Monday, December 17, 2012

"Just" a body?

My friend Father Sibley (pastor of the Ragin' Cajun Catholics at the University of Louisiana (Lafayette) posted this insight from then-Cardinal Ratzinger on Facebook. It clearly speaks to the confusion in society today--how many times I have heard women dismiss their femininity as being "just biology" and "not who I am."

Whenever biology is subtracted from humanity, humanity itself is negated. Thus, the question of the legitimacy of maleness as such and of femaleness as such has high stakes: Nothing less than the reality of the creature. Since the biological determinateness of humanity is least possible to hide in motherhood, an emancipation that negates bios is a particular aggression against the woman. It is the denial of her right to be a woman. Conversely, the preservation of creation is just so far bound up in a special way with the question of woman. And the Woman in whom “biology” is “theology”—that is, motherhood of God—is in a special way the point where paths diverge.”
– Joseph Ratzinger in Mary: The Church At The Source