Don’t Show Contempt for the Image of God

by Kilian SC · June 24, 2018

Exploiting women or treating them like objects is a sin against God, Pope Francis said in his homily during morning Mass at Domus Sanctae Marthae. It will do people good – especially those who enjoy freedom – to reflect on how many women have become “slaves of this throwaway mentality,” he said.

Committing Adultery

The pope’s homily focused on the day’s Gospel reading in which Jesus tells his disciples that anyone “who looks at women with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Jesus also admonishes those who divorce their wife, saying it “causes her to commit adultery and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

Jesus “changed history,” Pope Francis said, with the way he respected women and recognised they have equal dignity as men.

At the time, women were second-class citizens and slaves in that they did not enjoy full freedom, he said.

Jesus recognised the dignity of women and “put them at the same level as men” because he understood what God meant when he created male and female in his image.

“Both are in God’s image, both. Not man first and then woman a little bit below,” he said.

Not in the Image of God

“A man without a woman nearby – be it a mother, a sister, a wife, a co-worker, a friend – that man is not in the image of God” without her.

So many women, instead, are exploited and put on sale “like in a market,” he said. Men “go up to them not to say, ‘Good evening,’ but ‘How much do you cost?'”

People try to clear their consciences by labelling these women as prostitutes, but they must remember that Jesus said those who reject women expose them to adultery.

“Women end up like this, exploited, enslaved because you do not treat women well,” Pope Francis said.

Women are also used as objects in the media and advertising, displayed “like an object of desire” or to be used, he said.

A Sin against the Creator

A woman may be “humiliated, naked” in an ad for a certain product brand, he said, or they may be “objects of that disposable philosophy” at home, at work, in different businesses where it seems they are not even a person.

“This is a sin against God the creator – to reject women – because without them, we men cannot be in the image and likeness of God,” he said.

“We have to reflect better,” he said, and recognise how doing or saying certain things against women, in essence, shows contempt for the image of God. By Carol Glatz Catholic News Service