Pope Benedict on Gender ideology

            Our American culture is making a shift to the cause of transgenderism.  Both cultural elites and the medical profession are taking up this cause even though it cannot be scientifically validated, but political considerations override such considerations.  Before we look at how this trend  is being played out in our leading medical schools, it may be helpful and instructive to revisit what Pope Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, said about Gender ideology, in his 1996 book The Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millennium.

         In the chapter on the State of the Church, in the Problems of the Catholic Church, he wrote: “The idea that “nature” has something to say is no longer admissible; man is to have the liberty to remodel himself at will. He is to be free from all of the prior givens of his essence. He makes of himself what he wants, and only in this way is he really “free” and liberated. Behind this approach is a rebellion on man’s part against the limits that he has as a biological being. In the end, it is a revolt against our creatureliness. Man is to be his own creator –a modern, new edition of the immemorial attempt to be God, to be like God”.

 As Pope, he returns to the theme in  his 2008 Address to the Roman Curia: for example: “What is often expressed and understood by the term “gender” ultimately ends up being man’s attempt at self-emancipation from creation and the Creator. Man wants to be his own master, and alone -– always and exclusively –- to determine everything that concerns him. Yet in this way, he lives in opposition to the truth, in opposition to the Creator Spirit.” (Address to the Members of the Roman Curia, December 22nd, 2008).

A few years later in his controversial Address at the Bundestag, he said that  “there is also an ecology of man. Man too has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will. Man is not merely self-creating freedom. Man does not create himself. He is intellect and will, but he is also nature, and his will is rightly ordered if he respects his nature, listens to it, and accepts himself for who he is, as one who did not create himself. In this way, and in no other, is true human freedom fulfilled.” (Address at the visit to the Bundestag, Reichstag in Berlin, September 22nd, 2011).

Okay, so after hearing the voice of reason  grounded in anthropology, biology, and Revelation, a peruse of our leading medical schools show how our culture has bowed to transgenderism.

#1 Harvard Medical School.  The hospital as a specialized gender-affirming care unit, specializing in the following:

• vaginoplasty, a surgery used to create a vulva, labia, and vaginal canal;

• orchiectomy, a procedure I which the testicles are surgically removed;

• hysterectomy, a surgery to remove the uterus;

• oophorectomy, a procedure to remove the ovaries;

• phalloplasty, a surgery to create a penis;

• mastectomy, a surgery to remove breast tissue;

• breast augmentation, a surgery that uses implants to enhance the size of a person’s breasts;

• facial feminization or masculinization, a surgery to alter facial features to create a more feminine or masculine facial structure;

• vocal feminization or masculination.

#2 Boston Children’s Hospital, a teaching hospital at Harvard Medical School, is “the first pediatric and adolescent transgender health program in the United States.”  It claims to have cared for over 1,000 families.

         #3 Johns Hopkins Medicine runs the Emerge Gender and Sexuality Clinic for Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults.  The clinic’s services are available for individuals between the ages of 5 and 25 years of age.

#4 Stanford Medicne runs a LGBTQ+ Health Program, which offers “compassionate, comprehensive, and unparalled LGBTQ+ care for those in the San Francisco Bay Area and from around the world.”  The program touts its “safe, comfortable,a nd affirming environment.”

# 5 Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, offers more of the same but also embraces a robust advocacy role:  “Everyone has a role in Gender affirming care.” It stresses “medically necessary, evidence-based, gender-affirming care,” and the active role society must play in helping people realize their “gender identify.” 

Other medical schools that provide similar services include The David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Yale Medicine, Duke University School of Medicine. 

Scientific American, one of the most prominent scientific journals in the world, has weighed on the issue and ran an article in August 29, 2017 which claimed that “sex, gender, and sexuality are all distinct from one another…and each exists on their own spectrum.  Moreover, sex cannot be depicted as a simple, one-dimensional scale.” 

In June 13, 2019 the same publication featured an article claiming that “the science is clear and conclusive: sex is not binary, transgender people are real.  It’s time we acknowledge this.  Defining a person’s sex identity using decontextualized “facts” is unscientific and dehumanizing.”

In a similar vein, the American College of Physicians and the American College of Obstetricians, have declared that it believes that “gender-affirming care is an important component of comprehensive health care services for transgender and nonbinary patients.”

Given the above, one can discern the direction that are society is leaning regarding human sexuality and gender.  While the medical field is assuming a strong advocacy position, what they are promoting cannot be scientifically validated and their policies overrides such consideration. 

—Deacon Jim McFadden

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