Some rebel Catholics have vehemently reacted to the Vatican’s current confirmation of its unwavering support for individual life and male-female complementarity.
On Monday, the Vatican published a charter titled Dignitas Infinita, in which it reiterated the Catholic Church’s historic refusal of infertility, abortion, and gender flexibility, provoking anger from liberal Christian lobby groups who had hoped for greater ideological change under Pope Francis.
Dignitas Infinita “fails badly by offering transgender and nonbinary individuals not eternal, but limited people dignity”, stated Francis DeBernardo, the executive director of New Ways Ministry — a” Catholic” LGBT advocacy group.
The document draws on the antiquated theology of gender essentialism, which asserts that a person’s physical appearance is the main indicator of a person’s normal gender identity, in its approach to sex, DeBernardo continued.
Also, Jamie Manson, the leader of the pro- pregnancy Catholics for Choice, lamented that Catholic philosophy on abortion, contraception, and pregnancy has “forced many women, many of them the poorest of the poor, to provide birth”, which constitutes “violence against women”.
A group of all-male, unmarried priests once more are telling people and gender-inclusive people that their lived experiences are untrue and valid, according to Manson of Dignitas Infinita.
” We do n’t buy that women who choose abortion and Catholics who support abortion rights are’ evil’ as this document suggests”, she contended.
The new Vatican word was rejected as indifferent to the experience of transgender people, according to Maddie Marlett, the head of the Boston-based DignityUSA, an institution pushing LGBT rights in the Catholic Church.
” As a transwoman, I am told by this document I am playing God and misapplying my moral freedom”, said Marlett, a biological male. This is not the way it is in my life. My journey to self- acceptance was through realizing my self- worth as God’s creation”.
” This document’s adherence to long outdated beliefs about human anthropology conflicts with Pope Francis ‘ work to refocus the Catholic church as a listening church”, said Marianne Duddy- Burke, DignityUSA’s Executive Director.
” The Pope’s personal encounters with deeply faithful transgender people have not led the Vatican to take into account their stories of how gender-affirming care has allowed them to live full, rich, productive lives, and for them to finally experience the unity of body and soul,” she said.
Monday’s Vatican text said that” so- called surrogate motherhood” disrespects human life by turning the unborn child in the mother’s womb into” an object of trafficking”.
The text claimed that the dignity of the unborn human child is the same as that of every human being, and that it “has an intrinsic character and is valid from the moment of conception until the death of the child.”
Unborn children are, indeed,” the most defenseless and innocent among us”, the declaration noted, despite efforts” to deny them their human dignity”.
In terms of gender, the document stated that the theory of gender is “extremely dangerous because it cancels differences in its claim to make everyone equal.”
The declaration stated that the gender theory “intents to reject the greatest possible distinction between living things: sexual difference.” This fundamental difference is not only the biggest imaginable difference, but it is also the most beautiful and powerful of them.
