Man and Woman
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he
created him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27); “And the
rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman
and brought her to the man” (Gen. 2:22).
Men and women share equally all the essential attributes of human nature.
They are equally human beings, possess freedom and responsibility, have
been redeemed by Our Lord Jesus Christ, and are destined for eternal glory
and happiness.
All this can be gathered from Scripture. It is clear that the first woman was
made not like the lower creatures but as a companion and helper to man
“like himself”: “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make
him a helper as his partner” (Gen. 2:18); “there is no longer male and
female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28).
The pagan notion that the woman is an inferior kind of man has no place in
the mind of Catholicism. The person of Our Lady, the manner in which Our
Lord honored women, the role of women throughout our Savior’s life, and
the presence of women with the Apostles in the Upper Room on Pentecost
Day, are vitally important facts concerning the status of women in Christian
society:
“Therefore, Christ through His word which stands forever, elevated
man in marriage and again raised up woman who had been cast
down by the ancients to the role of slave and whom the most austere
of the Roman censors had likened to ‘an unbridled nature and an
unsubdued animal;’ just as the Redeemer had exalted in Himself not
only man but woman, taking human nature from a woman and
sublimating His Mother blessed among women, to an immaculate
mirror of virtue and grace for every Christian family throughout the
centuries, crowned in Heaven Queen of the Angels and Saints.”¹
1
Pope Pius XII, Address to Married Couples, 22 April, 1942.
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