In my mind, some of the most disturbing words to have come out of the UN in recent months are those of Independent Expert Victor Madrigal-Borloz, working for the Human Rights Council. As reported by C-Fam in early October of last year, Madrigal-Borloz produced a report to the UN General Assembly in which he called for the criminizalization of any objections to the various manifestations of radical gender and sexual orientation/identity theory. Specifically targeting the Catholic Church as a fomentor of “intolerance”, Madrigal-Borloz said that “the Holy See’s doctrine of complementarity…holds that women are not equal but rather have complementary social roles…” As the C-Fam report summed it up at the time, “Madrigal-Borloz argues that the Catholic Church’s understanding of the family is a violation of existing human rights law.”
What is perhaps most shocking about Madrigal-Borloz’s statement is that it takes a word which in so many other contexts is a positive, beautiful, and even necessary thing – complementarity – and identifies it as the very source of evil and oppression. As a scientist with training in ecology, I was incredulous that anyone could use the name of such an exquisite concept in vain, so to speak. Complementarity is the lifebreath and framework of all ecological systems, and we see it absolutely everywhere in the proper functioning of the natural world. The very structure of our DNA is composed of complementary base pairs, and the synthesis of proteins is ultimately based on the same kind of complementarity between RNA codons and anti-codons. Complementarity between enzymes and substrates allow for the existence of life itself by catalyzing biochemical reactions. Niche complementarity is a recognized ecological concept that describes the ability of organisms to coexist by utilizing different forms of a resource, thus easing competitive pressures and allowing for increased biological diversity. Complementarity is all around us, from electricity to chemistry to sexuality.
Pope Saint John Paul II masterfully wove the concept of complementarity into the life of the Church with his promulgation of the ideas of “human ecology” and “theology of the body”. John Paul II wrote extensively on the complementarity of men and women, specifically in marriage, referring to the “ever-richer union on all levels of the body, the character and the soul” which marriage allows. While Pope Francis has encouraged the extension of discussions on complementary to extend beyond physical and emotional complementarity between spouses into the realm of spiritual gifts which may be shared in any human context, certain constants in the Church’s understanding of complementarity must by definition remain. An elegant article about John Paul II and Pope Francis’ interpretations of complementarity states something that both men’s philosophies would seem to agree on: “God creates woman and man complete in themselves, but, for forming a couple, they are incomplete.” This statement could easily be applied to systems besides the male-female dynamic. Indeed, it is a metaphysical reality that, whether the union referred to is a physical, emotional, or spiritual one, no union is possible without relationally incomplete wholes. The possibility of union is itself predicated upon being able to define parts, constituencies, or complements.
And it is this unalterable fact that Madrigal-Borloz seems to have come into conflict with in his UN report. In attacking complementarity, Madrigal-Borloz is laying the axe to the root of the tree of unity itself. He and those who think similarly should carefully consider the implications of a worldview which refuses to make distinctions between the ways in which humans are equal or whole and those in which they are properly complementary or incomplete. To do otherwise is to reject humanity’s place in the larger framework of the cosmos, which achieves a powerfully dynamic harmony only through the interplay of exquisitely paired actors, each self-contained and uniquely valued while simultaneously reaching outward to the other in relationship.
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