Last week, I’m not sure if I explained clearly enough why we’re talking about femininity and masculinity. It’s because, in our culture, there’s a crisis of what it means to be a woman, what it means to be a man, what is truly beautiful. (We’ll get to men next week.) But it’s part of the Catholic worldview to face reality and admit a problem: in this case, our culture has taken something good and twisted it.

Recognizing that women are beautiful, our culture objectifies them. Besides the way the media does this, there’s also the huge reality of pornography. I heard James Borkowski say that 98% of sexting is done from girls to boys. (What’s going on there? It tells us that girls want to be loved.) Videos like Blurred Lines are very popular but degrade women. Recently, there’s been the Facebook scandal by some dentistry students at Dalhousie University. A year and a half ago, students sang a frosh song at St. Mary’s University celebrating underage non-consensual sex.

My point is that it’s basically everywhere and it affects us and our children: in my position as a priest, I meet many people at different parishes and schools and I encounter face-to-face the pain in low self-esteem among women (“I’m not enough,” “I’m not beautiful,” “I hate getting old,” “I’m so depressed”), in relationships breaking down, in promiscuity and pornography.

Now some might say we shouldn’t talk about this in church. I’m really sorry if this is uncomfortable. We’re not used to it. But the truth is we’re behind the eight ball. We’re getting killed. Our children are more influenced by the media than by God’s great vision of sexuality.

Question: (only raise your hand if you’d like, you don’t have to) how many of us were taught about sexuality by our parents? If our parents didn’t teach us, then someone else did, and I’ll bet they didn’t have God’s vision in mind.

Nothing good has happened by us ignoring this problem. If someone were to say to me, “Father, this is part of our strategy: we won’t talk about it and that’ll help,” then I’d say, “Fine, let’s see what happens.” But it’s not a strategy and it isn’t working. Nothing good has happened by priests not talking about it. If we don’t feel comfortable talking about something good and beautiful, given by God, then parents won’t have the comfort level to talk about it at home, and we won’t be comfortable talking about it with our friends. There’s nothing wrong with talking about something God made; masculinity, femininity, sexuality are good and holy because they’re designed by God.

When I was praying over the readings, I asked, “Jesus, what do you want to tell us?” And I came across the entrance antiphon, “The voice of the Father thundered: This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” That’s taken from today’s Gospel, where Jesus is baptized.

Because we’re baptized, we’re adopted by God, meaning we’re His sons and daughters. And because our society can degrade women and their worth, God thunders to tell them that they’re worth so much to Him and that they’ve got this amazing dignity, and that He’s well-pleased with them. That’s the message for today: to remember the amazing dignity of women.

Jason Evert talks about the dignity of women this way: women have a great holiness and mystery. Holy things are always mysterious, which means we don’t understand everything about them, not because we can’t understand them, but because there’s so much depth.

Take, for example, the Holy of Holies, the most sacred space in the Jewish Temple. The Jewish people had one sacred temple; they weren’t like us with many churches, they had one. Within the Temple, “this was the most sacred space for Israelites, hidden behind a veil to emphasize its sacredness: only one sanctified priest could enter this sanctuary once a year. Within the Holy of Holies was the Ark of the Covenant, which contained the Ten Commandments, the staff of Aaron, and the manna from heaven… plated in and out with pure gold” (Theology of Her Body, 5-6).

God doesn’t veil Himself to hide from us, but to reveal His sacredness, holiness. When we approach holy things we shouldn’t do it casually, but with reverence. In the same way, we have to approach women with respect and awe.

The Song of Songs, in a poetic way, refers to women as an “enclosed garden,” which must be protected against people who have no right to be present, to those who aren’t worthy. In the same way, a man must be worthy of a woman.

A woman has to recognize her dignity: for example, when a woman dresses beautifully “she is not hiding herself from men. On the contrary, she is revealing her dignity to them.” She’s saying there’s something much deeper to me. But to dress in a sexy way doesn’t show her true beauty.

Crystalina Evert had her first serious relationship in Gr. 10. Thinking she was in love, things slowly got more physical, and her boyfriend started putting more pressure on her with lines like, “If you truly loved me, you’d prove it to me.” She asked her friends for advice and they said, “Everyone’s doing it. You love him, right?” After she lost her virginity at 15, thinking it would bring her love, the love was gone. She realized, “If I couldn’t respect my own body, how’s he going to respect it?”

After a while, he was just using her for her body. (People know in the depths of their hearts when they’re being used.) They broke up, and she felt like he had taken something away from her that never belonged to him in the first place. She went down a vicious cycle of bad relationships with other boys. (In her story, she notes how women sometimes use sex to get love.) She got into partying, drinking, clubbing, which was a lot of fun and very attractive… at the time. But, when she woke up the next day, she was left wondering why she was doing those things. Deep down she was miserable, not happy, “disgusted with” herself.

After a while, her mother knew what was going on and sent her to a chastity talk. Crystalina thought it’d be a waste of time, but, when she heard the speaker, who was honest, blunt and real, talked about everything he had been into, her “life was changed.” He spoke of the things she was most ashamed of and hiding. He had done the same things she had done, but now he had a joy, peace, and confidence that none of her friends had and none of the guys she was dating had. His most striking quality was that he wasn’t ashamed of himself. Crystalina realized she wanted just one day of peace. So she decided to raise her standards as high as she could and start respecting her body for once.

That night she wrote down every bad thing she had done and everything the speaker had said and then hid the letter, knowing that there would be temptations that weekend. When she was invited to parties, she pulled out the letter, read it, and it was a harsh reminder. Every time she felt tempted to go back to the old lifestyle, she wrote herself another letter. When she later got married to Jason, she felt she didn’t have her virginity to give him, but a huge stack of “No”s to give him.

No matter what we’ve done, God always loves us and always gives us more chances. He wipes away all of our sins in Confession and makes all things new.

I was talking to a friend of mine last night and asking her thoughts on this. She used to live a wild life and so, now that she’s living according to God’s plan, I asked her, “What would you want to tell other women?” She said, “Remember that your worth comes from God, not from other people. Who you are is a question only God can answer. Women forget their dignity because the attention people give them feels good. It’s hard to have dignity, to live to that standard. But there’s a difference between what feels good and what is good.”

Can we tell the difference between attention and love? That’s a question for all of us. I’ve been given attention before and then realized it’s not love—that’s deeply painful. You see how empty it is. But when you find true love, then it lasts.

Please talk to me about all this. I’m open to suggestions; if there’s a better way, then please tell me.

James Borkowski is coming here this Wednesday, Jan. 14, 7-9 p.m. to talk about the good news of sexuality. It’s for parents of children in Gr. 4-7 but I asked Mr. Pozzolo to open it up to everyone. I would pay James $500 out of my own pocket for him to come here so that you could hear him speak. Because when I heard him, I thought, “This guy is awesome!”

When I asked my friend, “How do you feel living according God’s plan, how does it compare to your life before?” she said, “I’m free! I’m free in my decisions! I can see when I’m objectified or not, and make healthy choices even though it’s hard. I feel truly beautiful. I know where my beauty comes from. I go to my Father and He gives me what I need. When I’m sad and upset and craving things of this world–that’s when I’m not happy.” What I understood from what she said is that she’s no longer dependent on others for her self-worth. And that’s awesome!

Let’s all raise the bar. Let’s treat women according their amazing dignity.