A reader writes:

I’m a frequent reader of your blog and I was wondering if you had seen this and what you think about it? Also, I was wondering about you thoughts on another phenomena I’ve noticed. My friend who posted this link left the Catholic Church over the issue of female ordination, arguing to me that women should be allowed to be priests since there is no difference men and women. After hearing this I suspected she would come to support gay marriage shortly after on the same reasoning. What do you think the effect on our culture is from this assumption and what does the Church say about difference between men and women? Thanks.

I hadn’t seen the video. I don’t doubt they have their facts in order about Prop 8. Similarly, a supporter of the move to legalize contraception in the mid-60s or abortion in the state of Washington could, with technical accuracy, claim that there was no way they were ultimately aiming at sweeping away all abortion laws and making abortion on demand legal in all 50 states up to the moment of birth, and for any reason whatsoever. Still less were the proponents of these measures able to acknowledge that the logic of their position had to inexorably lead to a drive for euthanasia. I’m old enough to remember the snort of derision that greeted prolifers when they pointed out that this was exactly where it would, in logic, have to go.

In the same way, the makers of this video are kidding themselves and everybody else if they don’t believe that this has to lead to persecution of the churches which reject homosexual practice as a sin. It surely will.

Re: your friend’s notion that there is no difference between men and women. The irony, of course, is that she has taken an aspect of the Christian revelation and elevated to a totally unwarranted All Explaining Theory of Everything. It is revelation (and revelation alone) which tells us that “in Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female”. It is revelationa and revelation alone that tells us human being are, make and female, made in the image of God. There is no empirical scientific proof of human equality. It is *purely* an article of faith. It will be interesting to see how long the vestigial faith in human equality lasts once our culture jettisons the Faith that is the only conceivable basis of our conviction of human equality. I suspect, not very long.

As to the question of women’s ordination, this is pretty much all I have to say.

Finally, the deepest Church teaching I know of concerning the differences and complementarity between male and female are found in John Paul II’s Theology of the Body.