Striking a blow against the unscientific “transgender” agenda, Pope Francis called the notion of “gender fluidity” the “annihilation of man” during a recent closed-door meeting. Among his remarks, made while speaking with bishops at the start of the recent World Youth Days in Poland, were, reports Breitbart, “‘Today, in schools they are teaching this to children — to children! — that everyone can choose their gender,’ as a result of ‘persons and institutions who donate money.’ He went on to describe the process of ‘ideological colonizing’ backed by ‘very influential countries,’ which he did not identify. One such ‘colonization,’ he said, ‘I’ll say it clearly with its first and last name — is gender.’” He added, “This is terrible.”
The comments were made shortly after the pope’s arrival in the city of Krakow on July 27, but were only released this past Tuesday. And pulling no punches, Francis said “We are living a moment of annihilation of man as image of God”; explaining this statement, he elaborated, “Speaking with Pope Benedict, who is well, and has a clear mind, he was telling me: ‘Holiness, this is the epoch of sin against God the Creator.’ He’s intelligent! God created man and woman, God created the world this way, this way, this way, and we are doing the opposite,’” reports the Washington Post.
The two popes were alluding to the biblical revelation stating that “God created man in his own image … male and female He created them,” a truth that also, of course, is Catholic teaching. Thus, choosing a “gender” contrary to one’s God-given sexual status constitutes rebellion against the divine order. Moreover, since man was created “male and female,” asserting that a person could be something other — social engineers have now defined literally scores of “genders” — is the “annihilation of man” in the sense that it seeks to supplant the recognized reality of what God-created man actually is with a new conception of man wholly contrary to it.
The New York Times reports that the “pontiff’s latest remarks represented a letdown for gay rights groups that were encouraged by the pope’s conciliatory remarks in June after the massacre of gay patrons at a nightclub in Orlando, Fla.” Yet such feelings result from false expectations, which themselves are the result of a mis-reporting of Francis’ statements and a misunderstanding of Catholic Church teaching.
Consider what’s perhaps the most publicized statement the pope has made in the area of sexuality: “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Uttered off-the-cuff to reporters while on a plane back to Rome in 2013, this was widely misinterpreted because “Who am I to judge?” is a code phrase that in the secular “Anglosphere” generally means, “I’m okay with homosexual behavior.” Yet Francis is not secular or Anglo, and being neither American nor a native English speaker, it isn’t surprising he might not understand the phrase’s connotation. In truth, though, the pontiff was speaking specifically of priests who may have homosexual feelings but nonetheless live chaste lives — as the Church teaches all unmarried people must. And in this he merely reflected long-standing Catholic doctrine: While homosexual feelings are “disordered,” having them is not itself sinful.
Sin enters the equation when a person decides to act upon the feelings.
This is just common sense. People generally don’t choose their feelings, but they do choose their actions.
In the same vein, the pope has also rejected the homosexual agenda. While making the point in 2013 that having disordered feelings alone must not bring condemnation, he said that “lobbying by this [homosexual] orientation” certainly is condemnable. Being even more blunt in 2010 while still archbishop of Buenos Aires, Francis said that faux marriage “is the total rejection of God’s law,” “an attempt to destroy God’s plan,” and an effort by “the father of lies [the Devil] who seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God.”
And the pontiff’s position on “gender” reflects this, according to Pope Francis biographer Austen Ivereigh. As the New York Times reported, “Mr. Ivereigh said the pontiff’s remarks last week represented no prejudice toward transgender people, but rather a rejection of so-called gender ideology. ‘His view is that gender is a gift of God — it’s part of the created world,’ Mr. Ivereigh said. ‘And that gender ideology, which says that gender is something that you can choose and select, is an abstract ideology which doesn’t correspond to that human reality.’”
Nonetheless, this sober and salving position has done little to forestall criticism. As Breitbart tells us, “The [pope’s] comments have upset LGBT activists, with Marianne Duddy-Burke, the executive director of the LGBT Catholic organisation DignityUSA, claiming that the comments show his ‘dangerous ignorance of gender identities.’”
Yet Duddy-Burke appears herself to know little more about “gender identities” than she does about Catholicism. As to the latter, “Catholic” is not an ethnicity but a designation defined by adherence to a set of beliefs, beliefs Duddy-Burke’s organization clearly doesn’t share; thus, it is not “Catholic.” Moreover and as I’ve oft explained, the “transgender” agenda is based on ideology, not science. In a nutshell, doctors who diagnose a person with “gender dysphoria” — the strong sense you’re a member of one sex stuck in a body of the opposite sex — can identify no physiological markers proving that at issue is a biological, and not a purely psychological, phenomenon. Nonetheless, they forge on ahead treating the body, not the mind, and may even recommend “sex-reassignment surgery” based on nothing more than the patient’s “feelings.” But as former “transsexual” Alan Finch said in 2004, relating facts and not feelings, “You fundamentally can’t change sex…. Transsexualism was invented by psychiatrists.”
And is advanced by governments. This brings us to the pope’s comments about “ideological colonization.” What did he mean? The Times writes that in 2015 Francis “was reported to have given the example of an education minister in Argentina who was offered a loan to build schools on the condition that the textbooks include ‘gender theory.’” Note that this is par for the course. As OneNewsNow wrote in 2014, the Obama administration has made African nations’ “support of the homosexual agenda … the ticket for [their] receiving billions of dollars in foreign aid.” And these United States are victimized by this ideological colonization as well. Consider that Obama’s bathroom dictate — advising schools nationwide that they must allow students to use any bathroom they wish — included the threat that federal funding could be denied for noncompliance.
Of course, we’re funding our own colonization. The federal government seizes an exorbitant amount of the people’s wealth via taxation; then, behaving as if it’s doing us a favor, makes the return of a small portion of it dependent upon our acceptance of its social engineering. We pay the piper — the feds call the tune. So perhaps avoiding the annihilation of man can begin with the annihilation of unconstitutional federal power.
Photo of Pope Francis: Edgar Jiménez
