Pat Gohn

1. Bodacious! 10 Discussion Starters about the Feminine Genius during the Year of Faith Terry Polakovic Pat Gohn

2. #10. John Paul II, Letter to Women, 2 Thank you, women who are mothers! You have sheltered human beings within yourselves in a unique experience of joy and travail. This experience makes you become God's own smile upon the newborn child, the one who guides your child's first steps, who helps it to grow, and who is the anchor as the child makes its way along the journey of life. Thank you, women who are wives! You irrevocably join your future to that of your husbands, in a relationship of mutual giving, at the service of love and life. Thank you, women who are daughters and women who are sisters! Into the heart of the family and then of all society, you bring the richness of your sensitivity, your intuitiveness, your generosity, and fidelity. (Continued )

3. # 10. John Paul II, Letter to Women, 2, (continued) Thank you, women who work! You are present and active in every area of life—social, economic, cultural, artistic, and political. In this way you make an indispensable contribution to the growth of a culture which unites reason and feeling, to a model of life ever open to the sense of "mystery," to the establishment of economic and political structures ever more worthy of humanity. Thank you, consecrated women! Following the example of the greatest of women, the Mother of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word, you open yourselves with obedience and fidelity to the gift of God's love. You help the Church and all mankind to experience a "spousal" relationship to God, one which magnificently expresses the fellowship which God wishes to establish with his creatures. Thank you, every woman, for the simple fact of being a woman! Through the insight which is so much a part of your womanhood you enrich the world's understanding and help to make human relations more honest and authentic.

4. Questions for Reflection and Discussion • Why is it necessary to understand that who we are is more important than what wedo? • In what way do women make human relations more honest and authentic?

5. # 9 John Paul II, MulierisDignatatem, 11 In Mary, Eve discovers the nature of the true dignity of woman, of feminine humanity. This discovery must continually reach the heart of every woman and shape her vocation and her life.

6. Questions for Reflection and Discussion • Have you ever considered Mary’s inspiration and influence for your life or vocation? Why or why not? • In the second century, St. Irenaeus linked Mary and Eve in this famous quote, "The knot of Eve's disobedience was untied by Mary's obedience: what the virgin Eve bound through her disbelief, Mary loosened by her faith” (CCC, 494). Now in MulierisDignatatemJohn Paul makes a similar contrast – How does Mary’s life heal or reconcile what is hurting or difficult in Eve’s life?

7. #8. John Paul II,Redemptoris Mater, 39, 46. Before anyone else it was God himself, the Eternal Father, who entrusted himself to the Virgin of Nazareth, giving her his own Son in the mystery of the Incarnation. Mary . . . sheds light on womanhood. . . . Women, by looking to Mary, find in her the secret of living their femininity with dignity and of achieving their own true advancement.

8. Questions for Reflection and Discussion • What is the secret to living our femininity with dignity? • Is Mary special to you in a particular way?

9. #7. Vatican II, Gaudium et Spes, 24 This likeness reveals that man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.

10. Questions for Reflection and Discussion 1. How does generosity operate in your life? Is it a sometimes gift, or is it always operating? 2. How do you make a gift of yourself to God and others through your vocation?

11. #6 John Paul II, Letter to Women, 12 Perhaps more than men, women acknowledge the person, because they see persons with their hearts. They see them independently of various ideological or political systems. They see others in their greatness and limitations; they try to go out to them and help them. In this way the basic plan of the Creator takes flesh in the history of humanity and there is constantly revealed, in the variety of vocations, that beauty—not merely physical, but above all spiritual—which God bestowed from the very beginning on all, and in a particular way on women.

12. Questions for Reflection and Discussion • Gender equality is a huge issue today, with the idea being that men and women are not only equal, but they are interchangeable. Given this, how do you explain a woman’s particular “capacity for the other” to someone who embraces this ideology? • Reflect on this passage: “It is women, in the end, who even in very desperate situations, as attested by history past and present, possess a singular capacity to persevere in adversity, to keep life going even in extreme situations, to hold tenaciously to the future, and finally to remember with tears the value of every human life.”* Does this resonate with your experience? *On the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World. CDF, May 31, 2004.

13. #5. John Paul II, MulierisDignatatem, 30. The moral and spiritual strength of a woman is joined to her awareness that God entrusts the human being to her in a special way. Of course, God entrusts every human being to each and every other human being. But this entrusting concerns women in a special way—precisely by reason of their femininity. . . . A woman is strong because of her awareness of this entrusting . . . always and in every way, even in the situations of social discrimination in which she may find herself. This awareness and this fundamental vocation speak to women of the dignity which they receive from God himself, and this makes them "strong" and strengthens their vocation.

14. Questions for Reflection and Discussion 1 .How does God’s entrusting of the human person in a special way to women speak to women about strength? 2. What might God’s entrusting of Jesus to Mary might say to women today?

15. #4. John Paul II, Angelus Message,July 16, 1995, 1 Woman's singular relationship with human life derives from her vocation to motherhood. Opening herself to motherhood, she feels the life in her womb unfolding and growing. This indescribable experience is a privilege of mothers, but all women have in some way an intuition of it, predisposed as they are to this miraculous gift.

16. Questions for Reflection and Discussion 1. Can a mother be a biological mother and a spiritual mother at the same time? 2. How do religious sisters living in a convent cultivate their gift of motherhood?

17. #3. Alice von Hildebrand, The Privilege of Being a Woman, p. 86. The special role granted to women in procreation . . . is highlighted by the fact that as soon as she has conceived (and conception takes place hours after the marital embrace), God creates the soul of the new child in her body. This implies a direct “contact” between Him and the mother-to-be, a contact in which the father plays no role whatever. This contact gives the female body a note of sacredness, for any closeness between God and one of His creatures is stamped by His Holy Seal. This divine “touch” is . . . a special female privilege that every pregnant woman should gratefully acknowledge.

18. Questions for Reflection and Discussion 1. In your own words, and based on this passage from Von Hildebrand, describe the sacredness of body and soul – both in a woman, and in her unborn child? 2. Von Hildebrand describes a moment of “touch”, of connection, between God and an expectant mother and her child in the womb. How can a woman gratefully acknowledge this reality?

19. #2. Paul VI, Address to Women And now it is to you that we address ourselves, women of all states . . . you constitute half of the immense human family . . . But the hour is coming, in fact has come, when the vocation of woman is being achieved in its fullness, the hour in which woman acquires in the world an influence, an effect and a power never hitherto achieved. That is why, at this moment when the human race is under-going so deep a transformation, women impregnated with the spirit of the Gospel can do so much to aid mankind in not falling.

20. Questions for Reflection and Discussion 1. Since these words were written in 1965, women have indeed acquired an influence, an affectand a power never hitherto achieved. Since then, what have we done to aid mankind in not falling? 2. In your opinion, what is the state of womanhood today?

21. #1. John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, 99 In transforming culture so that it supports life, women occupy a place, in thought and action, which is unique and decisive. It depends on them to promote a "new feminism" which rejects the temptation of imitating models of "male domination", in order to acknowledge and affirm the true genius of women in every aspect of the life of society, and overcome all discrimination, violence and exploitation. … I address to women this urgent appeal: "Reconcile people with life". You are called to bear witness to the meaning of genuine love, of that gift of self and of that acceptance of others which are present in a special way in the relationship of husband and wife, but which ought also to be at the heart of every other interpersonal relationship. … motherhood makes you acutely aware of the other person and… confers on you a particular task. . . [accepting] a person who is recognized and loved because of the dignity which comes from being a person and not from other considerations, such as usefulness, strength, intelligence, beauty or health . . . It is the indispensable prerequisite for an authentic cultural change.

22. Questions for Reflection and Discussion • John Paul II proposes a new feminism, a Christian feminism… any thoughts on how women might bring this about? • How does the recognizing the genius of woman build a culture of life?

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24. Pat Gohn Author of Blessed, Beautiful, and Bodaciuos Visit www.patgohn.net

25. Terry Polakovic Executive Director of Endow endowgroups.org

26. Endow (Educating on the Nature and Dignity of Women) is a Catholic study program that engages the intellect of women and teenage girls to help them understand their God-given dignity and respond to our culture’s desperate need for an authentic feminine presence in every aspect of life and society. We believe that education is one of the fundamental aspects of cultural change. Pope John Paul II’s 1995 World Day of Peace message includes this important reminder: “Time dedicated to education is time truly well spent, because it determines a person’s future, and therefore the future of the family and of the whole of society.” www.endowgroups.com

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