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CV NEWS FEED // Bishop Robert Barron identified gender ideology and sex changes as fundamental attacks on marriage and the complementarity of the sexes established by God at the beginning of creation.
In a presentation given at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) plenary fall session this week in Baltimore, Bishop Barron said gender ideology today stands at the forefront of attacks on marriage, undermining the divine plan for man and woman and the human family.
Dubbing gender ideology a version of “self-invention” and “making oneself God,” Barron emphasized that human nature includes both body and soul, which both participate in the dignity inherent in our nature. He said it is through the body that we recognize that we are generated by our mother and father, and through the body that men and women are capable of generating other persons.
“Generation is both personal and embodied. This stands in contradistinction to attempts to obscure the connection in a dualistic way, or what St. Paul VI described as the separation of the unitive and procreative significances of the nuptial act.”
Human dignity within marriage, he argued, can be violated in two ways: First is the “desire for personal self-determination.”
Bishop Barron dubbed this “the age-old temptation to make oneself God, so characteristic of our time.”
“The second is the denial of sexual difference,” he continued.
Bishop Barron quoted Pope Francis’ apostolic letter Dignitas Infinita, which states, “Another prominent aspect of gender theory is that it tends to deny the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings, sexual difference. In the male female couple this difference achieves the most marvelous of reciprocities. It thus becomes the source of that miracle that never ceases to surprise us, the arrival of new human beings in the world.”
He denounced the “new rights advanced by gender theory,” which he said, quoting Pope Francis, “envisions a world without sexual difference, thereby eliminating the anthropological basis of the family.”
Bishop Barron included “gender theory” and “medical attempts at sex changes” as violations of human dignity related to sexual identity that must be rejected according to Catholic moral principles.
>> REPORT: CHILDREN SUBJECTED TO SEXUAL SURGERIES IN CATHOLIC HOSPITALS THROUGHOUT U.S. <<
Concluding his remarks, Bishop Barron pointed to resources addressing gender theory on the website LoveMeansMore.org. He said the resources are intended for pastors, parents, and teachers.
The presentation comes as various dioceses this year have come out with instructions from an authentically Catholic perspective for schools, hospitals, and other Catholic institutions on proper policy on gender-related issues.
These instructions have followed the Doctrinal Note On The Moral Limits To Technological Manipulation Of The Human Body, issued by the USCCB’s doctrinal committee in March 2023, which condemned gender ideology as a dualistic rejection of the unity of body and soul and as a denial of sexual difference as divinely established at the creation of man and woman.
The note condemned medical procedures that attempt to change a person’s sex as acts of mutilation that destroy healthy sexual reproductive organs of the male or female body. The bishops likewise condemned puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones as an immoral chemical sterilization of minors.
When in June 2023, the bishops held debate on the implementation of the doctrinal note on gender ideology, several pro-LGBT bishops objected that persons from the LGBT community should first be consulted. In what appeared to be an effort to bolster the LGBT agenda, in January several bishops met behind closed doors in St. Louis, at a pro-LGBT event hosted by New Ways Ministry, known for its promotion of homosexuality and LGBT ideology.
>> USCCB SPOKESPERSON RESPONDS TO REPORT OF CATHOLIC HOSPITALS PERFORMING SEX ‘TRANSITIONS’ ON CHILDREN <<
Just last month, CatholicVote reported that medical watchdog group Do No Harm published a report that nearly 150 Catholic hospitals across the U.S. provided cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and performed “gender-transition” surgeries on minors between 2019 and 2023.
