In this article on the current homosexual advances scandal involving a highly placed priest at the Vatican itself, Father Robert Gahl, a professor at one of Rome’s Vatican universities said in discussing the speed with which the Vatican responded to the situation,
That’s right. “Her” doctrine. I’m hardly a Vatican scholar in any way. I am not Catholic. But I have never heard of the Roman Catholic Church or the Vatican as a ruling body called “her”.
Is this the norm?
Cartooniverse
The church is considered the bride of Christ. I believe that is where the her comes from.
I skimmed the article, and I assume that the ‘her’ refers to the Church, which is called the Bride of Christ, and is typically referred to in the feminine. ‘Her doctrine’= ‘the Roman Catholic Church’s doctrine’.
When are inanimate objects/nations/etc ever refered to as “he” (other than one German battleship)? 
AFAIK it’s either “it” or “her”.
yep, the church as a whole is female.
Then they say it’s out of “respect”…
Also hear the phrase “Mother Church” from time to time amongst Catholics. Sort of ironic given that the leadership is almost exclusively male, but there you go.
I thought I heard once that storms and swords are male?
Hurricanes used to only bear female names (and thus, presumably, female pronouns) till they started alternating a decade or two ago.
ETA: the switch was in '79
Throughout this section of the Catechism, Names and Images of the Church, the feminine is used to describe the Church.
I believe Germany is stil the Fatherland, but that may have changed after the fall of the Third Reich.
Interesting, because the Italian *Il Vaticano * is masculine.
I’ll yield to the Catholic Dopers, but I’d formed the impression that the Church was “she” for two reasons: “Ecclesia” is feminine, and she is referred to as “Mother Church.” The ‘bride of Christ’ imagery, though quite real and common, was not TTBOMK a contributing factor.
Note that this is in reference to the Catholic Church, in English.
Vatican City would of course, like most countries, be neuter gender in English. (“Vatican City announced that its bank would…”) However, in Italian, it is citta (grave accent over the a which this keyboard refuses to make) derived from Latin civitas, both nouns being feminine. FWIW.
As Malodorous and Polycarp have noted, the common expression is “Mother Church,” (and there is a subtext that associates the church with Mary in some imagery). However, the confusion in the OP is that of conflating the Vatican with the church.
The Vatican is the location from which edicts are published and the Curia (in the Vatican) is the collective organization that prepares and administers those edicts, but within the church, there is never a confusion that the Vatican or the Curia is the church. There have clearly been members of the Curia, located at the Vatican, who have forgotten themselves, from time to time and actually believed that they were the church, but the college of cardinals and the many bishops scattered across the globe and the billion or so people around the world who call themselves “Catholic” never confuse the Vatican with the church, any more than Americans would confuse themselves with Washington D.C.
The Vatican’s also a country, and one used to hear countries referred to in the feminine. That was a long time ago, though.
Città just means “city”, not specific to Vatican City. In Italian, it is referred to as *Il Vaticano * (is there an echo in here?),
FWIW, the Vatican is also refered to as The Holy See, which in Italian (and Spanish) is La Santa Sede (f).
Right: the Città del Vaticano (Vatican all by itself being the name of the hill upon which the city is built.)
In most languages, nouns are in one of two classes. In the indo-European group, we call these classes “gender.” This is why Inspector Clouseu calls an thing “he,” or “she.” These languages lack an “it.” When speaking English, some people simply take the pronoun (he or she) from their mother tongue and plug it into English.
Penis ensues.
In the non-Indo-European languages nouns are classified in other ways. I understand at least one language uses “edible” and “inedible.”
Still goes on now, from Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the U.S.A (bolding mine):