The Vatican has issued a strong warning against \u201cgender theory\u201d and said that any gender-affirming surgery risks threatening \u201cthe unique dignity\u201d of a person, in a new document signed off and approved by Pope Francis. <\/p>\n
Titled \u201cDignitas Inifinita\u201d (Infinite Dignity) the declaration focuses on what it describes as a range of threats to human dignity, including poverty, the death penalty, war, assisted dying, abortion, sexual abuse and the abuse of women. <\/p>\n
The text, published by the Vatican doctrine office on Monday, states that attempts to obscure \u201cthe sexual difference between man and woman\u201d should be rejected.\u00a0\u201cIt follows that any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception,\u201d it adds. <\/p>\n
The document is largely a re-stating of Catholic teaching on these topics but does not seek to isolate one issue \u2013 such as abortion \u2013 but says it emphasizes the equal dignity of all people, regardless of their circumstances. On abortion, it strongly reiterates what the pontiff has said in the past, that\u00a0the \u201cdefense of unborn life is closely linked to the defense of each and every other human right.\u201d <\/p>\n
The document also addresses\u00a0surrogacy, which\u00a0it says \u201cviolates\u201d both the dignity of the child and the woman, who \u201cbecomes a mere means subservient to the arbitrary gain or desire of others.\u201d Pope Francis has recently called for the practice of surrogacy to be banned. <\/p>\n
The pope has spoken out strongly against gender ideology in the past,\u00a0describing it as \u201cugly\u201d\u00a0for erasing what he says are distinctions between men and women. The latest Vatican document quotes Francis by describing it as a form of \u201cideological colonization.\u201d <\/p>\n
It states that gender theory \u201cintends to deny the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings: sexual difference\u201d which it says is \u201cthe most beautiful and most powerful of them.\u201d Gender-affirming surgery, it adds, is to be avoided because \u201cthe body serves as the living context in which the interiority of the soul unfolds and manifests itself\u201d but the document says medical intervention is permitted for those with \u201cgenital abnormalities.\u201d <\/p>\n
While Francis has been critical of gender theory, he also provided pastoral support for transgender Catholics. The pontiff has met a group of transgender Catholics from\u00a0Torvaianica, south of\u00a0Rome, meeting them regularly,\u00a0inviting them to a lunch in the Vatican along with 1,200 marginalized and homeless people and giving them front-row seats at one of this audiences. <\/p>\n
The Vatican\u2019s doctrine office \u2013 now led by a close ally of Francis, Argentinian Cardinal Victor Manuel Fern\u00e1ndez \u2013 has also recently allowed for transgender people to act as\u00a0godparents at baptisms and witnesses to marriages, a change to a ruling in\u00a02015 when the Vatican said transgender people could not act as godparents. <\/p>\n
Not all Catholics have agreed with the Vatican criticisms of gender theory. One Catholic LGBTQ+ group described a 2019 document from the Vatican\u2019s education office on gender identity as a \u201charmful tool\u201d while a deacon (a member of the clergy who can be married), the father of a transgender daughter,\u00a0expressed his concern. <\/p>\n
The latest Vatican document identifies various \u201cviolations\u201d to human dignity, including in the digital world, pointing to the trends where people\u2019s personal lives are laid bare and \u201ccombed over\u201d anonymously.\u00a0\u201cSuch tendencies represent a dark side of digital progress,\u201d it adds. <\/p>\n
It also cites the death penalty, which Francis has repeatedly condemned, and which it says \u201cviolates the inalienable dignity of every person.\u201d The pope has\u00a0changed Catholic teaching to make the death penalty \u201cinadmissible\u201d\u00a0\u00a0although this has seen him criticized by some conservative Catholics. <\/p>\n
This story has been updated.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n The Vatican has issued a strong warning against \u201cgender theory\u201d and said that any gender-affirming surgery risks threatening \u201cthe unique dignity\u201d of a person, in a new document signed off and approved by Pope Francis. Titled \u201cDignitas Inifinita\u201d (Infinite Dignity) the declaration focuses on what it describes as a range of threats to human dignity, <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":17720,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17719","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}