401 ALL ARE ONE IN CHRIST JESUS

YOUCAT Lesson 401

YOUCAT the catechism for Catholic youth

401  Is there a priority of one sex over the other?

No.  God endowed men and women with identical dignity as persons.  [2331, 2335]

Notre Dame Academy pilgrimage to National Champion Schrine of Our Lady of Good Help. ..... 401

Both men and women are human beings created in God’s image and children of God redeemed by Jesus Christ.  It is just as unchristian as it is inhumane to discriminate unjustly against someone because he is male or female.  Equal dignity and equal rights, nevertheless do not mean uniformity.  The sort of egalitarianism that ignores the specific character of a man or a woman contradicts God’s plan of creation.  54, 260

“Christianity snatched women from a condition that was the equivalent of slavery.”  Madame de Stael (1766-1817, French author)

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”  Galatians 3:28

[2331, 2335]

* I. "MALE AND FEMALE HE CREATED THEM . . ."

2331 "God is love and in himself he lives a mystery of personal loving communion. Creating the human race in his own image . . .. God inscribed in the humanity of man and woman the vocation, and thus the capacity and responsibility, of love and communion." (Familiaris Consortio 11)¹¹⁵ –Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition

"God created man in his own image . . . male and female he created them"; (Genesis 1:27.)¹¹⁶ He blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and multiply"; (Genesis 1:28)¹¹⁷ "When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created." (Genesis 5:1-2.)¹¹⁸ --CCC

2332 Sexuality affects all aspects of the human person in the unity of his body and soul. It especially concerns affectivity, the capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way the aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others. --CCC

2333 Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity. Physical, moral, and spiritual difference and complementarity are oriented toward the goods of marriage and the flourishing of family life. The harmony of the couple and of society depends in part on the way in which the complementarity, needs, and mutual support between the sexes are lived out. --CCC

2334 "In creating men 'male and female,' God gives man and woman an equal personal dignity." (Familiaris Consortio 22; Compare Gaudium et Spes 49 § 2.)¹¹⁹ "Man is a person, man and woman equally so, since both were created in the image and likeness of the personal God."^{1 (}Mulieris Dignitatem 6.⁾²⁰ –CCC

2335 Each of the two sexes is an image of the power and tenderness of God, with equal dignity though in a different way. The union of man and woman in marriage is a way of imitating in the flesh the Creator's generosity and fecundity: "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh." (Genesis 2:24.)¹²¹ All human generations proceed from this union. (Compare Genesis 4:1-2, 25-26; Gen 5:1)¹²² --CCC