Deborah Savage January 2015 Franciscan University Presents “The Masculine Genius” Dr. Deborah Savage Is There a Masculine Genius? When Pope St. John Paul II wrote his Apostolic Letter On the Dignity and Vocation of Women in 1988, he introduced into the...
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Deborah Savage January 2015 Franciscan University Presents “The Masculine Genius” Dr. Deborah Savage Is There a Masculine Genius? When Pope St. John Paul II wrote his Apostolic Letter On the Dignity and Vocation of Women in 1988, he introduced into the Catholic tradition an entirely new category in the Church’s understanding of the human person: the so-called “feminine genius.” In that document, St. John Paul declares that woman’s genius is expressed in her unique yet natural tendency to attend, above all, to persons. He argues that this genius is grounded in the fact that all women possess the capacity to be mothers in either a physical or spiritual sense. And it is a quality that is found most perfectly in Mary, the Mother of God. Since then, there has been much interest in these new insights and a great deal of faithful reflection on the significance and place women occupy in both the Church and society. The genius of women, as well as John Paul’s teaching on the complementarity tha
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