Youcat commented through CCC – Question n. 400 – Part II.

YOUCAT Question n. 400 – Part II. What does it mean to say that man is a sexual being?

(Youcat answer - repeated) God created man as male and female. He created them for each other and for love. He created them with erotic desires and the ability to experience physical pleasure. He created them to transmit life.    

A deepening through CCC

(CCC 2392) "Love is the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being" (FC 11). (CCC 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.    

Reflecting and meditating 

(Youcat comment) Being a man or being a woman is very deeply imprinted on the individual human person; it is a different way of feeling, a different way of loving, a different calling with respect to children, another way of believing. Because he intended that they should be there for each other and complement one another in love, God made man and woman different. That is why man and woman attract each other sexually and intellectually. When a husband and wife express their love for each other in bodily union, their love finds its deepest sensual expression. Just as God is creative in his love, so too man can be creative in love and give life to children.     

(CCC Comment)

(CCC 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." All human generations proceed from this union.(Cf.  Gen 4:1-2, 25-26;  5:1). (CCC 2334) "In creating men 'male and female,' God gives man and woman an equal personal dignity" (FC 22; Cf. GS 49 § 2). "Man is a person, man and woman equally so, since both were created in the image and likeness of the personal God" (MD 6).    

(The next question is:  Is there a priority of one sex over the other?)