Woman: God's Masterpiece: Understanding and Living the Feminine Genius
Christopher West

Beginning in Genesis it is shown that man has failed miserably in upholding woman's dignity
All women to some extent have been affected by the sins of men; abused, discarded

"The hour is coming, in fact has already come, when the vocation of women is being acknowledged in its fullest, the hour in which women acquire in the world an influence and a power hitherto never achieved" - Second Vatican Counsel

"The great process of women's liberation has been difficult and a complicated one, and at times it has not been without its share of mistakes, but it has been a substantially positive one even if it is still unfinished, the journey of an authentic women's liberation must go on" - PJPII
This is a task given to women, especially in a time when there is a built-in prejudice against women, when men dominate over women.

2 Competing Feminologies; two visions of what it is to be a woman:
1) The Church is the main oppressor of women in the world
2) The Church is the main defender and protector of women's dignity in the world

What is the Catholic vision of women?
Masterpiece; the greatest work of art made or done by a person or a group
The master artist at work here is the Trinity
The masterpiece of the Trinity, the most beautiful work of creation, the most perfect work of creation is woman.
The last act of creation is the creation of human being as male and female. The fact that man is created last is a sign of humanity being the crown of all created works of God. In the second creation story, the last creature God creates is woman. We discover that we are all the crown of creation, but women in a particular sense is that crown. Women embody the perfection of the human creature. Mary is the highest creature in heaven; she has been given the perfection of the divine life, which is why we call her Mary full of grace. Mary is the masterpiece.
Almost all cultures universally describe nature with feminine terms; mother nature, mother earth for example. Femininity speaks of the dignity of the created order. Even biology speaks of this priority of the feminine in the order; the X chromosome is the standard, the Y is a deviation of the natural pattern.

The battle satan rages is a battle against woman. If we understand why the devil attacks women, we can understand our great dignity and our great purpose in God's plan of creation.
God's eternal plan for the whole human race is to marry us. To be human is to be a bride, to conceive divine and eternal life within us. The woman who conceived divine life within her was Mary.

However, we cannot understand woman in isolation from man.
"We need to return to God's original plan for the human couple, and proclaim it forcefully so that women in particular who have suffered more from the failure of God's original plan to be lived,  so women in particular can finally give full expression to their womanhood and their dignity" - PJPII

Marriage is the primordial sacrament; a sacrament right from the beginning, the fundamental sacrament. The union of man and woman in one flesh is the fundamental way that God reveals His eternal plan to humanity. Women have a particular desire for union and intimacy because we desire for a union with God, and this is related to our desire for intimacy and union with a man through the sacrament of marriage.

The man, in making himself a gift to the woman, also receives the gift of the woman. And the woman, in receiving the gift of the man, also makes a gift of herself to the man. The giving of the gift, and the receiving of the gift, interpenetrate. In this way, we form a true life-giving communion that images the very life-giving communion with the trinity.

God is maculine in relationship to humanity and humanity is feminine in relationship to God; this is why we refer to the church as a "she".

Why does the serpant approach woman, Eve, in the garden? Not because we are the weaker sex, but in a sense because we are the 'stronger' sex. "Woman represents the archetype of the whole human race. She represents the humanity that belongs to all human beings; both man and woman" -PJPII. Satan attacks woman because he wants to deny the gift of the bridegroom.

To be continued...