more to aid our culture and our Church
than the “theology of women” recently
called for by some Church leaders.
Relying on the indications left for us by
St. John Paul, we will ourselves return
to the “beginning” found in Genesis
and continue the work he began there.
What Are the Fundamentals?
St. John Paul’s theory of
complementarity can be contrasted
with the many distortions that are
found in history and still characterize
our own era.
First there was Plato, who argued
that women and men are equal but
denied any real differences. Next was
the gender “polarity” of Aristotle,
where men are considered superior to
women. Later there came “fractional”
complementarity, a theory that
suggests that a man and a woman
“add up” as it were to one whole
human being.
But most destructive are the theories
of dualism and materialism. These ideas
fracture the union of the body and the
soul; the body is merely “matter” and
human identity is located in “mind”
alone. Such thinking has turned the
body into an instrument of pleasure,
one’s sexual identity as a matter of
choice, and led to the conviction that
men and women are exactly the same
and the body has no meaning at all.
The