On Monday, the Vatican rejected the notion of a “gender spectrum.”
In a statement about the document titled “Male and Female He Created Them,” which is intended to instruct teachers and parents in Catholic education as to the standards expected of them, the Vatican explained that it was created to “support those engaged in the education of the younger generations to address ‘methodically,’ in light of the broader horizon of education in love, the issues most debated today on human sexuality.” The document states people’s gender identities existing along a spectrum is “nothing more than a confused concept of freedom in the realm of feelings and wants.”
The document itself adds, “Efforts to go beyond the constitutive male-female sexual difference, such as the ideas of ‘intersex’ or ‘transgender,’ lead to a masculinity or femininity that is ambiguous … This oscillation between male and female becomes, at the end of the day, only a ‘provocative’ display against so-called ‘traditional frameworks.’ … Gender theory … speaks of a gradual process of denaturalization, that is a move away from nature and towards an absolute option for the decision of the feelings of the human subject … In this understanding of things, the view of both sexuality identity and the family become subject to the same ‘liquidity’ and ‘fluidity’ that characterize other aspects of post-modern culture, often founded on nothing more than a confused concept of freedom in the realm of feelings and wants, or momentary desires provoked by emotional impulses and the will of the individual.”
The document was signed by The Congregation for Catholic Education’s leaders: Italians Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi and Archbishop Angelo Zani.
The statement from the Vatican continues:
The Congregation for Catholic Education, which prepared the text, speaks of “an educational crisis,” in particular on the themes of affectivity and sexuality, in the face of “challenges emerging from varying forms of an ideology that is given the general name ‘gender theory,’ which ‘denies the difference and reciprocity in nature of a man and a woman,’” and considers them as “merely the product of historical and cultural conditioning.” Identity would then “become the choice of the individual, one which can also change over time.” The text speaks of an anthropological disorientation that characterizes the cultural climate of our time, contributing to “the destabilization of the family.” Quoting Amoris laetitia, the document says that, among other things, this ideology “leads to educational programmes and legislative enactments that promote a personal identity and emotional intimacy radically separated from the biological difference between male and female.”
The document also approves of “the need to educate children and young people to respect every person in their particularity and difference, so that no one should suffer bullying, violence, insults or unjust discrimination based on their specific characteristics (such as special needs, race, religion, sexual tendencies, etc.).”
But the document also states that “gender theory (especially in its most radical forms) speaks of a gradual process of denaturalization, that is a move away from nature,” adding that gender theory’s view of “sexual identity” and “family” are based on “a confused concept of freedom in the realm of feelings and wants.”
The document champions the “legitimate aspirations of Catholic schools to maintain their own vision of human sexuality,” positing that “a democratic state cannot reduce the range of education on offer to a single school of thought.”
