But my larger point was just to lament the way people seem to think they can ask (or rather DEMAND) money from anyone as long as there’s a vague reference to “the poor” in the mix somewhere. Which is precisely the kind of practice that makes me so cynical about all such endeavors.

You said “complimentary”. There is one womb in a marriage. XY is better at some things. XX is better at other things. XX cannot be XY nor vice versa, but they CAN come together! They can work toward the same goal, or work against one another, but XX has to do what XX does best and XY has to do what XY does best, and they both have to do and share in the rest that they cannot stand to have to do! And if one dies or is long term disable, the other gets to do even more of the “foreign” tasks, capable or not. Be what you are, until forced to be more. There’s enough to do.

I found some further discussion of accidents that may help in Saint Thomas’ De Anima: “There are three genera of accidents: some are caused by the principles of the species, and are called proper accidents, for example, risibility in man; others caused by the principles of the individual, and this class is spoken of [in two ways]; first, those that have a permanent cause in their subject, fro example, masculine and feminine, and other things of this kind, and these are called inseparable accidents; secondly, those that do not have a permanent cause in their subject, such as to sit and to walk, and these are called separable accidents. Now no accident of any kind ever constitutes part of the essence of a thing, and thus an accident is never found in a thing’s definition.”

We also sometimes say things like, “If I were Mel Gibson, I’d make a movie about St. Edmund Campion,” or whatever. But obviously, if I were Mel Gibson, I’d be a different person.

St. Paul explicitly argues on the basis of Eve’s creation from Adam that woman was made for man, not man for woman. There it is a matter of principle. As for the New Adam and the New Eve, we aren’t goint to argue that Our Lord was made for Our Lady as if she were His principle. I think that we can say that He did become man for her more than for the rest of the human race. Certainly not for His own good. That may explain the complementarity; Eve was made for Adam, God became the New Adam for the sake of the New Eve. Yet even then, the New Adam still is superior to the New Eve in that He is her Creator, Model/Archetype, Redeemer, and Savior.

You can return to what St. Thomas says. Christ honors man by becoming one, woman by being born of one. Now, which is the higher honor? Do we agree that Christ could not have manifested his divinity if He had become a woman? Now does a greater ability to manifest the attributes of the Creator imply greater accidental perfection or not? Or does reflection of the Creator not constitute a perfection in a creature? I freely admit that in any other pairing of man and woman, the accidental perfection of masculinity may not balance any number of other perfections that are not determined by sex — practice in virtue, education, and especially grace. But in the case of the perfect man and woman there still is the test case of inequality in perfection: the woman is the most god-like human person and the man is a Person of God become human. Unequal. So I can still fault people who glibly say, “Yeah, well the holiest human person was a woman, not a man,” without so much as pausing to consider that the holiest *human being* was in fact a man, Christ, Who exceeded His Mother in grace. I’m serious when I say that we risk scandalizing Protestants and others when we casually refer to Our Lady as “the only sinless human being” or words to that effect without even thinking to add “other than her Son,” who was also a sinless human being. I just see this tendency to effectively exclude Christ from the human race because He is God as well as man. As singular as are the graces that accrue to the Immaculata as the Mother of God, they do not exceed the graces that accrue to the Soul of her Son by right of His actually *being* God. Our Lady’s graces *are* singular, but *among pure creatures/created persons.* It’s not always easy to make all the proper distinctions in casual parlance and in devotional usage; on the other hand, casual parlance and devotional usage can lead us to forget some necessary theological presuppositions and distinctions. That’s what I’m trying to provide here.

As for Aristotelian biology, I would note that it is not good to casually dismiss his observations. Despite all that the modernists want to say against Aristotle, it remains the fact that the male is the active partner in reproduction and the female is the passive one, and not just in respect to the easily perceptible mechanics of sexual congress. Aristotle incorrectly thought that the woman merely received the seed of the man, which of itself constituted the full genetic makeup of the offspring. No, but it turns out that it still is the male sex cell that actively swims for and penetrates the egg. The sperm is active and the ovum passive. It is still true that the male seed is the most determinative of the genotype and phenotype of the offspring. Why? Because it is the sperm cell that carries either the X or the Y chromosome and thus determines the sex of the offspring. So modern science has disproven one aspect of Aristotle’s treatment of men and women as active and passive while affirming this fundamental observation at the microscopic level. So much for poor old Aristotle! Harumph!

Besides, it seems to me that a lot of the more basic observations about accidental perfection can be argued from Scripture alone without reference to Aristotelian science. To my knowledge, I have not based my own arguments on any one of Aquinas’ particular arguments for male superiority. I have merely noted that *IF* Christ’s birth from a woman and Our Lady’s Immaculate Conception says something about the status of women, *THEN* Christ’s birth as a man and the graces His soul received on account of the hypostatic union should say something about the status of men. And it seems to me that the latter suggests a greater accidental perfection in the male — if only the dignity of being head/Head as opposed to being under the guidance of another person acting as head/Head.

A whitewash perhaps to spare us the bad conclusions based on bad science and to shield Saint Thomas from criticism. Yes, Popik said some of the same things that Father Farrell did in my previous post but she said a lot of jarring things in between. And in the end she does say that if Saint Thomas made some mistakes, it was because his major premise was based on falsehood. She says,

“The dependence of St. Thomas’ philosophy of woman on the generative biology of Aristotle, then, cannot be overestimated. As evidence for her inferiority, this biological theory argues the necessity of that inferiority. In other words, while St. Thomas appears to accept the inferiority of women in reason and virtue as something given in experience (either his or the common experience of men) and to offer his arguments as mere explanations of this inferiority, those arguments, once given the truth of Aristotle’s biology, conclude so necessarily to woman’s inferiority that he could presume that inferiority to be verified by experience. If some of St. Thomas’ conclusions about the nature of woman are not true, the fault lies not in his philosophical reasoning, but in his acceptance of Aristotle’s biology as his starting principle.”

Fr. Farrell was not going to hold Saint Thomas responsible for his conclusions based on this false principle and verifies that he held woman’s soul to be equal to man’s, without going into the controversy.

I think anyone could come up with a theory about the inferiority of men due to their physical strength: Because men are strong by nature, they have a tendency to resolve differences not by reason but by force. This often leads to striking opponents, escalating in some cases to murder. Likewise their strong emotional tendencies tend to encourage them to forget proper manners when dealing with women, reminiscent of the evolutionary era. If you look at the statistics of incarceration, men outnumber women by 4 to 1. (just a guess for argument sake) Women are the great civilizing influence on society. As woman goes so goes the culture…. Sounds good but can I make the conclusion: Therefore women are superior and more noble than men? No, but if there were some false scientific or Aristotelian premise with which everyone took as true, as the “starting principle” there would be a good case. Take that away and it falls.

Referring to Eve being made from the rib of Adam, you put a lot of weight on the first principle: “Isn’t the principle superior to and more perfect than that of/for which it is the principle?” And yet the human body of the New Adam came completely from the New Eve.

You say that grace can overcome the inferiority of the female yet Saint Thomas admitted other elements beside grace could do the same, such as education. Popik writes: ‘The only time Thomas attempts an explanation of the exceptional women, he says something quite revolutionary something, which calls into question his theory that the inferiority of women’s souls and reasoning powers is naturally caused by the imperfection of their bodies. After praising the wisdom of the Samaritan woman at the well, Thomas explains almost matter-of-factly that it should not be surprising that this woman was so learned, for it commonly happens in those areas where there are diverse doctrines, where these matters are much debated, that even the women and the simple people are learned in higher matters.”

This must not be taken as a contradiction, she continues: “but rather as an indication that that inferiority is not so great as to be impossible of being overcome with a bit of practice, by cultural factors, and by education. Women then, because of the effect of their imperfect femininity, tend to be weak in reason, but they are not necessarily or universally so:…” Not necessarily so? The case is falling apart.
In Thomas day, did girls receive the same elementary education as boys? Were they allowed a higher education? If so there would have been a lot more exceptions for Saint Thomas to consider. As it is the whole inferiority theory starts to unravel as more and more exceptions are found.

“The devil attacked mankind through the woman, the weaker part of humanity, because he saw that in her wisdom ruled and shone to a lesser degree.” In another part of the Summa Saint Thomas talks about the intellectual gifts of Adam and Eve and says that Eve, because of her gifts, could not have been deceived by Satan but had to have already sinned interiorly through vanity and pride. Blinded so, she then gave in.

There may be other discrepancies that anyone who studied the Summa as Father Farrell must have would know. He may have made the conjecture of men and women complimenting each other in knowledge and maybe not but he wasn’t writing a thesis and was speaking authoritatively as someone who knew his subject.

Ah, but the question is not over equality or inequality of *substance* but of *accident.* That makes the analogy between relationships among creatures and the relationships within the Trinity too tricky for me to grapple with.

I suppose that the Father as the principle within the Blessed Trinity would be the exception to this. However, I am not sure that we ever receive in traditional accounts of marriage any statement to the effect that man and woman are equal in the sense that the Father and Son are equal. Although the Son’s obedience to the Father does present an interesting case where the authority to command and obedience to said command do not imply superiority and inferiority. But this may have to do with the analogies we are using; perhaps *among creatures* such a paradox would not be tenable. More to mull over.

To return to Fr. Farrell, he writes: “to augment and conserve the love of man for woman as for one who came from himself, giving it somewhat the note of the love of a parent for a child”

Man:woman::parent:child. Striking! Do we generally speak of the parent and the child being equal? Equal *qua* humans yes, but not in terms of authority, etc. The relationship between parent and child seems to me to be complementary in a number of ways, but complementarity does not seem to entail accidental equality. I think we can say that the parent is the child’s superior, which is why we call our superiors in the Church “Father” and “Mother.” And God, the superior partner in the life of grace, is called the “husband of the soul,” not the bride.