Recently, EDIFY host Mary FioRito sat down with Dr. Greg Bottaro to discuss what defines a man and the “masculine genius.”
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Dr. Greg Bottaro is the Founder and Director of the CatholicPsych Institute. The organization’s mission is to revolutionize therapy from a Catholic standpoint with the knowledge that comes from the Catholic blueprint of humanity.
Bottaro and FioRito counter this mindset by citing biology, neuroscience, psychology, and how the Catholic faith reaffirms God’s natural design and the beauty in differences between men and women.
FioRito points to the work of Dr. Ricardo Lando, “who does presentations on this and he shows slides of a female fetal brain and a male fetal brain and points out the differences even during human development inside of the womb between the male brain and the female brain.”
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Bottaro and FioRito confront the attacks against traditional gender roles by addressing one of the main concerns for Catholics worldwide.
“We’ve been watching this happen with the breakdown of the family and the breakdown of… what the church has called the cell of society. The family is what makes up the community of society but the family is not being upheld as worthy of protecting,” Bottaro explains.
Today, the U.S. is experiencing an unprecedented attack on men, women, marriage, and family.
“So with contraception and then divorce and all the promiscuities that are allowed, and the redefinition of marriage, and the redefinition of gender, I mean we’re just completely obliterating what it is to be human,” Bottaro says.
>> LISTEN TO THE WHOLE EPISODE: “What is a man?” <<
Dr. Bottaro’s own medical practice is aligned towards addressing and healing wounds imparted on men and women from the secular world.
One of Bottaro’s main points is the importance of understanding the differences between men and women and how God has designed men and women to work in harmony with one another, and ultimately towards communion with God:
When we can see that there’s good things within me but there’s also things that I need from the good things that are in women if that’s what I can work with a man to understand then that’s how we learn how to develop ourselves as persons more than just what we find in our biology because the personal call is a call to communion.
Men and women should not simply be put into boxes based on what society labels as either “masculine traits” or “feminine traits.” Similarly, part of our understanding of the theology of the body is rooted in an appreciation for natural design and how certain behaviors support God’s intrinsic design for both men and women.
“Real equality doesn’t exist without real difference, and so if we’re going to not acknowledge the differences we’re never going to get to a place of equality,” he notes.
>> LISTEN NOW: “What is a man?” <<
