Pope Francis’ long-awaited apostolic exhortation — “Amoris Laetitia,” or “The Joy of Love” — was just released.
The good news is that he urges church leaders to be pastors rather than
church bureaucrats. The request wasn’t surprising because Pope Francis
immediately taking the reigns of the Catholic Church displayed a
pastoral countenance to his papacy.
While his recent tome might bring a sigh of relief to some Catholics,
like divorced parishioners, for the LGBTQ community, however, Francis’
message and tone to us are in lockstep with church doctrine - and that
message is anything but pastoral.
On the issue of same-sex marriage Francis wrote scathingly the following:
“There
are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual union to be in any
way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and
family.”
And being in lockstep with the American College of Pediatricians in
their denouncement of transgenderism Francis wrote the following in
advising transgender teens to stop being “self-centered” and “self-
absorbed”: "The young need to be helped to accept their own body as it
was created, for thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own
bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power
over creation. An appreciation of our body as male or female is also
necessary for our own self-awareness in an encounter with others
different from ourselves. In this way we can joyfully accept the
specific gifts of another man or woman, the work of God the Creator,
and find mutual enrichment.”
But this isn’t the first time the pontiff’s transphobic vitriol unleaded itself.
In the pontiff's 2015 tome, "Pope Francis: This Economy Kills" Francis
compares transgender people to nuclear weapons. His reason is that this
unlikely pair destroy and desecrate God's holy and ordained order of
creation.
In an interview with the National Catholic Reporter Francis spewed the following transphobic remarks:
“Let's
think of the nuclear arms, of the possibility to annihilate in a few
instants a very high number of human beings," he continues. "Let's
think also of genetic manipulation, of the manipulation of life, or of
the gender theory, that does not recognize the order of creation."
"With
this attitude, man commits a new sin, that against God the Creator. The
true custody of creation does not have anything to do with the
ideologies that consider man like an accident, like a problem to
eliminate."
"God
has placed man and woman and the summit of creation and has entrusted
them with the earth. The design of the Creator is written in nature.”
In 2000 the Catholic Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith also denounced the existence of transgender people.
"The
key point is that the transsexual surgical operation is so superficial
and external that it does not change the personality. If the person was
a male, he remains male. If she was female, she remains female."
Francis' clear denunciation of our present day gender theories and
understanding of the fluidity of human sexuality not only perpetuates
spiritual harm and alienation to our trans community, but it also
unwittingly invites physical harm to our trans community - done in the
name of God with righteous wrath and indignation.
For example, I wish Leelah was alive today. Rather, Leelah’s memory
will haunt us as a society until there’s change. Her 2014 suicide note
sparked a movement to end conversion therapy (also known as “reparative
therapy”).
"If you are reading this, it means that I have committed suicide and
obviously failed to delete this post from my queue…To put it simply, I
feel like a girl trapped in a boy’s body, and I’ve felt that way ever
since I was 4….When I was 14, I learned what transgender meant and
cried of happiness. After 10 years of confusion I finally understood
who I was. I immediately told my mom, and she reacted extremely
negatively, telling me that it was a phase, that I would never truly be
a girl, that God doesn’t make mistakes, that I am wrong, ” Leelah’s
suicide note opened with.
In wanting to advance the civil rights cause of transgender people
Leelah (whose birth name was Joshua Ryan Alcorn ) was a 17 year old
trans female left the following instructions:
"I
want 100% of the things that I legally own to be sold and the money be
given to trans civil rights movements and support groups…. Gender needs
to be taught about in schools, the earlier the better. My death needs
to mean something. My death needs to be counted in the number of
transgender people who commit suicide this year. I want someone to look
at that number and say “that’s f***ed up” and fix it. Fix society.
Please. Goodbye.”
When we miss the essential point that human life is varied, precious,
and of equal worth, we ignore the unique gifts that each life brings to
each other and to the world.
That’s what Leelah was telling us. I had hoped Pope Francis would, too.
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