The following comes from an August 3 New York Times article by Mike McPhate:
Leaders of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender groups expressed dismay on Wednesday after Pope Francis said that schoolchildren are being taught they can choose their gender as part of what he called an “ideological colonization.”
Marianne Duddy-Burke, the executive director of DignityUSA, a leading organization of L.G.B.T. Catholics, said the comments represented a “dangerous ignorance” about gender identity, which is no more a choice than height or hair color.
“It’s very troubling that the pope would say this,” Ms. Duddy-Burke said on Wednesday. “It also shows that the pope doesn’t understand the danger that his words can mean for gender-nonconforming people, particularly those who live in countries with laws or cultural pressures that put these people at risk for violence.”
In his remarks, the pope said the idea of choosing gender was being taught with schoolbooks supplied by influential donors and countries.
“This is terrible,” he said, according to the transcript.
“It’s not all that clear who he’s mad at and what’s upsetting him,” said the Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a Jesuit priest and senior analyst for The National Catholic Reporter. “But there’s something underlying there. And I think it’s primarily that he feels that this kind of stuff is being pushed down their throats.”
L.G.B.T. leaders said Wednesday that the pope had failed to grasp that one’s gender identity is discovered, often at a very young age, not chosen. Ms. McBride, of the Human Rights Campaign, noted that transgender people have been a part of humanity throughout time and across cultures.
“There have been times where he’s demonstrated compassion,” she said of Francis. “Then there have been other times where his words have been not only hurtful, and frankly harmful, but really demonstrating a misunderstanding of what it means to be transgender.”
The Holy Father speaks the Gospel truth. The Pope is Peter the head of the Body of Christ in a long line of Peters first instituted by Jesus Christ. After all who are these people to judge the new Peter?
Who are They to Judge?
I kind of think of it like the young person who knows in their heart that they are an artist, and yet the parents want the child to be a doctor, but when the parents see the passion and drive and creativity expressed in his or her art, they come around and realize that their notion of their own child is not what the person sees as their authentic selves. It’s really nothing to do with “ideological colonialism” at all, but rather about human authenticity.
Except there’s nothing authentically human about desiring to be or desiring to act contrary to human nature. Authentic human nature as male or female is fixed; not fluid, not changeable, and not subject to personal choice. The pope is affirming fixed maleness and femaleness.
Any man who believes his authentic self is female is mentally ill. Any woman who believes her authentic self is male is likewise. You don’t help mentally ill people by indulging in their confusions about themselves.
People who accept the erroneous premises of gender ideology are as dangerous to an ordered, virtuous society as those who accept the erroneous premises of homosexuality. Look no further than the government’s recent bathroom dictates for an example…
As with the child yearning to be a millionaire, or a pop star or just imagine it and you can become it, rubbish.
Or perhaps, a junkie, or pervert or wicca priest, what rubbish.
Why do you spin a twisted story, like a fairy tale with NO HAPPY ending? Here is a pearl, meant to help. Life = reality. Good mental health = ‘accepting’ reality. Notice how people who seek attention by being ‘overly authentic’ are NEVER happy. The rest of us, more accepting of being ordinary, can be sorry as (or supportive as) heck for them, but it is never enough for those rejecting WHAT IS. So presenting scenarios that illustrate a “feel this in my heart” as motivation won’t HELP. The God who loves us made us male & female. Mocking the Creator by attempting to change God’s designs is futile. HE IS EVERYTHING. We are nothing. We can deal with it or seek professional help.
Continued……………………Because we can not alter our physical reality. It is, what is! A more then skin deep design not understood by beings lesser than the Creator. Many studies show, pretenses of change, even extravagant examples like Bruce Jenner, are not healthy, no longer recommended & are even detrimental. Pity those poor souls. Pray for them. You are not helping those poor souls humanity with you ‘wanna be something else’ story. God is God. We are not. Reality.
Continued…………..Your story would be more practical, realistic & end HAPPY if the son choose to think– What does God want of me? and then said, “I should and will honor my parents & become the best darn doctor. What was I thinking? Great opportunity.” After that, I can indulge my ‘artistic’ passions & create art in my spare time. That would be a smart choice as very few have the talent they THINK (DREAM) they have = starving artists. So I want to be practical & a good son.
Not too many parents insist their child become a doctor or a lawyer. But on the other hand, many parents discourage their child from insisting on being an artist or musician and forgoing a formal education or a more logical career path. That is because the parents understand reality better than the teen. That is because when the teen’s bubble bursts he or she has put themselves way behind the eight ball in having a chance at success at least to the level where they can support themselves and a future family. That is imprudent of the parents?
Kids and teens want to have fun. They do not love work so they look for something they can have fun and make money at it. Rarely happens. Rarely does a teen who was coerced to apply…
It depends on what kind of artist they want to be. If it is a promiscuous, godless artist or a Michael O’Brien of studiObrien type of artist. The field, like acting, is often full of land mines.
Yeah, I’m sure Jesus disappointed some Pharisees, Sadducees and assorted adulterers with His words, too. The real “dangerous ignorance” lies with those who think they can practice perversion and avoid Hell.
Excellent point TB.
Anyone who reasons correctly and understands correctly affirms that transgenderism is a mental illness.
Nobody in his right mind would accept the fluidity of gender or the self-determination of gender. One’s gender is determined by one’s biological sex, which is fixed at conception and ordinarily readily discernable through primary sex characteristics or chromosomal analysis.
Male and female, God created them.
So true! What kind of people think they can change reality? God is God. We are nothing. God does not make, isn’t capable of, a mistake because He is PERFECT. God ONLY made them male & female. Everything else is man made madness or sin or both. Pray for those sorry souls. There but for God’s grace…….
SO I don’t suppose anyone would ever be born with the genitalia of both sexes, because God never makes a mistake?
God does not make mistakes, but he created a universe in which abnormalities sometimes occur. The occurrence of abnormalities does not invalidate the norm from which the abnormality is a departure because the abnormality is understood to be an anomaly.
In cases where the sex of a newborn might appear ambiguous, the proper sex can almost always be determined through more rigorous examination, and any superfluous genitalia can be surgically removed.
Let’s keep in mind the minute number of transgenders. Their illness or abnormalities don’t warrant a departure from the objective, fixed, binary male/female sexuality of human nature.
Sigh.
The Pope is Catholic.
His job is to represent and teach what is Catholic.
That’s the job he does.
Anyone who’s disappointed or upset by this is demonstrating a misunderstanding of what it means to be Catholic, and pope.
Very well spoken
At some point, the Pope will need to always speak the truth. He is here, he is there, he is everywhere. Sure the LGBTQ people are disappointed and confused. Francis has all but said to them, “what you do is fine and dandy to me,” but not quite. The sad thing is that Francis fails to teach what the true nature of the Church, and of Mankind, is, and how Christ is needed to achieve salvation. Confusion is certainly a result of the Pope’s purposeful obscurity.
Who are they to judge on what the Pope says?
Thank you Father. This choice thing is new age. People choose to be mean, to steal, to be greedy, to gossip, to indulge in sexual adventure, to aspire to modesty or greatness. We are not predestined for any of that. Let us not encourage immorality or total destruction of one’s identity.
Transpeciesism is the next mental illness in line to be championed by the Left. Think that’s silly? Not long ago SSM and transgenderism were considered absurd.
The Left is proposing that it’s just fine for parents to raise their little boy as a girl and that boys who believe they are girls have nothing wrong with them.
Similarly deviant thought will propose that it’s just fine for parents to raise a kid as a dog and that children who believe they are dogs have nothing wrong with them.
The Left is waging an ideological war against objective reality, and the logical ramifications of that ideology lead to the dictatorship of relativism that wise Pope Benedict XVI warned about.
The Left is at war with God’s creation, and…
When you are spiritually blind, you can’t see the truth, because you have hardened your heart, to the knowledge of the truth.
When people reject the truth, it is because they are spiritually dead,
and the love of God is no longer in them.
They have a choice of will for good, but they choose evil.
Thus did Adam choose, after being created all good, to take on evil
for our nature. Thus there is intertwined in our nature, good and evil.
But through all the toils of life, we must choose good. If we do not,
our destination is not heaven, with God, but hell with Satan, for all
eternity.
Not long ago the idea of a Negro president was absurd. Not long before that the idea that a Negro man marrying a white women and not being lynched was also considered absurd.
But C&H, it was never Catholic teaching that B. O. could not be president, nor that people of two different races could not marry. Quite a different matter here.
At various times and places in history slavery was justified from Catholic pulpits. Would any priest in the Antibellum South officiated at a marriage of a Black Catholic and a White Catholic? If he had, would his Bishop have backed him up?
You confuse the notion of absurdity with unlikelihood. Your examples concern improbable outcomes, not contradictions of the inherent natures of things.
SSM is an absurdity because it is metaphysically impossible for two people of the same sex to marry. For one, their bodily natures are not oriented toward union nor reproduction. You don’t unite two bolts with each other; a bolt must be united with a nut, as is understood by grasping the natures of the two things.
Transgenderism is an absurdity because males and females cannot become their opposites. To claim that a cat is a dog is absurd in a similar way that claiming a male is a female: the assertions contradict the inherent natures of the things.
By asserting a legal right to SSM and transgenderism, American law is in the absurd position of claiming that there is no difference between squares and triangles. Nevermind that there are obvious differences easily grasped, says the government: you must treat them the same because the law says they are to be treated the same.
So anyone who adheres to reality by considering squares and triangles different, or saying they are different, or treating them differently will incur the government’s wrath for discrimination.
And just as an engineer who considers squares and triangles the same would build unsound structures destined for collapse, a culture that considers SSM the same as marriage and transgenderism the same as natural sex…
New Catholic Teaching Rules for Radical Reactions
1. “Dangerous ignorance” = This means that Pope Francis clearly spoke the truth!
2. “There have been times where he’s demonstrated compassion,” she said of Francis. = This means that many are now confused and “dismayed” because they thought Pope Francis was saying, “it’s more than ok to still have a lifestyle that’s gay, as long as you seek the Lord.” If you don’t believe this, just ask Elton John. This is where Jesus compassionately clarified, “Go and sin no more.”
3. “Then there have been other times where his words have been not only hurtful, and frankly harmful.” = This means that Pope Francis clearly spoke the truth!
The Pope speaks the truth. This woman’s ideology is dangerous and harmful to everyone.
From Prof Mike Adams – Townhall.com
“- members of the LGBT movement are often falsely accused of supporting fascism.
In fact, I often hear them referred to as “homo fascists” – and I detest the term because it is inaccurate.
(However, despite its fascistic overtones I do still occasionally employ the term “gaystapo.” Old habits are hard to break).
Put simply, LGBT activists are not seeking to have the government control all private businesses – as would be the case if they were truly fascistic.
In reality, they are only seeking to have the government control all Christian organizations as well as individual Christian entrepreneurs.
Recent HISTORY: WHY are we at this GAY tipping point in this (once) great country? Our POTUS said last election, “Marriage is between one man & one woman”. Then he got elected again (sigh). Shortly afterward he said, after much thought (?), he has CHANGED his mind about marriage. BO OPENED the flood gates of Sodom & Gomorrah to SWAMP America’s Christian Values! The SUPREME COURT did their part when they overturned state laws supporting traditional marriage. Least we forget, THANKS TO ALL THE CONFUSED CATHOLICS who voted BO in AGAIN. All Christians are suffering but the WORST is yet to come if Hillary gets in & continues this WAR on religious freedoms. Wake UP & Vote THEM out!
Barak Obama wants to destroy our culture so the Muslims can take over. What better way to do it than to encourage contraception, abortion and gender bending, besides making us rely on foreign oil, etc., but what they forget is that no decent religion or people could ever admire a man (Mohammed) who was a pedophile, plain and simple, so eventually they too will be the source of their own destruction.