Pope Francis has spoken out strongly against gender ideology, while insisting that each individual must be treated with dignity and respect. In AmorisLaetitia (56), Pope Francis warned of “an ideology of gender” imposed through national “educational programmes and “legislative enactments” in order to “promote a personal identity and emotional intimacy radically separated from the biological difference between male and female.” The result is the “eliminate[ion of] the anthropological basis of the family.” Pope Francis writes that “biological sex and the socio-cultural role of sex (gender) can be distinguished but not separated,” and therefore the young “need to be helped to accept their own body as it was created.”
Similarly, in 2012, Pope Benedict XVI criticized ideologies that deny the “pre-ordained duality of man and woman,” and thus deny “the family” as “a reality established by creation.” Pope Benedict also highlighted the atheism underlying the denial of created reality: “When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being.”*
*Resource: Catholic Women’s Forum. See here for more informational resources.
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