The Church illustrates, through its understanding of the complementarity of men and women, that there is something unique about being a woman, and something unique about being a man — and that the two sexes are equal.
Equality as human persons created in the image of God does not imply that men and women are the same. As John Paul II put it, “masculinity and femininity” are “two different ‘incarnations,’ that is, two ways in which the same human being, created ‘in the image of God’ (Genesis 1:27), ‘is a body’” (Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, 8:2).
One of the beautiful but more complicated aspects of Catholicism is the development of doctrine within the Tradition of the Church. Development of doctrine does not mean that the Church’s teaching changes, but that her understanding of particular truths deepens. Sometimes this means that an interpretation of Scripture reaches a new level of meaning.
Read the rest at the National Catholic Register…