considers the new situation of women and the increased consciousness of the universal reality of discrimination against them to be one of the principal signs of our times. That is why it concludes by calling the whole Society to regard this work for reconciliation between women and men in all its forms as integral to its commitment to the faith that does justice which is supposed to be the unifying principle of all Jesuit endeavors and institutions. Like all the institutions of Jesuit higher education in the United States, Santa Clara has unfinished business here.