Christians in Galatia knew that women were created in God's image.

Sunday, 6/23/13

We might highlight St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians where he said, “For all of you who are baptized in Christ, there is neither male nor female.”

I leaned on that line in a play I had for grade school kids maybe fifteen years ago. My play was about Ignatius of Antioch and Emperor Trajan. The play opened in the emperor’s court where a slave girl from Galatia was sitting alone, going over the emperor’s mail, and to herself she was singing, “Christians in Galatia taught me to write, but I was made a slave by thugs who turned my days to night.”

Basically, for us Christians there is neither male nor female, because before all else we are all persons made in God’s image. I have been boring people by harping too much on the thought that each of us mirror’s God in a unique way. I hope I am not wrong in this, but I consider God to be so many faceted that each of us has the potential of being like God in a way no one else is like him. Each of us, you and I, have the potential of being like him in a way no one else is.

What put me on to this line of thought was Vatican II’s document on Christian education. It stated that as teachers our task is to aid each child in his or her task of becoming a unique person.

Much of our way of putting women down comes from social structures that assign them to a lower place. Up until 1900 no women were admitted to Harvard or Yale, and even tough women thought it should had to be so, because women are the strong defenders of proprieties. From Korea fifty years ago I have strong memories of a tough woman who wanted men and women to stick to their proper roles.

Miss Pak was the English teacher in the Boys’ High School, and she was had so often been coming to me for English conversation practice that she thought it might be proper for her to become a Catholic. So she asked me, “Should I become a Catholic?” And when I answered, “That’s up to you” she got bossy with me, as she often did. She said, “You are the man. Don’t you even know that men make the decisions?”  

I was delighted yesterday with our newspaper’s account about Moira Rossi. She is an intellectually disabled young woman who won in her campaign to have the Florida Legislature pass a bill requiring that all state statutes do away with applying the term Retarded to people like herself. The Army urges us all to be the best we can be, and Moira’s strong religion has always had her striving to be the best she can be.