being created for community—for communion (on both the
natural and supernatural levels of existence).
Man and woman were made “for each other”—not that
God left them half-made and incomplete: he created
them to be a communion of persons, in which each
can be “helpmate” to the other, for they are equal as
persons (“bone of my bones”) and complementary as
masculine and feminine. In marriage God unites them
in such a way that, by forming “one flesh” (Gn 2:24),
they can transmit human life: “Be fruitful and multiply,
and fill the earth” (Gn 1:28). By transmitting human
life to their descendants, man and woman as spouses
and parents cooperate in a unique way in the Creator’s
work. (Catechism, no. 372)
Theologian Fr. Paul Haffner in his book, Mystery of
Creation, further points out that a proper and profound
understanding of the relation between man and woman is
necessary in order fully to understand the mystery of the
Church as the bride of Christ, the true nature of the married
state, and why the ministerial priesthood presupposes a male
subject of ordination.
Man and woman are created in view of the coming
of Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, and this anchors
the difference between the sexes in a Christological
setting. The relation between man and woman reflects
in some way the mystery of the Holy Trinity. The
Apostle states that: “there are no more distinctions
between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and
female, but all . . . are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28).
Aid to Evangelization
By way of conclusion, Christian Anthropology is
important for evangelization because many contemporary
philosophies obscure or deny the human need for God,
redemption, and grace. They also hold that there is no
meaning or purpose beyond the present life.
Theologian Karl Rahner famously stated that “dogmatic
theology today must be theological anthropology” for the
purpose of launching an effective new evangelization of
the world. For we must first engage people where they are
at, showing how the Gospel addresses and answers the very
questions they have been asking themselves: Where do I come
M
from? Where am I going? What is my purpose? Who am I? n
“The Nuptial Meaning of the Body”
John Paul II thinks [the human
person] cannot be adequately
understood apart from the way
in which it is embodied. He has
something to say about how we
experience our selfhood through
the body, and it would belong to
the theology of the body to say
more about it. . . .
This concern leads him beyond
the general fact of our embodiment,
to the more particular fact that we
are embodied as man and woman.
That it is not good for us to be alone,
that we can find ourselves only
through a sincere gift of ourselves,
has its first fundamental bodily
expression in our existing as man
and woman; and in fact it cannot
really be understood apart from the
difference and complementarity of
the sexes. It is as man and woman
that we are first raised out of our
solitude, and ordered one to another,
and called to self-donation. The
capacity of the masculine body and
of the feminine body to serve selfdonation is called by John Paul the
“nuptial meaning” of the human
body, a concept that stands at the
heart of his theology of the body.
On this basis John Paul is led to
break new ground in the theology
of the Image of God in man.
Traditionally, one said that this
image lies primarily in the rationality
of man, which belongs to the soul;
one left the body entirely out of that
which images God. But John Paul . . .
says . . . that man and woman, taken
in their unity-in-difference, also
image God, and in particular image
the inner-Trinitarian communion of
the Divine Persons.
Since the man-woman distinction
is by its very nature also a bodily
distinction, it follows that it is not the
soul alone but the body-soul union
that constitutes the image of God in
man. John Paul is the first pope to
teach that the body, too, shares in
the image of God in man.
(An excerpt from John F. Crosby’s “Theology of the Body” entry in Our Sunday Visitor’s
Encyclopedia of Catholic Doctrine.)
FAll 2014
SAcred HeArt MAjor SeminAry
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