The Conference
“The problem of the subjectivity of the person – particularly in relation to human community – imposes itself today as one of the central ideological issues that lie at the very basis of human praxis, morality and ethics, culture, civilization, and politics.”
—Pope St. John Paul II, Person and Community
Perhaps it can be said that the most hotly contested question of our era is that of the nature of man and woman, their identities, their differences, and what constitutes their distinct missions in the world. What was taken for granted for centuries is under dispute, the very existence of such categories called into question. And we watch as the culture descends into confusion. It is time to call a halt. It is time to return to the fundamental question, so clearly articulated by the Synod of Bishops in 1987: Why did God make us male and female? And what are the consequences of that decision?[1]
The aim of this conference is to mount an adequate and coherent response to those questions. And at the heart of our efforts is the conviction that the only thing that will reverse the descent so evident all around us is nothing less than a robust, scientifically, philosophically, and theologically grounded account of the nature of man and woman.
Our investigation will begin with the recognition that at the epicenter of the entire debate – the actual target of the assault – is the human person himself – that is, the person as an embodied creature – a union of body and soul, made in the image of God. We witness it daily, certainly in the larger culture – but now even in the Church herself: the encroachment of an incoherent and unprecedented ideology that seeks not only to undermine the foundational understanding of the human person that has governed Western culture for centuries – but to replace it.[2]
The design of the conference follows from these claims. We will begin by establishing the foundations of human personhood first as a metaphysical reality and as an embodied creature. Then we will move on to an investigation of the nature of man and woman, their identities, their differences, their distinct missions. We will end with an exploration of the concrete implications of the fact that God determined that the human person should always and only exist as a woman and a man.
[1] 1987 Synod of Bishops on the Vocation and Mission of the Laity. Also invoked by Pope St. John Paul II in his 1988 Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem 1.
[2] Auguste Comte, the father of positivism, declared in the mid-19th century: “Nothing is destroyed until it is replaced.”
Sponsored by
The Office of the President
The Department of Theology &
The Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington D.C.
This conference is made possible by the generosity of the Henkels Family.
