I. "Male and Female
He Created Them . . ."
2331
"God is love and in himself he lives a mystery of personal loving communion.
Creating the human race in his own image . . .. God inscribed in the humanity
of man and woman the vocation, and thus the capacity and responsibility, of
love and communion."114
"God
created man in his own image . . . male and female he created
them";115 He blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and
multiply";116 "When God created man, he made him in the
likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named
them Man when they were created."117
2332
Sexuality affects all aspects of the human person in the unity of his body and
soul. It especially concerns affectivity, the capacity to love and to
procreate, and in a more general way the aptitude for forming bonds of
communion with others.
2333
Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity.
Physical, moral, and spiritual difference and complementarity are oriented
toward the goods of marriage and the flourishing of family life. the harmony of
the couple and of society depends in part on the way in which the
complementarity, needs, and mutual support between the sexes are lived out.
2334
"In creating men 'male and female,' God gives man and woman an equal
personal dignity."118 "Man is a person, man and woman equally
so, since both were created in the image and likeness of the personal
God."119
2335
Each of the two sexes is an image of the power and tenderness of God, with
equal dignity though in a different way. the union of man and woman in marriage
is a way of imitating in the flesh the Creator's generosity and fecundity:
"Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife,
and they become one flesh."120 All human generations proceed from
this union.121
2336
Jesus came to restore creation to the purity of its origins. In the Sermon on
the Mount, he interprets God's plan strictly: "You have heard that it was
said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that every one who
looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his
heart."122 What God has joined together, let not man put
asunder.123
The tradition of the Church has understood the sixth commandment as
encompassing the whole of human sexuality.
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