e lent credence to the idea that women are "rendered inferior . . . [and] affected by sexist influence." Equally, there is a weight of historical evidence that such influence is institutional and that the institutions are by and large the male province.
Adherence to Church dogma can also be interpreted as a call to conscience, or an affirmative obligation that the otherwise independent moral agent internalize the teaching as unassailable truth. But the truth derives not from reasoned discourse and logical argument; it derives from religious authority. Where the issue is one of the connection between a woman's psyche and the fate of her body, and where the Church articulates an unambigious absolute as answer to a moral dilemma, it is difficult to see how any other than a misogynist characterization of the Church's position can be made.
Secker cites Gilligan's view that "women experience a self-consciousness which differs from men's in that it is a product of social and relational formation in quite gender-specific ways." The point is that power of internaliza
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