He has revealed the universality of election by redemption. In Christ there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free man. All are one . As everyone knows, this wonderful declaration, at the heart of the Christian faith condemns all discrimination based on race, class or sex. The reference, used by Vatican II, and quoted many times since, is widely known nowadays and its omission here is all the more surprising.
Slavery is even less so.
While he spoke often of dialogue between cultures and peoples, there was nothing about human sexuality. I find it upsetting that for lack of any admonitions about abortion, the pill or homosexuality, the pope could find nothing important to say to the young people of today, girls and boys assembled to listen to him, about the rich blessings and the demands of their sexuality. It is a fact that some have difficulty in admitting, but there are more and more women who dare to say that they are offended or scandalised by having to fight against the use of identifying language which indicates if not their exclusion, then at least their lesser importance, an inferiority made all the more tangible by the ban in place on women fulfilling certain ministries and functions within the Church. I will admit, to qualify my proposition, that the repeated use of brother or son , and the absence of sister and daughter, do not mean exclusion for me, but imposes at the very least a painful separation. The deepest and most radical point in the matter of women's liberation is actually that we should be able from here on our own individual identity, proudly and joyfully, restored, without having to cower or hide behind a masculine identity and become dissipated or lost beneath the male image.