Last summer, a College Biology Professor in Texas was fired for teaching that sex is determined by X and Y chromosomes. Some students had walked out of his class and complained. They were of the mind that each individual decides their own gender and that the professor was pushing his Christian faith on them. The incident shows the current state of our culture where the ideology of relativism is taking a firmer hold on young minds especially. The influential feminist philosophy which seeks to deny and eradicate the natural differences between men and women has also helped to bring us to this crisis point.

Saint John Paul II is the great champion of our time of the dignity of the human person and prophetic teacher of the truth of why God made us male and female. His Christian anthropology takes us back to the beginning when we were created in the image and likeness of the Holy Trinity. All would do well to read John Paul’s encyclical “On the Dignity and Vocation of Women.” Similarly, his theology of the body is a great gift to help us understand the fundamental truths of who we are, where we come from, and where we are going.

In the encyclical, the Pope shows how the conflict between the sexes is rooted in sin, especially original sin. The fall wounded our nature, including the specific result of the tendency of men to dominate women. (Gen 3:16) But the Redemption brought about by Jesus has begun the healing process. St. John Paul recognizes that injustices against women continue and must be corrected. But he also states that this “must not under any condition lead to the ‘masculinization’ of women. … women must not appropriate to themselves male characteristics contrary to their own feminine ‘originality’. … if they take this path, women will not reach fulfillment, but instead will deform and lose what constitutes their essential richness.” (no. 10)

Next time we will reflect on how St. John Paul shows the superiority of the feminine in the interior and spiritual realm, as we have been discussing.

Peace.
–Fr. Peter