Vatican City, Jun 10, 2019 / 08:35am h/t CNA
A Vatican department has issued a sweeping
denunciation of so-called gender theory, and affirmed the principles of human
dignity, difference, and complementarity.
“In all such [gender] theories, from the most
moderate to the most radical, there is agreement that one’s gender ends up
being viewed as more important than being of male or female sex,” the
Congregation for Catholic Education wrote June 10, in a new document entitled
“Male and Female He Created Them.”
“The effect of this move is chiefly to create a
cultural and ideological revolution driven by relativism, and secondarily a
juridical revolution, since such beliefs claim specific rights for the
individual and across society.”
The document says it aims to set out an
intellectual framework “towards a path of dialogue on the question of gender
theory in education.”
Published at the beginning of “Pride Month,”
during which many cities and corporations mark the campaign of LGBT advocacy,
the document says that the Church teaches an essential difference between men
and woman, ordered in the natural law and essential to the family and human
flourishing.
“There is a need to reaffirm the metaphysical
roots of sexual difference, as an anthropological refutation of attempts to
negate the male-female duality of human nature, from which the family is
generated,” the document explains.
“The denial of this duality not only erases the
vision of human beings as the fruit of an act of creation but creates the idea
of the human person as a sort of abstraction who ‘chooses for himself what his
nature is to be.’”
The text, signed by Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi,
prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, outlines the philosophical
origins of the gender theory movement, and notes the broad movement to enshrine
its distinct anthropology in policy and law.
The Congregation explains that, beginning in the
middle of the twentieth century, a series of studies were published which
proposed that external conditioning had the primary determinative influence on
personality. When such studies were applied to human sexuality, the document
says, they did so with a view to demonstrating that sexuality identity was more
a social construct than a given natural or biological fact.
“These schools of thought were united in denying
the existence of any original given element in the individual, which would
precede and at the same time constitute our personal identity, forming the
necessary basis of everything we do.”
“Over the course of time, gender theory has
expanded its field of application. At the beginning of the 1990s, its focus was
upon the possibility of the individual determining his or her own sexual
tendencies without having to take account of the reciprocity and
complementarity of male-female relationships, nor of the procreative end of
sexuality,” the document says.
The result was a “radical separation between
gender and sex, with the former having priority over the later.”
The problem with this theory, according to the
Congregation, is not the distinction between the two terms, which can be
properly understood, but in the separation of the two from each other.
“The propositions of gender theory converge in
the concept of ‘queer’, which refers to dimensions of sexuality that are
extremely fluid, flexible, and as it were, nomadic.”
The result of this ideological trend, according
to the Congregation’s assessment, is an undermining of the family.
“[In gender theory] the only thing that matters
in personal relationships is the affection between the individuals involved,
irrespective of sexual difference or procreation which would be seen as
irrelevant in the formation of families.”
“Thus, the institutional model of the family
(where a structure and finality exist independent of the subjective preferences
of the spouses) is bypassed, in favor of a vision of family that is purely
contractual and voluntary.”
The document said that despite the challenges,
dialogue remains possible. It also called for protection of human and family
rights, decried unjust discrimination, and noted points of unity among people
of divergent perspectives on gender ideology.
“For instance, educational programs on this area
often share a laudable desire to combat all expressions of unjust discrimination,
a requirement that can be shared by all sides,” the document said.
“Indeed, it cannot be denied that through the
centuries forms of unjust discrimination have been a sad fact of history and
have also had an influence within the Church. This has brought a certain
rigid status quo, delaying the necessary and progressive
inculturation of the truth of Jesus’ proclamation of the equal dignity
of men and women, and has provoked accusations of a sort of masculinist
mentality, veiled to a greater or lesser degree by religious motives.”
The aim of the Church at the institutional and
individual level must be the education of children in line with authentic
principles which defend and instil authentic human dignity, the Congregation
explains.
“In practice, the advocacy for the different
identities often presents them as being of completely equal value compared
to each other.”
“The generic concept of ‘non-discrimination’
often hides an ideology that denies the difference as well as natural
reciprocity that exists between men and women.”
Referencing classical philosophy, historic
Church teaching, Vatican Council II and the writings of several popes, the
document explains the Church’s understanding of a Christian anthropology,
insisting that it be at the heart of human formation.
For Christians working in schools, both
religious and secular, the radical individualism of gender theory should be
avoided in favor of teaching children “to overcome their individualism and
discover, in the light of faith, their specific vocation to live responsibly in
a community.”
Above all, the document says, the family remains
“the primary community” to which the students belong and the fundamental
vehicle for preserving, understanding, and transmitting human dignity.
“The school must respect the family’s culture.
It must listen carefully to the needs that it finds and the expectations that
are directed towards it.”
In the modern context, however, the essential
alliance between school and family “has entered into crisis,” the Congregation
notes.
“There is an urgent need to promote a new
alliance that is genuine and not simply at the level of bureaucracy, a shared
project that can offer a ‘positive and prudent sexual education’ that can
harmonise the primary responsibility of parents with the work of teachers.”
“Although ideologically-driven approaches to the
delicate questions around gender proclaim their respect for diversity, they
actually run the risk of viewing such difference as static realities and end up
leaving them isolated and disconnected from each other,” the document
concludes.
Promoting a culture of dialogue between the Church
and those advancing gender theory principles must take place, the document
says, in a manner that respects “the legitimate aspirations of Catholic schools
to maintain their own vision of human sexuality,” based on “an integral
anthropology capable of harmonizing the human person’s physical, psychic and
spiritual identity.”
The congregation ends by insisting on the rights
of the Church, the family, and of Catholic educators to defend authentic
teaching and understanding in the face of an increasingly exclusivist approach
to education in line with secular progressive principles.
“A democratic state cannot reduce the range of
education on offer to a single school of thought, all the more so in relation
to this extremely delicate subject, which is concerned on the one hand with the
fundamentals of human nature, and on the other with natural rights of parents
to freely choose any educational model that accords with the dignity of the
human person.”
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