The Church has identified herself as an “expert in humanity” [1].  But who has the temerity to claim to be an expert in the female half of humanity?  The complete identity of the female—call it the nature of ‘femaleness’—is hidden in the complex body-soul unity which constitutes the human person.  And so an understanding of the female body is one key to unlock this complex reality.  But an understanding of the body is not enough to understand the person.  Although human persons are always bodily and human bodies always personal, persons are not reducible to their bodies. They are their bodies, but they are more than their bodies, because the animating principle that makes their bodies to be living bodies is a non-material soul.  But is there such thing as a properly “female soul”?  Can spirit per se be engendered?  These are weighty questions.

Here I examine Charles J. Reid, Jr’s “Marriage: Its Relationship to Religion, Law, and the State,” Douglas Laycock’s “Afterword,” and offer final comments.

I summarized pp. 157-176 of Reid’s chapter in Part I of this review; in them he showed that traditionally in Western civilization and particularly in Anglo-American history marriage was regarded as “a divine institution.” Here I focus on the section “Marriage and the State” (176-187) and on his “Conclusion” (187-188).