Editor’s note: Emma Jones graduated from UW-Superior with a bachelor’s degree in flute performance. She will attend Texas Tech University this fall to pursue her master’s degree in flute performance.
While in our culture, the comment “women are a mystery” is often seen as a misogynistic quip, it’s actually completely correct. Women are a mystery. Women see and interact with the world in a completely different way than men do, spiritually, emotionally and physically. While the culture pushes the agenda that in order to be empowered, women must stamp down their femininity and become more and more masculine, the Catholic Church teaches that there is beauty and natural complementarity in the way that women were created when combined with the way that men were created. Spiritually and emotionally, women possess a special receptivity and an ability to listen to others. Women are often more sensitive than men, and more attentive and aware of the needs and desires of others. Each woman is created and called to nurture others and to be a mother, whether she is a spiritual mother or a biological mother.
Although there are certainly spiritual components to understanding the gift of femininity, there are also undeniable physical components. As human beings, we are created not only with a soul, but also with a body. Therefore, to understand anything deeply about being a woman, we must grasp how a woman’s body works. In addition to the spiritual and emotional complementarity between men and women, there is also a more obvious physical and biological complementarity. Women are biologically receptive and have the special ability to nurture life within themselves. To quote Pope St. John Paul II, “The body, and only the body, is capable of making visible the invisible realities: the spiritual and divine.” By learning how her body works, a woman may come to appreciate and value her femininity more deeply, no matter what her state in life may be.
One way that women can come to understand more about their bodies through the context of the Catholic faith is by learning to chart their cycles through Natural Family Planning. While Natural Family Planning is often seen as something exclusively for married couples, there are many benefits to single women learning how to chart their cycles. Reproductive health is an aspect of women’s health that is rarely discussed but is important to understand. Learning how to chart through NFP could give women the opportunity to learn more about their overall health, not just their fertility. Throughout a woman’s cycle, there are massive differences in how she experiences emotions, physical abilities, appetite, etc. Becoming aware of her body and how her cycle works could give a woman a better chance of living out her femininity effectively.
Fortunately, Natural Family Planning has gotten easier and easier over time as advances in technology continue to be made. There are now several functional apps that can help women with tracking their cycles. A couple of these include FEMM and Ready Your Body. Whether you are married and planning to use a Natural Family Planning method to track fertility, or you are a single woman simply interested in learning more about how her body works, these apps could benefit you in your journey of understanding your femininity.
As a Catholic woman striving to live out her faith on a college campus, I see it is clear that our culture is deeply confused about men and women and what relationships between the two should look like. Our world needs women who not only understand their femininity as a gift from God, but who also understand how their bodies work and how God uses our bodies in a unique way for his plan for us.
Guest Column
