Nature, Sex, And Person In Thomistic Thought

Nature, Sex, and Person in Thomistic Thought

WILLIAM H. MARSHNER

THE WANDERER
Vol.s XXIV-XXV
1999-2000
Christendom College

Certain Catholic feminists of philosophical bent have criticized a strand of Catholic thought as positing in effect two natures of human beings. Sr. Mary Aquin O’Neill, for example, says the Catholic view of complementarity between the sexes has invented a male nature and a female nature.^[1] Mary J. Buckley repeats this charge.^[2] Both accuse the tradition of arriving at this error by “extrapolating meanings from the male and female bodies” and thus mistakenly attributing culturally-based gender differentiations to human nature itself. Sr. O’Neill seems to prefer an androgynous view of human capability and a biological view of what is “natural” to us. Mary Buckley demands that all talk of “constant” or “fixed” human nature be replaced by a “transformative model,” as she calls it, in which the core of humanity is sheer freedom. The aim of this paper is to show that the Thomistic account of human nature does not commit the mistake the feminist philosophers allege and avoids both of the disastrous (and conflicting) reductionisms into which they fall. Man qua man is one nature, for St. Thomas, not two; yet this one nature is neither pure biology nor pure freedom.

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HEW Stops Condom Program

By W. H. MARSHNER

THE WANDERER
(Special to The Wanderer)
May 22, 1975

WASHINGTON, C.C. — The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) has quietly terminated a program that mailed unsolicited sex information and “condom stamps” in unmarked envelopes to teen-age boys.

These stamps, subsidized with the taxpayers’ money, read as follows: “Condom information service: worth $1 on purchase of one dozen condoms. … Write brand name here.”

In other words, HEW was setting up shop as the world’s largest drugstore and at the same time drumming up business by offering what was supposed to become the Green Stamps of the sexual revolution.

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Region V

Meeting Chairman: Philip M. Hannan, Archbishop of New Orleans, La.

Reporter: William H. Marshner

THE WANDERER (Section Two)
W. H. MARSHNER
May 24, 1973

NEW ORLEANS — The Bishops of Region V met with representatives of priests, religious, lay people, youth, women, and Blacks. Altogether, there were 61 participants in the two-day meeting held April 27th and 28th at the somnolent Jung Hotel in downtown New Orleans.

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Georgetown Sex Advisor Linked To SIECUS

Georgetown Sex Adviser Linked To SIECUS

W. H. Marshner

THE WANDERER
December 28, 1972
(Special to the Wanderer)

Fr. Robert Baumiller, S.J., whose role in the production of a Georgetown University student sex manual has drawn fire from Cardinal O’Boyle, has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS).

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Cardinal O’Boyle Attacks Georgetown Sex Manual

By WILLIAM H. MARSHNER

THE WANDERER
December 7, 1972
(Special to the Wanderer)

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Six medical students at Georgetown University wrote a 46-page booklet called Human Sexual Response- Ability for the benefit of their fellow students. They were guided by a faculty advisor named Fr. Robert C. Baumiller, S.J., who is an associate professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Fr. Baumiller has already made the pages of the Wanderer (12-2-71) on this little book on sex. They claimed that the booklet was “purely informational” but that line did not wash with their Bishop, Patrick Cardinal O’Boyle. He read the thing and called it “potentially dangerous to spiritual welfare.” He got on the back of the Georgetown administration to have the booklet withdrawn as incompatible with the Catholic character of the University. The only response, however, was from school president, Fr. Robert J. Henle, who said the administration was not responsible. It was a student project and hence, not “official” he said. Nobody here but us chickens.

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