I always thought this was Paul’s way of keeping the men from getting too uppity by saying “Woman is the glory of man.”
He was reminding them that although woman came from the side of man, they owe their mother’s honor for the sacrifice they make in giving them life. Men and women are dependent on one another for life in different ways and those differences should be honored.Yes I said I understood the sign as an explanation.
Well I didn’t want to use the word ‘right’ I used worthy because males are given this gift because of their worth as a male.
So you understand it but you struggle to accept it? You also have to look at the bigger picture of what’s going on at the liturgy. The signs matter if we are to understand the spiritual realities that are being conveyed. In the sanctuary, you have the priest standing in the person of Christ the Head. Then you have the members who make up the Body of Christ. Women are visible signs of the Body of Christ even though men make up the body as well. You can say that the lay men should look to the woman as the sign or example in which to help them understand their part in what it means to be Bride and Body. The Bride of Christ who is made fruitful by being nourished with the love of Christ is then sent forth to bring the fruits of the Eucharist to the world.
Men and women have the privilege of imaging God and each sex points to and magnifies different aspects of God’s perfections. Saying “males are given this gift because of their worth as a male” is like saying certain perfections of God are “worth more” than others. The Trinity is One but there are also three distinct Persons in the Trinity. The Oneness of the Trinity doesn’t wipe out the differences among the three Persons. Which Person of the Trinity is worth more or more worthy than the others?
I guess I keep explaining it because I don’t understand why you keep pointing out that human males are not divine other than you seem to think that because human males have a human mother and father that that somehow that means they aren’t a more efficacious sign of Christ at the altar than a woman. Yes, human males get half of their DNA from their father but surely you can see that the woman has the much larger part in reproduction in that the baby grows from those first few cells into a fully formed human within her and she provides a lot more than just DNA in order for that to happen.
To be the image of God is
No. What is being pointed out in this passage is that in the order of nature (not the order of grace) that woman is the glory of man in that she came from him but she doesn’t image him in that her body is different than his. The man is both the image and glory of God in that he was created directly by God and images Him in that His body reflects Fatherhood. Paul thought these distinctions important enough that in the liturgy Christians should highlight these distinctions according to the custom of dress in that time and culture. Headcovering or not, in the case of men, was a matter of discipline which means the requirement could change without any doctrines being affected.
Thanks for all this information in all your posts, you are very well learned in what the church teaches. I’ve tried to pick out the ‘sticky’ parts that I’m working on so to keep posts short.
I mean that human males have human mothers and fathers, which is not quite the same as Jesus who had a human mother and a Divine father. So I don’t see why this is even a good explanation.
Yes, I don’t recall if women have had any ecclesial and theological influence, seems most teachings have come from men.
You’re very welcome. I do know there is so much confusion about this (and hurt in the misunderstanding of these things) and it seems when trying to explain one concept, it opens up another cans of worms in that other concepts have to be understood in order to understand the first one. It’s never easy to get this across in this type of forum communication but I do enjoy the discussion and I learn from them myself.
Yeah. I wasn’t sure whether Fatherhood/Motherhood, Head/Body, or Bridegroom/Bride would be the right words to go with but they are all related to each other. Probably Bridegroom/Bride is would be the better terms.
Jesus is the groom and the Church (the community of faithful) is the bride.
The point I was trying to make is that in the male we have both sexes represented in a way that in the female it is not. In Christ, this is more explicitly seen since he didn’t have a human father. In the human male, putting the equal DNA that both mother and father contribute aside, the flesh that makes up that baby takes form and grows completely from the nourishment of the mother and is even fed with her body after birth. So the flesh of the person is built from the nutrients provided by the mother. So a priest on the altar has the male sex represented in form but the flesh, his body, was primarily provided by what his mother gave him through the sacrifice of her own body and the nutrients he took from her blood. The female sex is represented in the contribution she gave in the growing and nurturing of the flesh of the man standing there. If the person standing on the altar is a woman, she too would have received her body built from the nutrients provided by her mother but the male sex, which she is not, would be missing. Missing in the sense that you can’t see it with your eyes, not missing in the sense that the person has DNA from their human father.
Of course, we have the women doctors of the church. St. Catherine of Sienna had great influence over the Pope in her time. St. Hildegard is another. The influence of a good mother towards her children can spread to influence larger society when they are grown. I do think that a lot of the great influence that women have had down through the ages, although not explicitly seen, has been more hidden and behind the scenes due to the sharper distinction of men and women in the past in public life but of course, the contribution of women in public life has grown tremendously in recent history. The closing documents of Vatican II states
Good luck having an all male community without women sacrificing their body and blood to give them life. Sigh. The feminine seems to always be more hidden but hidden doesn’t mean without power to influence. How many males in those all-male communities are there because of the example and teachings they learned at their mother’s knee? Nonetheless, an all male community doesn’t the Church make. It still takes man and woman together to make up the Church.
No. Not all women are called to biological motherhood, the same for men and biological fatherhood. However, built into our very being is the capacity for motherhood and fatherhood and that can be expressed regardless of being a biological father or mother. If the perfections of both of these are in God, then the capacity of each should be put to good use in the world because obviously if they are of God, then they are needed in our relationships, policies, and work that we do in the world.
Whoever includes women. And likely women were in the crowd and heard Him.
NAB note:
Because the body has many members (diversity) but the head is one. There is only one Christ and he was a man born of a woman so one man (the priest) stands in for Christ the Head but the diversity of the members of the body make up the body.