Pope Francis has repeatedly and emphatically spoken out against gender ideology. He has also boldly pushed back against cultural pressure — what he terms “ideological colonization” — being placed on individuals, families, schools, churches, cultures and countries, who resist this redefinition of what it means to be a human person.
While emphatically encouraging Catholics and all people of good will to support, welcome, accompany and love all those whose gender identity does not match their biological sex, to affirm their human dignity and defend their fundamental human rights to be free of violence and unjust discrimination, Pope Francis has simultaneously been very clear about the dangers to those with gender dysphoria and to all of society from gender ideology.
In his 2016 exhortation Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love), the Pope wrote that, by denying the “difference and reciprocity in nature of a man and a woman” and promoting a “personal identity and emotional intimacy radically separated from the biological difference between male and female,” gender ideology ultimately makes human identity “the choice of the individual” and undermines the “anthropological basis for the family.”
It is “one thing to be understanding of human weakness and the complexities of life,” he continued, “and another to accept ideologies that attempt to sunder what are inseparable aspects of reality.” We must, he emphasized, “protect our humanity, and this means, in the first place, accepting it and respecting it as it was created.”
Our sex — just like our genes, race, age and other natural characteristics — are objective givens, not subjective choices.
In his 2015 encyclical letter Laudato Sì (Care for Our Common Home), Pope Francis wrote at length on why the protection of our humanity is at stake:
“Acceptance of our bodies … is vital for welcoming and accepting the entire world as a gift, … whereas thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation. Learning to accept our body, to care for it and to respect its fullest meaning, is an essential element of any genuine human ecology. Moreover, valuing one’s own body in its femininity or masculinity is necessary if I am going to be able to recognize myself in an encounter with someone who is different.”
He described the consequences of questioning the complementarity between man and woman further in a 2015 General Audience. “The differences between man and woman are not for opposition or subordination, but for communion and generation,” he said. Rather than leading to a more free and just society, gender ideology in fact hinders communion and generation between men and women. It’s a “step backwards,” he underlined, “a problem, not a solution.”
When the natural, complementary duality of man and woman is called into question, the very notion of being — what it means to be human — is undermined. The body becomes no longer a defining element of humanity. The person becomes reduced to spirit and will and the human person almost becomes an abstraction until one discerns what nature one is or selects which of the four, or 58, or 64, or 100 possible genders or more one wants to be.
Pope Francis is particularly concerned about gender ideology being taught to children, so that boys and girls are encouraged to question, at the earliest ages of existence, whether they are a boy or girl, and told that gender is something one can choose.
That’s one of the reasons why the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education published a lengthy document in 2019 entitled, “Male and Female He Created Them: Towards a Path of Dialogue on the Question of Gender Theory in Education,” to give clear principles to Catholic educational institutions throughout the world and equip parents and educators in non-Catholic institutions with arguments as to why gender ideology not only exacerbates the confusion of children who might be experiencing gender dysphoria but confuses all children, undermining basic common sense and their security in knowing their nature and identity.
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