On Saints and Reason

DISCLAIMER: I do freely acknowledge that I am, for the most part, trusting the article-author's quotations to be accurate, as my Latin is not nearly proficient enough to read the direct quotes from Aquinas.

Well, I came across some very...interesting writings from St. Thomas Aquinas on men, women and souls.

My goodness.

There is a reason that saints are not infallible. Goodness gracious. Poor St. Thomas was borrowing heavily from Aristotle and medical inferences that are overwhelmingly basic (let's just say that they didn't have nearly the knowledge of pregnancy and female anatomy in general that they should have), on one level. On another level, he was making a number of judgments and decisions that are unsupportable by science, religion or just-about-anything (apparently muscle=perfection of soul).

I mean, really. Ladies, if you want to feel terrible about yourselves (and get angry at a saint), then read some of it. Otherwise, please avoid it.

Holy Saint Thomas...what the heck happened?

Problems of logic and other assorted issues include:

1. The belief that perfection of soul can be indicated by good tone of and physical strength of the body.
--IF TRUE, then St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Anthony of Padua, G.K Chesterton and a host of other more portly saints (I count Chesterton in there because he's awesome) should have had one heck of a time getting into Heaven.

2. The belief that the female's role in generation of offspring is limited to supplying the "matter" (thought to be the discarded menstrual blood). Which is interesting, considering that
--the sperm does absolutely nothing if there is no egg to fertilize.
--the baby does need to, y'know, gestate for nine months or so...like...inside the mother.
--after the egg is fertilized and you have a teeny-tiny four-cell baby, it has to implant in the uterus and blah blah blah. Anyway, the instant the egg is fertilized, you don't have a sperm and egg, you have an zygote (i.e itty-bitty-baby). That zygote has to go through cellular division and blah-blah-blah--but the point is that the sperm doesn't do anything without the egg, and the egg doesn't do anything without the sperm. The sperm doesn't keep working hard to make a baby after fertilization--it's gone. You have an zygote, not a sperm-n-egg.
3. Active/passive is seen as also determining a certain amount of perfection in the soul. This would be a problem for...
--impotent men
--infertile women
--those poor souls who have both or no reproductive parts

4. Women are seen as less perfect because men were made first, and nature always begins with the more perfect.
--this is silly, because EVERYONE knows women were made second as an improvement over the original. (I'm kidding.)

REAL 4. Male bodies are seen as more perfect because they are stronger (and active in procreation), and therefore the souls given to those more perfect bodies are more noble and perfect than are women's souls (limited by the greater imperfection of the female form, which is not as muscular as male forms, softer in general, and "passive").
--Bodies change over time. That should go without saying. I, for example, build muscle fairly quickly (in spite of being a passive, weak female)--is my soul more perfect when I can do 80 push-ups than it is when I can do 40?
--there is, of course, the additional problem that there is no way to actually prove that souls are in any way connected to how fit the body is! Furthermore, you then run into a host of other issues, especially with that of racial discrimination--it would be very easy to use that theory of the soul and argue that Ethnic Group X has especial imperfection of the soul, and therefore is not as human.

5. St. Thomas states that reason is more developed in men, and women are deficient in reason. He "blames" this on the softness of her flesh, the imperfect nature of her body, and her passiveness. In his commentary on Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, he accounts ultimately for wifely submission to...her deficient reason. (he sometimes described the lack of reason as a lack of Wisdom--a curious thing, considering the constant characterization of Wisdom as a Lady in the Old Testament) He additionally states that men first think of principles and eternal things, while women are concerned with worldly matters. He expressed surprise at the Samaritan woman at the well, for questioning Jesus about God. He also stated that the effect of the inferior femininity upon female souls is such that they are less able to reason and are lacking in courage (St. Theresa of Avila, St. Catherine of Siena and St. Joan of Arc were not available for comment).
--in fairness, Thomas goes on to state that there are "notable exceptions" and that through Grace, women may become morally stronger. Terribly nice of him, isn't it?
--Considering that St. Thomas lived and worked in environments where he was not exactly surrounded by a tremendous cross-section of women, I find it interesting that he (nevertheless) makes such overbroad generalizations for all of womankind. Moreover, seeing as he came to the conclusion that women are deficient in reason based upon a theory of how body composition and the soul are intertwined as well as oversimplified medical information, I am not sure how this argument can stand. Even if it could be empirically shown, as Thomas stated, that woman is naturally deficient in reason and that her soul is imperfect when compared to the soul of a man, this argument still could not be accepted due to the faulty information and problematic logic used in coming to this conclusion.

Therefore, I repeat: St. Thomas...what the heck?

Upper left: Jehanne Romee (commonly d'Arc), soldier, de facto commander of the French Army, and saint.
Upper right: St. Teresa of Avila, Doctor of the Church.
Lower: St. Catherine of Siena, Doctor of the Church. Convinced the Pope to return to Rome from Avignon.