Expression of a frustration and resignation?

Pope Francis © dpa

Bishop Voderholzer © CBA

Pope Francis has once again criticized the gender theory. Modern and contemporary culture has opened new spaces, freedoms and depths to better understand the differences between men and women, the Pope said Wednesday at his general audience. But it also created many doubts and skepticism, he said. He wondered, for example, "whether the so-called gender theory is not also an expression of frustration and a resignation that aims to erase sexual difference, because it no longer understands how to confront it. We risk going backwards here. Suppressing differences is the problem, not the solution."

The difference of the sexes belongs to the God-image of man, Francis continued. Without the experience of the reciprocity of man and woman, man cannot grow harmoniously and cannot really understand what being a man and a woman means, the Pope explained to tens of thousands of people.

God created man and woman

At the same time, Francis stressed that marriage and family are important even for non-believers. He appealed to the proponents of gender theory not to neglect this ie. On the way to a freer and more just society, marriage and the family have by no means become secondary, Francis said. The Church and all believers are responsible for rediscovering the "beauty of the plan of creation, which imprints the face of God also in the union between man and woman". God has entrusted the earth to the covenant of man and woman. The failure of this covenant therefore has serious consequences.

At the same time, Francis called for more rights and promotion for women in society and the church. Much remains to be done in this field. He said it was not enough just to listen more to the voice of women. Rather, they must also have "real weight" and "recognized assertiveness". The difference between man and woman should not mean subordination, but communion, the pope said.

Further, Francis made a connection between a current crisis of faith and a crisis in relations between men and women. He referred here to the biblical creation story of Adam and Eve. It teaches that there is conflict between man and woman as soon as the trust in God diminishes.

Against the imposition of gender theory

In January, Pope Francis had already spoken out against the imposition of gender theory by Western donors in developing countries. If financial aid is conditional, such as the teaching of gender theory in schools, these peoples will lose their identity, he said at a press conference during his flight back to Rome from the Philippines.

During his visit to the Philippines, Francis had criticized "ideological colonization," especially with regard to attacks against the traditional image of the family and a relativization of marriage. He called on the Filipinos to remain faithful to their Catholic traditions.

Benedict XVI.: "Profoundly untrue"

Even predecessor Benedict XVI. Had spoken out against gender theory. Their "profound untruth" is "obvious," Benedict said in 2012 in his Christmas address to the Roman Curia. She does not consider gender as a default of nature, but as a social role.

The gender theory leads to a disappearance of the "basic figures of human existence," the then pope emphasized in his annual review. If the fixed roles of father, mother, child are missing, man as the image of God is degraded. "Where the freedom of making becomes the freedom of 'making oneself,'" this "necessarily leads to a denial of the Creator Himself".

At the same time, the head of the church expressed concern about the threat to the family posed by a growing inability to form bonds. Despite all impressions to the contrary, the family is still "strong and alive" today. Especially in the Western world, however, its crisis is undeniable. The causes are a false self-understanding of freedom and self-realization as well as a "vision of being human" that no longer defines gender as a default of nature, but as a social role.

Bishop Voderholzer: "Fatal error"

In Germany, it was the bishop of Regensburg, Rudolf Voderholzer, who sharply criticized a "gender ideology". It is a "fatal error" to regard a person's gender as an "arbitrary and freely selectable cultural asset," Voderholzer said in 2014 at an international congress on "Love, Body and Passion" held at the Catholic University in Eichstatt, Germany. The alternative term "gender" is in itself a "poisoned word" that should not be made acceptable outside the scientific debate.

In its radical manifestations, the "gender ideology" is a dualistic heresy, as Manichaeism was in late antiquity, said the bishop of Regensburg. The possibility of being a father and a mother is a "creative determination of the human being" as a man and a woman. To deny this fundamental difference between the sexes is tantamount to a denial of reality. It is not decisive whether this potential is realized in every case or not. But the conscious renunciation of marriage or parenthood is something different from a denial or suppression of this possibility.

With regard to the human sexual act, Voderholzer pointed to a "serious difference between making and witnessing". It is "a terrible thought to put it in the vicinity of laboratories and freezers". The central intention of Pope Paul VI. at the beginning of the encyclical "Humanae Vitae" it was to keep the act of procreation as a source of life free from any manipulation. The commitment of the Catholic Magisterium to natural methods of conception promotes values such as consideration, mutual respect and fidelity. It is the question whether love in marital relationships has also grown as a result of the pill.

Meisner: "According to God, not politically correct"

The then Archbishop of Cologne, Joachim Cardinal Meisner, stressed in 2013 that the biological imprinting of human beings is willed by God. The grace of the sacrament of baptism helps "to unfold our being as man and woman without ideological constriction," Meisner said. The woman would not only be raised to be a woman, as once declared by the French feminist Simone de Beauvoir.

Although certain roles are associated with gender in different cultures, fundamental imprints are predetermined, the Cologne native explained in a pontifical mass at the New Year's reception of the Diocesan Council of Catholics in the Archdiocese of Cologne further. "The woman who stands her ground in her professional life remains a woman, and the man who looks after the children at home remains a man."Man can form his sex only in the sense of God.

"If gender thinking seeks to abolish creator thinking, the child has also lost its own dignity"." Man should strive to be "equal to God in the creaturely framework.". The unity of man in the family, according to God, arises from the nature of the Triune God. "Where this no longer applies, human culture, which is characterized by the diversity of people, also disintegrates."Christians are charged with standing up for this form of humanity. "And in doing so, we must look not to politically correct speech, but Godly action."