The Soul Maintains the Form of the Body

This idea is an error which is found in various religious traditions that accept either the pre-existence of souls or reincarnation. This is found in traditions as disparate as Ultra-Orthodox Judaism and Hinduism. For us Catholics, God creates the human soul directly at each bodily conception, and so there is no sense in which the soul or human form is male or female except insofar as it is infused into a male or female body as its form.

Sexual difference is a bodily reality, and so it is true to say that the soul of a man is always and forever the form of a male body and a male person, and likewise for the soul of a woman. Sexual difference is not indifferent for the soul, but it is still true that this difference does not find its principle in the soul but in the body of one who belongs to a kind, a species that is multiplied in many individuals through procreation. The source of male and female is a single, identical source—namely, human nature, which requires the union of the sexes for its fulfillment.