Pope Francis: ‘Today the ugliest danger is gender ideology’

afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 207 points –
Pope Francis: ‘Today the ugliest danger is gender ideology’
catholicnewsagency.com
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Pope Francis: ”Today the ugliest danger is gender ideology, which cancels out differences ... Erasing differences is erasing humanity.”

St. Paul: ”There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Jesus Christ.”

Came here looking for someone to have quoted this. I quote it to bigots all the time and it straight pisses them off.

I used it in a wedding between two men that I officiated.

Good use for it! My best friend is a former Baptist preacher who still occasionally preaches at different churches, and he likes to use it whenever that comes up.

Mind if I ask if it was a religious ceremony?

Not really, but both grooms gave me a verse to read and they pretty much gave me carte blanche for the rest of the ceremony.

I love the idea of an officiant with total free reign. "You may now kiss... The grooms mother on the cheek. ... Just playing, y'all. They gonna dance. Dance, boys!"

Tell that to a slave, but I get the sentiment.

The message was that Christian’s shouldn’t look down on slaves or see them as any lesser. I see it as calling people to act as John Brown, to not only free the slaves but to look at them as one’s full equals

Except for all the verses on how to properly punish and manage your slaves as well as detailing how slaves must serve their masters.

The book has a detailed record of how it considers slaves different from people.

Not disagreeing that it’s a contradictory mess. It’s why sola scriptura is a ridiculous theology that can justify anything and that even tradition doesn’t fix it. But also that’s the vibe I got from that epistle. Though if it was written by Paul I probably misinterpreted it, but iirc it wasn’t wasn’t one of the Pauline epistles.

ETA: it looks like it’s the first of Paul’s letters. Paul was weird. Early Christianity basically took an extremely egalitarian stance, but Paul contributed romanization of it and implemented a lot of the misogyny, justification of power, etc that we all know and hate about Christianity. That wave was where Christianity went from what today we would consider an internationalist anarcho communist movement packaged in a religious cult and began the dismantling of the revolutionary elements of it into a religion where the most progressive leader in centuries is condemning transness as a concept and bars women from the priesthood. A religion that left the pacifism it began with and became the state religion of the Roman Empire without actually changing the Roman Empire’s cultural rules. Where certain things the cultists would’ve likely been more accepting of than Roman pagans became condemned as pagan and anti Christianity.

And it’s important to remember this only happened because Jesus if he was real and accurately recorded, was likely a man suffering the beginnings of a mental illness while preaching.

It’s a message of how things should be, not how things are.

It's actually a message that all are welcome to be baptized, but people love to quote it out of context for the issue du jour.

I'm upvoting this, not because I agree with it, but because it is relevant for this community. Like it or not (and I certainly don't), the Catholic Church has massive global power. Knowing where they stand on this issue is important, especially since this Pope, seemingly, has been trying to appear more progressive.

Huh. Fascism is on the rise everywhere. The planet is being destroyed by greedy billionaires. People are struggling to pay for food. There are wars and genocides. But he thinks the ugliest danger is "gender ideology", whatever that is.

And he says it erases differences. If "gender ideology" is being a non-bigot about gender, then that respects differences. What erases differences is forcing everyone to conform to only two set gender stereotypes.

It's saddening that dogma prevents him seeing how dramatically advances in understanding and respect for gender have improved so many people's lives. And it's disappointing to see him align himself and his church with forces of oppression.

The Catholic church expressed clear support for Hitler's Nazi party. It's almost like shitbirds of a feather flock together to oppress minorities.

Mussolini made the Vatican a theocratic nation-state. It is baked into the cake.

The Vatican had a history of literally being a nation state long before Mussolini.

That may be true but it wasn't in 1929 as the dictator was beginning to define the word fascism. Then Mussolini gave the vatican nationhood distinct from Italy.

It's doubly sad because Christian teachings could actually be a good influence on people. Like that quote above shows, there's good thoughts in there (alongside bullshit, of course.) When modern people, who respect science, develop a reflected and balanced faith, that can be a good thing. It's just so damn rare, and the bigots are in charge

And he says it erases differences. If "gender ideology" is being a non-bigot about gender, then that respects differences. What erases differences is forcing everyone to conform to only two set gender stereotypes.

Yeah. I read things like this and just wonder what exactly I'm erasing by being myself? And if I do my best to try and parse his statements about how we should be acting instead of the "gender ideology" way of acting... I don't stop being a lady. It's not a thing I've "decided' I'm going to do now that I'll stop once you remind me that I'm called to be a human and live for good or whatever. Pretty sure I've been doing that the whole time, if I understand it at all.

Edit: typos/clarity

Trans people are the biggest issue right now, says group with a paedophile problem.

Imo ",the trans issue" is cut and dry. Be who you want, do what you want. Doesn't affect me, or anyone else.

I'm starting to take an issue with everyone who isn't trans though, and how weirdly obsessive and angry everyone iand their mother is about an issue that doesn't affect a vast majority of the population.

I get that people can care about more than one issue at once. But wage inequality, homelessness, war, genocide,declining standards of living, student loans - there are so many issues that deserve our collective consideration and action on more.

It's a non issue. What other people do to themselves and how they present themselves is their business. Its not that these issues don't matter, they do, but we have bigger fish to fry and while I'm personally glad to see such a widespread desire to advance causes like this I can't help but feel like the time so many people spend bickering online about it is time that could be better spent offline doing things that would advance these causes anyway.

And it doesn't help that the time spent bickering isn't even productive. It's just people who already agree withe sch otherr aggressively reinforcing each others,' beliefs to the point of militancy.

I'm not allowed to have opinions on the subject, and I largely don't because it really doesn't affect me snd I'm already in support of people being able to live how they choose anyway, but I'm bombarded with posts about the issue wherever I go, and I'm ju#t so fatigued by how little it matters on the grand scale of things, while being sensitive to how it can be the most important things of the world to some people.

On the left, it's due to intersectionality. And that the attacks against trans people is part of a broader attack from the christofascists to create outgroups and use hate and fear to obtain power (very similar to what the Nazis did with "degenerates" and jews). "First they came for..." and all that.

Yes, this. I wore makeup and spent all day in the wood shop yesterday. We better burn down society so that isn't allowed. Never mind that the world is literally burning and homelessness is rampant even in the richest cities. Don't look at that, look over here at the queer person!

Our planet becoming nearly uninhabitable or uninhabitable with millions if not billions of people dying seems like a bigger problem. But then again spreading hate about the LGBTQ+ is more important to the spokesperson for 'god'.

Climate change

Rising fascism

War and genocide

Growing inequality

Consolidation of power through AI and automation

I guess none of those things worry the Pope.

But how can you sleep at night knowing that there are people living their lives in a way that doesn't affect anyone else!

Well, those other problems become dramatically more difficult to manage while there is a very vocal movement attempting to nit-pick and re-write nuances of our existing social structures, like they think it's some computer program instead of the cumulative product of thousands of years of trial and error paid for in blood, sweat and tears.

I truly am confused about what point you’re trying to make. That we should live by the social structures from a thousand years ago? Or is it that you believe we’ve perfected the social structure and it needs no further change as of today? Or something else?

Oh, I absolutely believe that we need to make changes. Society is a living thing which MUST move in order to sustain itself. What I can't agree with, however, is people looking at it as though it were an inanimate object like a computer, and picking it apart as though they're writing a computer program, often without any attempts made at all to learn about the history which has led it to existing in the form which it does. I would be a lot more open to arguments from the LGBTQ movement, if the average influencer had actually studied some of the publicly available references explaining how and why we have built our societies this way. Yet instead, the movement is dominated by those who are proud to have never engaged with historical philosophical works, religious or otherwise, and that is what it truly offensive about it all.

Edit: This very same issue is actually one place in which I can't see eye to eye with a large number of religious people either today, because many don't even appear to possess the recognition of the importance of educating oneself upon the foundations of the way of life which they engage in, instead using it as a rubber stamp of approval, with as few actual qualifications as they can get away with pursuing.

WTF are you even talking about? You keep using super vague phrases to try and argue that (and I'm just guessing here since I legitimately can't tell what you are trying to say) LGBTQ advocates are ignoring history?

What history are you pointing to? Why would that history matter in fields like medical science? Would the history of gender help us understand that some people identify as trans? Would it help us understand the best practices in helping them?

Was this all just a way to complain about "men" going into women's spaces?

You should take an entry level sociology course before you go off about history and functionalism being the root of how culture works. It's been voluminously debated and largely rejected.

is that not exactly what scientists, philosophers, artists, politicians, lawyers, psychologists, doctors and similar have been doing for thousands of years though?

Sure, but to paraphrase Copernicus, too many want to engage in such pursuits not because they have anything to contribute, but rather because it benefits them either financially or socially, and so they only end up playing the part of drones among bees.

I don't know if you're aware of this but this is like the epitome of "iamverysmart" style speech. You might think that your way of speaking is so advanced that everyone else not understanding it is just dumber than you, but the reality is proper communication is about making communication as clear and concise as possible to as wide an audience as possible.

That's really neat, but just because someone's use of language doesn't match your own doesn't always mean there's something wrong with them that they need to change. An important part of communication is an earnest attempt to understand the speaker, instead of just dismissing what they've expressed outright because you don't like their word choice.

Frankly I already "dumbed it down" quite considerably from the original quote, in which Copernicus expressed the reasons he was reluctant to share his research proving the Earth orbits the Sun:

Therefore I debated with myself for a long time whether to publish the volume which I wrote to prove the earth's motion or rather to follow the example of the Pythagoreans and certain others, who used to transmit philosophy's secrets only to kinsmen and friends, not in writing but by word of mouth, as is shown by Lysis' letter to Hipparchus. And they did so, it seems to me, not, as some suppose, because they were in some way jealous about their teachings, which would be spread around; on the contrary, they wanted the very beautiful thoughts attained by great men of deep devotion not to be ridiculed by those who are reluctant to exert themselves vigorously in any literary pursuit unless it is lucrative; or if they are stimulated to the nonacquisitive study of philosophy by the exhortation and example of others, yet because of their dullness of mind they play the same part among philosophers as drones among bees.

Frankly I already “dumbed it down” quite considerably

r/iamverysmart in a nutshell here

But he insists that he's very smart. The sad thing is, someone in his life believes him.

This is ironically the exact attitude that passage speaks of. You are presented with an excerpt from one of the most important works of science ever produced, and can do nothing but mock it.

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Well, the society we've had through "trial and error" got us to the point of climate collapse so maybe it deserves to be "nitpicked" a little bit. 🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️

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Said the leader of pedophile mafia.

No no no you don't understand.

When you diddle a kid, it only scars them mentally, which is like only a couple thousands affected. There's only so many pastors.

But when you teach them about gender, who knows how many of millions of kids are affected.

Thank goodness! I was starting to like the head of the Catholic Church for a second there. That's better! No hate like Christian love, Frankie.

Fuck the catholic church, tax the fuckers into non-existence.

Aren't there multiple genocides going on right now?

To be fair, genocide is nowhere near as bad as a man wearing a dress or something.

As asserted by a guy who chose a non-reproductive life of celibacy, hangs out with a bunch of fellas in dresses and bases his opinions on stories preceding the Dark Ages.

So maybe let's not listen?

The world is on fire, fascism is rising, and your god is dead.

ETA: I actually personally left the Catholic Church over their stance on trans people. I had had other issues for a long time, and was firmly pro abortion, gay marriage, and female priesthood, but those were things I thought I might see them come around on. But then I got to trying to figure out why I was so damn miserable. Long story of self discovery later I learned I’m trans and that the psychological agony I’d been in my entire pubescent life was gender dysphoria and that’s why nothing was fixing it. The Catholic Church’s stance was that I either accept easily curable pain for the rest of my life that has little downside or a loving god will punish me forever when I die. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I took a year off of Christianity to cleanse my palate as I transitioned expecting to go episcopal or Quaker and wound up atheist -> pagan with an understanding that I will choose gods by their morality rather than choosing my morality by my gods.

I left the Catholic Church shortly after leaving Catholic school. Like, in Catholic high school, they taught us about the "issues" (read: CA scandal) the church was "going through" and how we all need to "pray for the victims" of these "isolated incidents." You then step into the real world and learn that the church protected monsters from the law for DECADES (and continues to do so), it really fucks with your head. In college, I went "spiritual but not religious" for a while and then landed squarely into atheism town... been a resident there now for more time than I was ever Catholic.

If nothing else, I'll say that the Catholic Church really doesn't seem to have an official stance on "transgenderism". There's lots of priests and bishops who will try to convince you it does, and there are plenty of them talking about how "gender ideology" is "colonizing the family" or some other similar things, but even the Pope who just said all this also says of trans women that they are "daughters of God" and meets with them regularly. There's are groups in the church made of bishops, Cardinals, and priests who explicitly support LGBTQ people and trans people in particular.

Did you even read this article? Frank made his stance very clear that he is making trans people his enemy.

Also worth noting that just because a Pope says it doesn't make it the stance of the church. For all that he has basically unlimited power of government, he (and popes generally) doesn't address major points of doctrine.

The thing is, he's said more than one thing? He's such a politician. He definitely says "gender ideology" is bad because it "erases differences" when he's in front of conservative bishops, but he also genders trans folks correctly and actually talks to them and treats them kindly (according to them even) apparently regularly. I don't know if you have been a trans woman trying to talk to a bigoted priest before, but they tend not to be great at being kind to you and they certainly don't call me "she".

The pope did not read the full address, instead delegating the task to Monsignor Filippo Ciampanelli. “I still have a cold and it’s tiring to read for a while,” the pope said to the participants assembled at the Vatican.

Where's your god now? Can't even give his #1 on earth the strength to mumble his message of hate. Fucking losers.

What do you expect from beta males?? They are weak as fuck like this dude.

“It is very important that there is this meeting, this meeting between men and women, because today the ugliest danger is gender ideology, which cancels out differences,” the pope said during an audience with members of the French-based academic organization Research and Anthropology of Vocations Institute (CRAV).

Gender ideology, which seeks to blur differences between men and women through movements such as transgenderism, “makes everything the same"

I mean...isn't this a good thing? Why the fuck do men have to hold doors open for women, specifically? Why are women supposed to be the stay at home parents? Equality seems pretty fucking good tbh. I mean, good lord, men have nipples and that line on the scrotum because we start out as women while in development. The proto-ovaries descend to become testicles. We have some hormonal differences and some brain development differences, but we truly are not that different. Being seen as equals should be a thing we strive for. At the end of the day, it really doesn't matter who you fuck or what privates you have. We all only have one life on this planet, make the most of it. And be nice to other people while on this place.

Sure, it's a good thing for people for whom these differences represent disadvantages. The Catholic Church, however, is a historical beneficiary (and cause) of the oppression of women, so blurring the line threatens that disadvantage.

That's RIGHT! GENDER IDEOLOGY is the Ugliest Danger! Says the man who Protects Child Abusers!

But think of the clergymen who are diddling boys that might accidentally diddle a trans boy! They might get PTSD or something! 😢

“It is very important that there is this meeting, this meeting between men and women, because today the ugliest danger is gender ideology, which cancels out differences,” the pope said during an audience with members of the French-based academic organization Research and Anthropology of Vocations Institute (CRAV).

He's demanding that everyone conform to his narrow worldview... in the name of preserving our differences?

That's some impressive mental gymnastics, even for a Pope.

Counter argument: Your organization raped thousands of kids repeatedly and covered it up repeatedly for decades, probably hundreds of years. Never mind all the other horrible shit the Catholic church has done, so uh, fuck off and leave trans people alone? Their lives are hard enough without your bullshit.

Welp so much for the woke pope. Literally blaming your problems on the minority of a minority.

Human suffering in Palestine?
Ukraine? Africa? Global warming? The rise of fascism?

Nah, better go after personal freedoms.

"You are as god made you"

"No no no, not like that, I mean white and cis"

Transgendered people are an abomination, but fuckin a kid? Now, well, that’s just god’s will.

Me: “Today the ugliest danger is religion”

Get fucked Francis and the rest of your followers can get fucked as well.

Leader of millennias old pedophile ring says people changing their birth-assigned gender is dangerous

"today the ugliest danger is gender ideology, which cancels out differences"

Well I'm glad he said the misogynistic part out loud. In a religion in which only men can hold power, blurring the lines between who can be a man undermines their power structure. They see women as inferior chattel and the strict gender binary allows them to enforce their hegemony. I suppose the pope thinks that LGBT* people around the world being murdered and persecuted is a good thing as long as the cis white straight men get to stay in power.

Your position is a joke, and everyone with 2 brain cells can tell that it can only exist by enslaving half of the population and trying to murder another 2%. Like any good tiny dictator, you don't inspire respect for people to follow you, you reach for the cudgel of violence, and make no mistake, your words inspire violence just as much as if you lit the torches yourself. Your god will judge you accordingly.

I’ve been waiting for him to to do something like this. It was too good to have a pope that didn’t seem evil.

Well after pope palpatine they decided to go in the other direction for a while i guess

Focusing the Friday morning address on the “anthropological crisis and the necessary promotion of human and Christian vocations,” Pope Francis said this task is challenged by myriad social challenges arising from the cultural zeitgeist, including gender ideology.

Highlighting the anthropological angle of the conference, the pope pointed to “an elementary and fundamental truth, which today we need to rediscover in all its beauty: The life of the human being is a vocation.”

The pope emphasized that this is a foundational element “which underlies every call within the community” and “has to do with an essential characteristic of the human being as such.”

What the fuck does this even mean?

What the fuck does this mean?

"The job of humans is to adhere to traditional gender roles."

“This discovery,” the pope added, “brings us out of the isolation of a self-referential ego and makes us look at ourselves as an identity in relation.”

So racism is good because it creates a "tension" that allows you to compare yourself to others too, I take it?

Fundementally these arguments aren't even about trans folks. They're reheated arguments about second wave feminism.

A "fun" game when reading quotes from bigots is to swap out "gender ideology" with "bodily autonomy" to realize how absurd, hateful, and fascist the message really is. That's really what we're talking about; being trans isn't a choice but expressing your true gender is somewhat* a choice you make with your body and aesthetic. Fascists don't want people to have freedom, they want to have power over you for power's sake. The pushback against "gender ideology" isn't the reasoned philosophic debate that they want it to sound like, it's a war against already-marginalized people. It's "a boot stamping on a human face" because power is both the means and the ends for these fucks. Anyone supporting these assholes should ask themselves what happens if they finally succeed to stamp out the queer menace. Fascists' continued existence requires another group to persecute and if history is any guide it will be religious minorities, racial minorities, political rivals, etc. until the world is empty and there is no "fruitful ‘tension" that Pope Franky states that he values so much aside from the powerful and those that they decided to keep as slaves.

*somewhat because for many the choice is transition or suicide

"it's okay he's a good guy he ate spaghetti with Italian trans women"

Wasn't he the one to come out in support of homosexuality? Or was it just to justify the morality behind diddling little boys?

I'm surprised by this, I thought this guy was basically a socialist.

No, he's a guy who's desperately trying to market a crusty old religion to a population that gets more tolerant and progressive with each generation. They've just barely started pretending they dont actively hate gay people, it'll be a few more decades before they do anything like that for trans people.

Funny how God seems to change his mind about social issues whenever the pews start getting empty.

To steelman, or whatever they call it. Perhaps he's calling for radical acceptance; that men and women are undeniably different, and those differences are something that should be celebrated rather than denied.

Quick! The people are rebelling against the genocide that we're committing!

Better bring out ol faithful to divide the people: gender politics.

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Treating everyone the same is a problem though. Mostly men and women are different and accepting that is Good and healthy.

Yep. People differ from each other, and one common way is along gender lines. Doesn't mean everyone of a particular gender is the same. ..but, if there weren't differences, there would be no need for identifying with one, or the other, or both, or neither.

No but we are getting to the point where solutions to problems are one size fit all. And healthy things in one gender must be a good solution for the other gender and that's not thr case.

Be careful, you're literally not allowed to say you agree with him or your comment will get removed.

This place has worse censorship than reddit.