Catholic Sex Blog

Have you ever thought of this question - why was Jesus a man? Why did God become a man, not a woman? It isn’t as simple as saying that if Jesus had been a woman, then people would not have listened to her. As in, it’s not for a cultural or social reason that God became a man. It’s Jesus we’re talking about, and he broke almost all the social and cultural rules of his time. Why then did God become a man? Here, we’re asking why God became specifically a male human.

To understand this, we need to understand two things. First is that God created humans male and female. He could have created us unisex, but he chose to create us male and female. Why? Because if humans are made in the image of God, then humans have to live in a communion of love. When a man looks at a woman, and a woman looks at a man, they understand very well that they are made differently, and that the parts that are different fit together in a complementary way. This is how humans were created in the beginning.

From this reason, it follows that men and women are fundamentally different, not only in terms of the way their bodies are built, but also in the roles they play in life. It is true that women can be a police officer (as opposed to policeman), a fire fighter (as opposed to fireman), and that men can be nurses and secretaries, but there is one thing that a man can do, and no woman can. That is to father a child. In the same way, only women can become pregnant; no man can do that.

So the first thing we need to understand is that God created men and women differently, to play different roles, but to live as a communion of love in God’s own Trinitarian image.

The second thing we need to understand is that God has a male role. I’m not saying that God is male, but that God plays a male role. By this I mean that God is the Initiator, while humans are the Recipient. When we look at the male-female relationship, especially in the conjugal aspect, we see that the man is always the initiator. He gives of himself and the woman receives the man’s seed. This is further strengthened by the fact that the man tends to climax first. I quote the following from Pope John Paul II:

If a husband is truly to love his wife, “it is necessary to insist that intercourse must not serve merely as a means of allowing [his] climax. … The man must take [the] difference between male and female reactions into account… so that climax may be reached [by] both… and as far as possible occur in both simultaneously.” The husband must do this “not for hedonistic, but for altruistic reasons.” In this case, if “we take into account the shorter and more violent curve of arousal in the man, [such] tenderness on his part in the context of marital intercourse acquires the significance of an act of virtue”.

- Love and Responsibility, Karol Wojtyla

God always reaches out to humans. He is always the Initiator, and humans are always receiving God in themselves. Throughout the Bible, we see that God’s one desire is to marry us. God literally wants to impregnate us with his Word. In fact, there was one woman in history who was literally impregnated by God’s Word, who later became a unique fusion of God and human - Jesus. This is why Mary is the model for the Church. She represents the Church, who is the Bride of Christ, and she represents humanity, who receives the gift of God himself into us.

So the second thing we need to understand is that God wants to marry us, and that God is always the Initiator in this relationship.

Understanding these two things helps us to see why God had to become a man, not a woman, when he became human. As a God-man, Jesus was able to initiate his gift of love, his gift of self on the cross. If Jesus had been a woman, she would not have been able to initiate anything. She would have to receive something from humanity. But humanity is the one who receives, not initiates.

When we understand the reason why God had to be a man (not a woman), we understand why the Church insists that the ministers of the altar and the Eucharist have to be male, not female. In order to act in the person of Christ at the altar, the priest has to be a man. If we insist on women ordination, then we will not be able to explain why Jesus is a man; why the Church is the Bride of Christ; and why men and women are different.

In addition, if we insist on women ordination, then we will also not be able to explain the importance of having two complementary genders in marriage. Guess what follows? You know it - homosexual unions. This is clearly painted out in the path taken by the Anglican Church, something that began back in the time of Henry VIII.

As you probably know Henry VIII broke away from the Church because the pope refused to allow him to marry another woman. Henry VIII decided to change the meaning of marriage in his new church. But when we change the meaning of marriage, we also change the meaning of Christianity - why God wants to marry us. And we also change the meaning of our own humanity - why we are made male and female.

This is the reason why the Church cannot allow women ordination - because it understands that the priesthood is not merely a career or ministry - it is a role in which the ordained minister acts in the person of Christ… and Christ was not a woman. He couldn’t have been, not without changing the meaning of marriage, the meaning of humanity, and the meaning of Christianity.

This is also why the Church can never approve of homosexual unions not because of discrimination, but simply because homosexual unions deny the fundamental differences between male and female; deny the significance, sanctity, and the very meaning of marriage… and this directly leads to denying the meaning of Christianity. You will find that Christians in support of homosexual unions are not able to explain why Christ is the Bridegroom and the Church is the Bride (Ephesians 5:25; Revelation 19:7-9), or even why Christ lay down his life for his Church. It is, in essence, the denial of the fatherhood of God.

That said, it must also be said that the reason the Church cannot allow women ordination has nothing to do with culture or the degradation of women. On the contrary, the Church holds women in a very high position. Pope John Paul II himself has called the feminist movement “praiseworthy”, and that it must continue. But he also stressed that it must not make the mistake of equating males with females. They have the same dignity, but they are not the same.

The Church does not degrade women. If it did, it would not place Mary as Queen of Heaven, and the role model for all disciples of Christ, and indeed the role model for all humanity. Mary is so highly esteemed because she received God into her so fully that a human person was conceived from that intimate union with God.

Each of us is also called to receive God fully in our lives, so that God may be born into the world. But as none of us can receive God so fully and completely as Mary did, since she was conceived without original sin, none of us will ever be able to physically give birth to a God-man. We can, however, still spiritually give birth to God in the world, increasing his kingdom of heaven on earth.