Mystery of Woman Revealed in Motherhoodby Pope John Paul II from this General Audience on 12 March 1980. Read text via EWTN. It’s good for us to situate these words of Pope John Paul II in his 21st catechesis. We are in part I of Man and Woman He Created Them a Theology of the Body, chapter 1 “Christ Appeals to the Beginning”, Number 6 of that chapter “Knowledge and Procreation”. And in this section Pope John Paul II is going over three (3) parts of that number 6 of chapter 1: “Knowledge as Personal Archetype”, “Fatherhood and Motherhood as the Human Meaning of Knowledge”, and “Knowledge and Possession”. Over ten (10) times Pope John Paul II focuses on “knowledge” in this 21st catechesis. He again analyzes “knowledge.” He went over it in the last catechesis. “Yada”, the Hebrew word “to know”: “Adam knew his wife and she conceived.” Knowledge is not just what we know rationally speaking: 2 + 2 = 4, Washington D.C. is the capital of the United States, Nashville is the capital of Tennessee, George Washington was our first President in the United States of America. These are things we know but there is a different knowledge. The knowledge between husband and wife, heart to heart, and carnal knowledge: the knowledge of husband and wife when they make love. Knowledge establishes a kind of personal archetype. Pope John Paul II cites Carl Gustav Jung, He is not endorsing all of Jung’s work obviously, but whatever insights he can garner. John Paul II even points out that Freud doesn’t use the archetypical terminology but the reality is there nonetheless even in Freud and so there you have it. What made man different from the other animals? His ability to know, he is able to differentiate one creature from another: this is a giraffe, this is a lion, this is a trout, this is a salmon, this is an amazon parrot, this is a sparrow. The birds of the air, the beasts of the field, the fish of the sea; they recognize each other perhaps at least as predator or not. But can they classify them as we are able to classify them? Study them as we are able to study them? Heal them or cure them as we are able to in our veterinary sciences? Our ability to abstract, to apply universals and to share knowledge; abstract knowledge makes us different. We are able to not just to build a house or a structure but an igloo, or a sky scraper, or a brick house, or a teepee… All of these are human dwelling places. But sparrows only make sparrow homes and beavers or make beaver homes. You see what I am getting at. Knowledge is a basis for the original solitude and the Holy Father had treated original solitude earlier and it was based on this ability to know. Adam recognized he was not like all the other creatures and it was then that he discovered his wife Eve. “This one at last bone of my bone” but the two of them together were still unlike any other creature on the face of the Earth. And they are different because they were made in the image of God. Male and Female they were made in the image of God and that is still true for us today. Pope John Paul II in this 21st catechesis speaks to us about reciprocal knowledge. The reciprocal knowledge of the husband and the wife: the knower and the known. At first he just says “the husband knows the wife and the wife is known” but later he points out that it is also vice versa, there is reciprocity here. Sometimes you meet a couple and they are able to finish each others’ sentences after so many years of Holy Marriage. This is just one aspect of reciprocal knowledge. Pope John Paul II in this 21st catechesis of the Theology of the Body Man and Woman He Created Them speaks of “external” and “internal”, “inside” and “outside”, as sorts of knowledge of the other. This reciprocal knowledge, of husband for wife, and wife for husband, externally or from the outside: the bodily constitution, the [...]