Psychological Healing
in the Roman Catholic Mystic Tradition

Questions and Answers

How do you live in San Francisco and have such a trite understanding of feminism? Catholicism makes little room for the thinking woman or for that matter the thinking man. The request of equality is a basic one and is not based on making God pay. . . . Denial and love are not one. Life is about living not abstaining. You are one of the non-adaptive, narrow-minded interpreters of the tradition and history that make Catholicism ritualistic, patriarchal and hierarchical.

       
ctually, if you really dare to think about it, for ages men have been saying, “Life is about living, not abstaining” and women (and, in San Francisco, other men as well) have been paying the price all along.

And so it is precisely because I live in San Francisco that I understand feminism so profoundly.

Now, if you go right back to the beginning, you will find that God created men and women equal. In Genesis 1:27 we read that God created man, and that “man” is male and female. And in Genesis 2:18 ff. we read that God wanted to give “the man” a “partner.” Notice this: He made the woman to be a partner—not a slave and not a playmate—for the man.

And so Christ insisted on the dignity of human relations. We read in Matthew 5:28 that He even raised lust to the level of the high sin of adultery.

The early Church said nothing to contradict the equality of men and women. Ephesians 5:21 instructs all Christians to “be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ.” Only in marriage—not in any other social relationship—are wives specifically instructed to be subordinate to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22; Colossians 3:18; 1 Peter 3:1), but husbands are instructed to treat their wives with love (Ephesians 5:28)—and real love, if you think about it, demands equality.

Moreover, because Christ demanded that neither spouse be seen as mere property, the bond between the husband and wife cannot be broken as if one person were legally disposing of property.

All of this simply shows how the marriage bond in a legitimate marriage between a man and a woman reflects the loving bond between Christ and His Church: the man represents Christ, and the woman represents the Church who must be obedient to Him..

In all of nature, a male fertilizes a female’s egg so that the egg can grow and develop into an independent organism. For humans in particular, the woman nurtures and protects the baby as it grows within her body; then, as the child becomes independent from its mother, the man provides the guidance and instruction of a father to prepare the child to function productively in the world in service to God the Father. This natural, reproductive function between a man and a woman serves as a signification for Christ’s relation to His Church: Christ provides Sacramental “fertilization” to souls so that they can grow and develop within our mother the Church, and, ultimately, after death be received into the Father’s presence forever.

And why did Christ not take any women for Apostles? And why did He call God the Father? Well, these are the elements of God’s reality. If these facts pain you, then consider it your cross and bear it. Take that cross you wear around your neck like a piece of jewelry and start carrying it. If you believe that Christ is God—and if you don’t then you are self-deceived in calling yourself a Christian—then you must believe He did and said these things for a reason.

Yes, you could complain in bitterness that you’re not getting what you want from life, but if you think about it, the purpose of life is not to get what you want by denying the cross because you don’t want to deny yourself. The purpose of life is to serve God with pure love, regardless of what happens to you or how the world treats you, so that your sacrifices can help to lead others to true healing from the bitterness they feel about their emotional pain.

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