Posted on 09/24/2016 9:06:21 AM PDT by Salvation
Q. What is the Church’s official teaching about transgender bathrooms? There does not seem to be a clear answer about all of this.
Robert, via e-mail
A. There is no such thing as being “transgendered” from any biblical or Catholic perspective. Thus there is no official teaching about something that doesn’t even exist, let alone about bathrooms. What we can do is apply Catholic principles to address the deep confusion that has arisen about something so clear and basic as one’s sex.
The human person has a sex (not a gender), and God assigns that sex. Scripture says, in creating us, “[God] created them; male and female he created them” (Gn 1:27). Our bodies are therefore a revelation of who and what God created us to be. No amount of clothes, cosmetics or surgery can alter the fact that we are male or female right down to our DNA.
Transgenderism is one of the stranger manifestations of the sexual confusion of our times. It is a form of Gnostic dualism wherein a person can claim that he has an “identity” wholly separate from anything indicated by his body. This amounts to a reduction of the human person to his thoughts or feelings, and a stepping back from reality as clearly indicated by the body. It also denigrates the body and the witness it makes to us of who and what we are.
And yet the glory of the human person is to unite the two aspects of God’s creation, the spiritual and the material. So precious is the bodily dimension of the human person that Christ took to himself a full human nature: body and soul. He did not simply come among us as a ghost or mirage. He walked among us in our full nature, offered His body on the altar of the cross, and raised up His full humanity and glorified it. To reduce our bodies to a mere tool, or a sort of prison (where a man is “trapped” in a woman’s body), or to mutilate it surgically is a grave offense against what God has wrought. Since our body is a revelation from God of who and what we are, to ignore its voice or overrule what God says is a sign of the pride of our days.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches: “Man and woman have been created, which is to say, willed by God: on the one hand, in perfect equality as human persons; on the other, in their respective beings as man and woman. ‘Being man’ or ‘being woman’ is a reality which is good and willed by God.… In their ‘being-man’ and ‘being-woman,’ they reflect the Creator’s wisdom and goodness” (No. 369, emphasis in original).
Those who struggle with their sexuality as given by God deserve our sympathy and care. But in no way can we participate in confirming them in a very great error and deep confusion. Only the truth, as God has declared it, will set us free. We therefore must resist and teach against the “gender ideology” of our times, which seeks to replace what God has wrought with vain imaginings that both confuse and demean the true glory of the human person.
Monsignor Pope Ping from OSV column for September.
The whole reason for all this crap is that the left hates “Male and female he created them.”
The whole reason is to be able to punish and to be able to keep punishing those who they know will never capitulate to the latest soul killing insanity.
The whole sex exclusive area thing reminds me of ‘gay marriage’ 20 years ago. Not a good sign in my opinion.
FReegards
The Msgr made an interesting theological & historical link: “It is a form of Gnostic dualism....”
Thanks for the ping. Good statement of Catholic doctrine. I’m not sure about his link to Gnostic dualism.
The whole reason for this crap is the dominance of liberal morality being based on feelings instead of rules.
Liberal morality is feelings define morality and reality. They’ve moved past “if it feels good, it is good, if it feels bad, it is bad” to “if you feel like a woman, despite biological reality, you are a woman”.
Thus transgenderism is the epitome of feelings are the definition of reality and what defines how others should act.
Feelings or decisions?
Which make these people live the way they do?
Scott Adams thinks none of us are rational, we only think we are.
For liberals, rationality is irrelevant in most cases, the feelings trump any logic - which is why good intentions outweigh horrific end results and let you rush into the next thing sounds good and makes you feel good.
I use rational thought to determine that you are not rational. Neither am I.
It makes sense to me.
There is no such thing as a "gay marriage." It is a legal union NOW that is sinful to the core, against every ethic and moral code in all the cultures of this planet, past, present and future. ABOMINATION.
Also, just because something is now LEGAL, still doesn't make it morally right.
Not a good sign in my opinion.
You got THAT right.
I know and you know that the state’s take on marriage isn’t the right one, with the ‘gay marriage’ thing just the latest wrongness. It hasn’t had the right take on it for centuries, but now most get their definition from the state. Civil law defines marriage for the state, and civil law changes based on whatever judges, pols, or the voting majority think it should be at any one time. The state in the modern era doesn’t have any way to do it. It was probably a huge mistake to hand the definition over to the secular state.
Freegards
You are correct. But, since SO many Americans divorce, it HAS to be about money, child custody, alimony...and who controls it. It all starts with the first and worst of the seven deadly sins: PRIDE (arrogance).
It doesn't really matter what the state says or does as EACH and EVERY ONE OF US knows what is right in God's eyes. They also know that "permission" from the state may give them a few moments of "whoopee" here and now but THE DAY WILL COME when they have to answer to our good Lord and His judgment.
There WILL be a reckoning!
HIS judgment will be for ETERNITY.
I think the majority just take the state’s current version as the definition of marriage. And more fall in line as the decades pass and the state keeps whatever application of marriage was controversial. Otherwise why did all the religious groups that accepted ‘gay marriage’ wait until the state they happened to be in also accepted it before they married their gay members? And look at how many say things like ‘the state accepting gay marriage will destroy marriage?’
Freegards
Their own personal pleasures make people decide to do exactly what they want to do.
If they have same-gender attraction, they ACT on it, knowing full well that sex is ONLY allowed between a man and woman married to each other.
All other forms of sex are not allowed.
There are minions of Satan who decide that these anti-God decisions are okay. They force the state to legalize these sinful behaviors then they openly display their devotion to Satan.
Everyone can titter and snicker and pretend whatever they want but there WILL be a reckoning with those people who broke God's LAW on marriage. All those folks will DIE and have to meet their Maker. I seriously doubt if they will be tittering by then.
CATHOLIC groups haven't accepted "gay marriage" and neither have some of the Protestant denominations. The Catholic Church CANNOT accept homosexual unions as "marriage." It CANNOT.
Islam forbids "gay marriage." You would THINK that we Christians could do as well as or better than Islam.
I wonder WHICH Protestant denominations accept homosexual marriages. I haven't a CLUE. Do YOU have any idea? I know that there isn't any ONE voice of any Protestant denomination except the Bishop of Canterbury...and I'm not so sure of his opinion.
CATHOLIC groups haven’t accepted “gay marriage” and neither have some of the Protestant denominations.
Every religious group that did accept it waited until the state actually changed it’s law to accept it for themselves. All the groups had pretty much already split by that point, the libs took the old names, the conservative Christians formed new groups that haven’t accepted ‘gay marriage’. My point was that religious groups actually wouldn’t marry their own gays until the state agreed with them, so to them the state’s version is the actual version they go by.
“Now, since the family and human society at large spring from marriage, these men will on no account allow matrimony to be the subject of the jurisdiction of the Church. Nay, they endeavor to deprive it of all holiness, and so bring it within the contracted sphere of those rights which, having been instituted by man, are ruled and administered by the civil jurisprudence of the community. Wherefore it necessarily follows that they attribute all power over marriage to civil rulers, and allow none whatever to the Church; and, when the Church exercises any such power, they think that she acts either by favor of the civil authority or to its injury. Now is the time, they say, for the heads of the State to vindicate their rights unflinchingly, and to do their best to settle all that relates to marriage according as to them seems good.”
-—Pope Leo XIII, 1880, Arcanum (on Christian marriage)
Freegards
I see. Thank you for you explanation.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.