Episode 196: Do Souls Have Genders?

[@buirvin1236]

The way Fr. Gregory just couldn’t stop laughing got me.😂 I love how intelligent he is, contrasted with his constant case of the giggles. Fr. Bonaventure and he make a great pair for the podcasts. I really appreciate the ideas they bring out with each other.

[@marycountryman1790]

Fr. Gregory Pine had the giggles BAD. Absolutely riddled with them.

[@_unbalanced_]

The two of you crack me up 😂 you could do an episode where you just BS and I’d love it.

[@FrJohnBrownSJ]

Michael Jackson's soul uses the pronouns he/he

[@alegault2986]

😄

[@carolynkimberly4021]

I'd say they are he/she

[@Catholicmillennial]

All I needed to do when come here and listen to Fr Pines laugh

[@CocinandoconMartha121]

Listening to your video since I cannot fall asleep. Thank you and God bless you both

[@Nunwannabe1234]

Father Gregory, I'm going to start using all your creative words. We can start a Father Gregory dictionary😂😁 Sweet Christmas, I do love you all!😊😊😊😊😊

[@Nunwannabe1234]

Oh my gosh, I've been trying to arrange going to the retreat but if there's going to be a sock hop, now I have to try even harder!!!!😂😂😂

[@barbdwyer5759]

Good sense of humor!

[@fbittle]

A helpful study on the subject from an Eastern Orthodox pov is "On Gender and the Soul: An Exploration of Sex/Gender and Its Relation to the Soul According to the Church Fathers" by Benjamin Cabe (2021)

[@logospodxast]

It is only justified for a Dominican to breeze by the insight, “that’s how language generally works. It has some relation to what it is asking for” within the first two minutes of a conversation.

[@jeme7339]

Intelligence and wit. You guys seem like you would have been fine school chums. The humor is appreciated.

[@elijahhobbs5818]

Maybe our era's contribution will be to flesh out complementarity, and push it higher on the scale of importance. To be man is to be something in relation to woman. The wording of Genesis 1:27 comes to mind "In the image of God he created him, male and female he created them" comes to mind. A human being is not an androgyne, but is a being who is complementary to another being, in some way imaging the trinity.

[@user-bw3wi4xh4x]

The thing I like about Stein’s conception of gender is that it seems to me to really stand by the Biblical evidence we find in the creation story. God specifically makes male and female, in both accounts, whereas he doesn’t create them bipedal or mammalian or whatever other biological features we have as human animals. I am not claiming St. Thomas doesn’t address the importance given to sex in the Bible, but I would be interested to learn more about why he thinks those specific elements of our material selves are highlighted so specifically in the creation account of not as a description of our very natures.

[@user-bw3wi4xh4x]

*if* not as a description of our natures

[@erric288]

I think we need to think about the utility of a corporeal reality in general for living out relationships and complementality. There must be complementary sexes in order for the creation/generation of new life. This gives us a basic teleology for biological sex. A woman is someone who has a body that is ordered toward the bearing and rearing of a child, and a man is a person who is ordered to providing his seed, but just as importantly, to be physically stronger/more aggressive and therefore to be a protector and provider for the family. This sets up the dynamic between the sexes and how love is shared in the family. In the modern world, however, this breaks down. A modern economy has many opportunities for a woman to provide for herself and outsource child rearing and security. Sure, women will still dominate childcare positions and men likewise with security or policing. But there is overlap in the distributions of personality traits. Some men are more feminine than some women and vice versa. So that brings us back to a biologically essential definition. The post-modern will answer that they can change their hormonal milieu, have surgeries, alter their social presentation, and therefore match their personality to what biological sex they believe they are. So you can turn to genetics, but then there are edge cases where there is ambiguity, so that's out. Which leads us back to a general ordering toward child bearing and rearing as a definition for women, and men perhaps the lack thereof. Of course, the next step in medical transitions is uterine transplants where conceptually a man could eventually bear a child via IVF and hormone treatments and deliver via C-section. So the definition would have to be a person who is ordered to bearing and rearing a child at the point of birth. I'm just spit balling here though.

[@angelaspielbusch1237]

Holy Moly hilarious 😂 I so remember Sock Hops! Yikes!!

[@LostArchivist]

Maybe something like this for male and female (note, have not watched video yet may likely revise it does a better job, and that seems likely) Female: nurture one`s child in, by and with your own body. Male:nurture ones child (and wife) by being another body to care and protect and provide for them. Extended to a human level this undoubtedly does paint a millieu to how one or the other approaches caring for others and loving them. It also brings about the general trends of typically feminine and masculine interests as a result of these guiding orientations in love. How critical and deep that difference is, is beyond my ken to determine. One is internal nurture the other external in a sensem but both about sacrifical love and it is assumed here both are also oriented to giving freely of themselves for love of the other. There is clearly a bodily orient to them, but it extends to how love is given as well if one sees the necessary difference in approach to nurturing. I will leave the question open though as I definitely lack necessary expertise here. I can not help but feel there is something missing in these clinical definitions.

[@SarcasticScholastic]

That which we share in common with non-rational animals does not proceed, as such, from the immaterial principle that constitutes our rationality. They don’t determine the rational principle as such, but it affects the manner in which we exercise those immaterial powers. So, our souls don’t have a gender or a sex, which is a properly material quality, but they do impact passively and actively the manner in which we configure ourselves - in which we dispose ourselves toward the good.

[@archie8767]

There's seems to be an explicit teleological connection to gender, though. I understand the point you're making, but my uncertainty is that are we making the point that gender is equivalent to accidental circumstances and seems vulnerable to modern gender ideology if it is not teleologically defined but rather circumstantially.

[@deussacracommunioest2108]

@@archie8767 Teleology and Circumstance are found in Providence.

[@deussacracommunioest2108]

@SarcasticScholastic This. Thank you again for your comment.

[@archie8767]

@deussacracommunioest2108 Yes. We're all Thomists. My critique is that when we dispose ourselves toward the "good," we must dispose ourselves to the divine ideal of what we were created to be. I think we need to be more concrete in what gender expression is and isn't so that we don't end up relegating it to mere accident, which is fundamentally wrong and can lead to bad ideas like gender ideology. I do think there is substance to the idea that the first and final causes apropos gender suggest a gendering of the soul to some degree. Is motherhood properly material? That isn't really what the Church teaches about motherhood on a broad scale: she typically demands that all women be at least spiritual mothers in their various circumstances.

[@MargaretUIUC]

The weight of a soul is more properly expressed in billigrams.

[@carolynkimberly4021]

Fathers, could you explain Jesus's strange body following the resurrection?

[@danielkelly9678]

You guys are the best 😂. The reference to the “sock Hope” was priceless 🤣. Ok, Galatians 3:27-28 would seem to indicate that in heaven that the gender identity would no longer be present. However, in Revelation 12, it speaks about a woman (Mary) appearing in the sky. What would you say about that? Anyway, thanks for a great episode. God Bless

[@wierdpocket]

"When you die and your soul departs, we don't really refer to that body as a human body, we refer to it as a corpse" - but then what do we call the soul separated from the body until the resurrection? It's not complete either. How can something that isn't whole (a soul separated from a body) be happy? How can anyone in heaven be happy until they have their bodies back?

[@krizilloo2538]

If the soul and the body are not two sides of the same coin, then how do we explain the reality that the ratio of women to men in Heaven is at minimum 5:1, similar to the ratio of women to men attending church?

[@ashleynovels]

I’m in my 30s. I went to multiple sock hops between elementary school and summer camps. It never occurred to me how weird it was to make kids dress up like that 😂. Also I need to read Edith Stein

[@maryspencer4274]

Socks out of black and white saddleshoes

[@carolynkimberly4021]

So, gender forms the characteristics of the soul?

[@thossi09]

I don't know what it's like in German or any of the Romance languages - but in Icelandic, all souls are feminine. Grammatically speaking, anyway.

[@Quekksilber]

In German it is "die Seele", which is feminine, but "der Geist" (the spirit), which is masculine. "Der Körper" (the body) is also maskuline.

[@thossi09]

​@@Quekksilber Yes, "líkaminn" (the body) is also masculine in Icelandic, as well as "kroppur" and "skrokkur". Same as "andi" (spirit) - but there's also the feminine "önd", that also means "spirit" or "breath" ("með öndina í hálsinum" literally means "with the breath in the throat", but more accurately means something like "with baited breath"), and then there's "að standa á öndinni", literally "to stand on the breath" but it's an idom for "holding one's breath in anticipation". Unfortunately, "önd" also means "duck", and so the two idioms can also mean "to have a duck in the throat" and "to stand on the duck". Can't help but wonder if pre-Christian Icelanders thought ducks had something to do with the spirit, and that bit of linguistic quirk carried over... Then there's the word "hold", meaning "flesh", and that's neutral ("das" in German). "The resurrection of the flesh" in the creed is "upprisa holdsins" ("the upraising of the flesh") in Icelandic, but unfortunately, "holdris" (lit. "flesh-raise") has become a euphemism for an erection. I'm not entirely sure if it's a good or a bad thing the creed's translation hasn't been changed to avoid that sort of misunderstanding. Sort of how the Our Father translation hasn't been changed - we're still using the old plural for "our" (used to have three numbers, singular "ég" ("I"), dual "við" ("we two"), and then the plural "vér" ("we three or more"), but with time the old plural became a "royal we" and the old dual became the "common we", but the translation we all grow up with is still using the old plural), and that has some people wondering "Why do we use the 'royal we' for us, and then the 'familiar you' for God?"

[@danielm1991]

Algorithm

[@monicakosiorek2713]

Nope I’m 67 no sock hop in my past🤷‍♀️🥰

[@johnroesch2159]

First, do either of the two priests think that Saint Thomas Aquinas is right about everything or that he is actually wrong about somethings? God created both man and woman and this does not only pertain to our bodies, but also to our minds and souls! The soul is the substance of life often referred to as the vegetative or animal soul, the spirit that animates the body. The immortal human soul is the consciousness and sentient aspect of the human mind which is part of the soul, the life of the body. The body of a man, has the mind and soul of a man and the body of woman, has the mind and soul of a woman! For each human being, both man and woman, there is an ensouled body or an embodied soul!

[@CICMCB]

Father Bonaventure, you do not look old enough to have attended a sock hop.

[@flatearthtravolta6585]

What the hell?

[@adelephilomenadonata3226]

I found dressing my European Native American daughter as a Christian for inside difficult until I returned to Laura Ashley & looked at Loveshackfancy through a Washington DC teen influencer Avery Delponte who goes to the Greenbrier, Laduree as well as Nobu. I was so afraid at how quickly a lack of fellowship appears to affect little girls. We see what fabrics as well as colors go where on the more successful peer. We also used Petite Plume, founded by a mother who worked for the CIA. Prince George wore Petite Plume pajamas in blue while my daughter wears pink! She has them on now!

[@fakename3208]

What in the heck

[@texhaines9957]

'A soul dragging a corpse through life' Really Fr Pine?

[@sethlikes2lift]

Luke 9:23 Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me”

[@texhaines9957]

@@sethlikes2lift nothing about being a corpse there

[@sethlikes2lift]

@@texhaines9957 it’s called dark humor and this verse is just saying not everything is rainbows and unicorns everyday. “I do not promise you happiness in this world but in the next.” - Our Lady of Lourdes to St. Bernadette

[@ms.booklover2676]

I think you boys had a gender and tonic prior to recording. 🥸