Docetism is the heresy that says that Jesus never assumed human form but the whole human thing was just an illusion, basically a form of Gnosticism. What I said does not smack of Docetism
Sure it does. To deny that Jesus was a real first-century Jew is Docetism. And to claim that Jesus did not act according to the norms of first-century Judaism (except where His sinlessness and His divine mission prevented Him from doing so) is to deny that He was a real first-century Jew.
if you want to say men are superior in light of their ability to be priests, so be it.
Superior as in more fully human.
Cite where the Pope teaches that men and women are completely and totally equal.
What I said was that the Pope teaches that men and women are equal by nature, and that one is not superior to the other. I agree that this essential equality does not involve identity. That’s not the point.
I’m thinking of passages like this from Mulieris Dignitatem 3.6:
*both man and woman are human beings to an equal degree, *both are created in God’s image.
or
*Man is a person, man and woman equally so, *since both were created in the image and likeness of the personal God.
or
QUOTE] In biblical language this name indicates her essential identity with regard to man -
'is-'issah - something which unfortunately modern languages in general are unable to express: “She shall be called woman ('issah) because she was taken out of man ('is)”: *Gen *2:23. The biblical text provides sufficient bases for recognizing the essential equality of man and woman from the point of view of their humanity.24 From the very beginning, both are persons, unlike the other living beings in the world about them.
The woman is another “I” in a common humanity.
I know this seems obvious, but it isn’t. Contrast it with this, from ST 1, Qu. 92, Art. 1, ad 1:
As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of woman comes from defect in the active force or from some material indisposition, or even from some external influence; such as that of a south wind, which is moist, as the
Philosopher observes (De Gener. Animal. iv, 2). On the other hand, as regards human nature in general, woman is not misbegotten, but is included in nature’s intention as directed to the work of generation.
or ad 2:
So by such a kind of subjection woman is naturally subject to man, because in man the discretion of reason predominates.
or Question 93, art. 4, ad 1:
The image of God, in its principal signification, namely the intellectual nature, is found both in man and in woman. Hence after the words, “To the image of God He created him,” it is added, “Male and female He created them” (
Genesis 1:27). Moreover it is said “them” in the plural, as
Augustine (Gen. ad lit. iii, 22) remarks, lest it should be thought that both sexes were united in one individual. But in a secondary sense the image of God is found in man, and not in woman: for man is the beginning and end of woman; as God is the beginning and end of every creature.
These are two significantly different views of the role of women with regard to human nature.
Everything I am saying is about human nature. Talk to me about any other aspect of this controversy, and I will be deaf, because I have one point I’m trying to make and only one. If men and women are fully equal in *nature, *as JPII says, and if women are full and perfect individual instances of human nature just as men are (which JPII clearly also believed, or he couldn’t say what he says), then you cannot say that women are *by nature *incapable of a high and noble office in the Church, of which men are capable. With all due respect, JPII was wrong here, because of his determination to adhere to what he believed to be Sacred Tradition.
Edwin
