What is the essential difference between men and women? Has the Church taught anything definitavely about this?

The difference can't be only the "plumbing" since that is only useful in procreation, procreation is only for this life, and this life is only the means to the next life in heaven, where "plumbing" will be meaningless.

But apparently, in heaven, gender is not meaningless. There has to be some reason why God, while perfectly encompassing the virtuous traits of both male and female, chose to manifest Himself to humans as being male.

Some people believe that there are virtues which are exclusive to females and different virtues which are exclusive to males, i.e., it is not for females to be strong, forceful, logical, or in control of emotions; and it is not for males to be nurturing, devout by nature, intuitive, etc. That's pure hogwash, in my oppinion, though of course I don't know what -- if anything -- the Church teaches about it.

Is this something which the Church could speak infallibly on? Does the basic natures of and differences between men and women have to do with Faith or morals?

Has the Church definitavly taught anything about exactly why women may not become priests? Or why God manifests Himself to us as male when it is impossible for Him to actually have the gender of either male or female?

-- Psyche +AMDG+ (psychicquill@yahoo.com), November 14, 2003

Answers

The Church has faithfully handed on to us - and all generations that Jesus Christ was truly a man (not merely faking it) and that He revealed God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Thus we are not at liberty to claim God as "she", "Mother", or "Her", since the Son has told us on his authority that God wills to be known in the masculine.

But Jesus Christ also maintained the tradition of the Prophets that God is not by nature a physical thing "God is spirit and those that worship Him must worship him in spirit and in truth".

Thus we know that God (I am who am, or "ipsum esse subsistens") is SPIRIT - His nature is not sexually differentiated, yet He wills to be known as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that the Son became incarnate as a male...

God's divine nature therefore is not either male or female, yet at least 2 of the divine persons identify themselves with the masculine pronoun.

Why is this so? I'd wager a guess that only God will be able to tell you when you meet Him personally!

Yet why the incarnation of the Son as a man of the Jewish nation? It would immediately seem that the family nature of human life is essential to God: Adam and Eve were a married couple....Abraham was a direct descendent...and Jesus through Mary is a direct descendent.

Secondly, the Son was incarnate as a man (vir) because for some unknown reason the human race did not fall when Eve sinned but only when Adam joined her. Eve was not the reason humanity lost preternatural life and paradise...Adam was! Does this mean the human writers of Genesis were sexist or right in their description that the woman was not ultimately to blame?! From time immemorial the Church has taught that it was Adam, not Eve who condemned the Human race through sin....so whatever feeling of inferiority women nurse is largely a misunderstanding of their own creation.

So in some way the savior of the race HAD to be male as well, and just as the first Adam was preceeded in sin by a woman, so too the second Adam was preceeded in immaculate sinlessness by a woman!

Eve made it possible for Adam to sin. Mary made it possible for Jesus to restore grace to the fallen race.

As for heaven and our destiny...holiness of life and not particular ministries is what the Church deems as the ultimate reason for human existence. St Paul in his analogy about the human body writes about this: the hand cannot feel a second-class citizen because it is not the eye...both are part of the body of Christ. Having different functions does not mean anything is ontologically missing in one part over another.

I think the great error the so-called Feminists fall into is their belief that dignity is somehow only found in absolute sameness, rather than in uniqueness and differentation of role.

-- Joe (joestong@yahoo.com), November 14, 2003.

Don't forget about Satan being male....

"I think the great error the so-called Feminists fall into is their belief that dignity is somehow only found in absolute sameness, rather than in uniqueness and differentation of role. "

The trouble is that over the centuries such " uniqueness and differentiation of role" has been exploited, not celebrated as a virtue. Sure, there are some things that men are better at than women, and vice versa. But that does not apply across the vast spectrum of activities that some people believe it would.

-- GT (nospam@nospam.com), November 14, 2003.

Lady P interesting questions, I cant help you much sorry. I hope your fellow "trads" will follow your lead and drop the Vat II dissent.

HI GT "You GO GIRL!" nice to see you back posting, I agree with you about the exploitation aand exaggeration of these differnces.

In saying that, if there are any young women out there who enjoy nothing more than opening ice cold cans of beer and carrying them in from the kitchen (with substantial finger foods of course) during rugby/cricket matches please e-mail me urgently for free air travel/accomodation to NZ. LOL

-- Kiwi (csisherwood@hotmail.com), November 14, 2003.

Jmj

To get fully informed on this, the following is "must reading":

1. In 1975 and 1976, the Vicar of Christ, Pope Paul VI, chief visible shepherd of the Catholic Church, twice exchanged letters with the Anglican "Archbishop" of Canterbury about the subject of "ordination" of women within the Anglican communion.

In the first letter, the pope stated:
"3. Your Grace is of course well aware of the Catholic Church’s position on this question. She holds that it is not admissible to ordain women to the priesthood, for very fundamental reasons. These reasons include: the example recorded in the Sacred Scriptures of Christ choosing his Apostles only from among men; the constant practice of the Church, which has imitated Christ in choosing only men; and her living teaching authority which has consistently held that the exclusion of women from the priesthood is in accordance with God’s plan for his Church.
"4. The Joint Commission between the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church, which has been at work since 1966, is charged with presenting in due time a final report. We must regretfully recognize that a new course taken by the Anglican Communion in admitting women to the ordained priesthood cannot fail to introduce into this dialogue an element of grave difficulty which those involved will have to take seriously into account."

In the second letter, the pope stated: "In such a spirit of candor and trust, you allude ... to a problem which has recently loomed large: the likelihood, already very strong it seems in some places, that the Anglican churches will proceed to admit women to the ordained priesthood. ... Our affection for the Anglican Communion has for many years been strong, and we always nourished and often expressed ardent hopes that the Holy Spirit would lead us, in love and in obedience to God’s will, along the path of reconciliation. This must be the measure of the sadness with which we encounter so grave a new obstacle and threat on that path."

2. Later in 1976, there came an authoritative Instruction from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), approved by the pope: "Inter Insigniores" ("Among the characteristics").

3. Eighteen years later, in 1994, we received an Apostolic Letter from Pope John Paul II: "Ordinatio sacerdotalis" ("Priestly ordination").

4. Finally, there is the key 1995 message of the CDF, following up on the pope's Apostolic Letter, clarifying its teaching as infallible: "Responsum ad dubium" ("Response to an uncertainty").

God bless you.
John
PS to GT: The loser "satan" is not "male," even though the pronoun "he" is used to refer to "him." Satan is a fallen angel, and no angel possesses a sex, since each is a pure spirit without a body.

-- J. F. Gecik (jfgecik@hotmail.com), November 16, 2003.

" PS to GT: The loser "satan" is not "male," even though the pronoun "he" is used to refer to "him." Satan is a fallen angel, and no angel possesses a sex, since each is a pure spirit without a body. "

John, one could say the same thing about God.

-- GT (nospam@nospam.com), November 16, 2003.

GT, you are absolutely correct -- insofar as God's divine nature is concerned.
God, as God, has no sex.

However, the God-Man Jesus is a Man. He is masculine in his human nature.

Moreover, he revealed the first Person of the Trinity as his "Father," so we cannot call the latter "she" or "it," but only "He."

Finally, since Our Lady conceived the Son through the power of the Holy Spirit, we do not call the latter "she" or "it," but "He."

God bless you.
John

-- J. F. Gecik (jfgecik@hotmail.com), November 16, 2003.