Episode 62: Gender Theory – Why Does the Church Say What It Says?

We have discussed the cultural, philosophical, pastoral and medical aspects of gender theory and gender dysphoria. In this final episode of the series, we will discuss what the Church has taught us on this topic.

As we know, Mother Church has been quite clear and consistent in her teachings on human sexuality, which is based on a proper understanding of the human person made in the image and likeness of God. Over time, the Church has continued to develop and make these even clearer, as various issues and challenges arise.

In April 2024, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a document, “Dignitas Infinita: On Human Dignity“, which discussed human dignity and how it can and should be properly understood and upheld in various aspects of society and culture. In this document, a section was dedicated to the topic of gender theory.

The document began this section by emphasising the dignity of every human person. It said that “every person, regardless of sexual orientation, ought to be respected in his or her dignity and treated with consideration, while ‘every sign of unjust discrimination’ is to be carefully avoided.” (Dignitas Infinita, no. 55)

Which is why “they must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2358)

Rejecting a Gift from God

The document made a clear distinction that while we are called to respect the dignity of every human person, including those who experience gender dysphoria, the concept and promotion of Gender Theory is quite a different matter altogether. Why so?

For one, “the Church recalls that human life in all its dimensions, both physical and spiritual, is a gift from God. This gift is to be accepted with gratitude and placed at the service of the good. Desiring a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes, apart from this fundamental truth that human life is a gift, amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God.” (Dignitas Infinita, no. 57)

In other words, Gender Theory is problematic because it advocates the rejection of God’s gift to us in making us who we are, as male or female. In doing so, we make ourselves to be like God, deciding for ourselves who we want to be, and choosing what we think will make us happy. Once we seek happiness apart from God, our Creator who made us and knows what is best for us, and we fail to follow the operating manual He has given us for our flourishing, disaster surely beckons.

Imagine filling our car with diesel when it was designed to be running on petrol, just because we think we know better. What happens? The engine will break down. The car will break down. So, too, will we when we reject our Maker’s plans for us.

Just look at the increasing and alarming rates of depression, anxiety and despair in our society today.

Male and Female

Here is the next point mentioned in Dignitas Infinita on this topic: “Another prominent aspect of gender theory is that it intends to deny the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings: sexual difference. This foundational difference is not only the greatest imaginable difference, but is also the most beautiful and most powerful of them. In the male-female couple, this difference achieves the most marvellous 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.” (Dignitas Infinita, no. 58)

In denying sexual difference, gender theory “envisages a society without sexual differences, thereby eliminating the anthropological basis of the family.” But the Church is adamant that “We cannot separate the masculine and the feminine from God’s work of creation.” (Dignitas Infinita, no. 59)

Why does the Church consistently uphold the beauty and complementarity of the masculine and the feminine in God’s work of creating human persons?

To answer this question, we return to the salient points in the Theology of the Body:

1. Can we see God? No, He is pure spirit. But as bodily and spiritual beings, we can make Him visible in the physical world.
2. We are made in the image and likeness of God. Since God is love, and we are made in His image, we will find fulfilment only when we love as He loves.
3. God exists as an eternal exchange of love in the Holy Trinity: The Father loving the Son and giving the gift of Himself to Him; the Son, receiving and experiencing the gift of the Father, offers the total gift of Himself to Him. The love that they share is the third person of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Spirit. Made in the image and likeness of the Holy Trinity, we, too, are made for loving communion. We know in the depths of our being that this longing for communion is a deep, deep yearning of our hearts.
4. What is more, this call to loving communion is stamped right here, in our bodies. The husband, in his male body, offers the gift of himself in love to his wife. The wife, receiving and experiencing the total gift of her husband, reciprocates his love through the total gift of herself to him.
   And their love, open to the Lord, the Giver of life, becomes, God willing, another person, their child.  The complementarity and union of the husband’s body and his wife’s body, their one-flesh union, thus becomes an icon, an image of Trinitarian love, a love which is free, total, faithful and fruitful.
   This union of a man and a woman in marriage serves as what St John Paul II refers to as a primordial sacrament. It is a visible sign, a template, so to speak, to not only help us understand who God is, but also Christ’s love for His bride, the Church, as referenced in St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, Chapter 5.
5. Finally, our male and female bodies, with our call to communion, not only reveal who God is, but also gives us a little glimmer, a foretaste of Heaven. It points us to an infinitely greater reality – Paradise, the wedding of the Lamb, when we join the communion of saints in the heavenly wedding with our bridegroom, Jesus.

As Dr Christopher West likes to say, the whole biblical message can be summed up in five words: “God wants to marry us!”

As our bridegroom, Jesus came as a man to initiate and pour out the gift of His life and love to us, His bride. This helps to explain one of the reasons why priests, who act in Persona Christi, in the person of Christ, must be men, since the male body signifies the one who initiates the gift. The bride, in this case, the Church, is the one who receives the gift and bears fruit precisely through her reception of that gift.

The human body is not only a biological reality, but also a theological reality.

As Pope St John Paul II said, “The body, and it alone, is capable of making visible what is invisible, the spiritual and divine.” (TOB 19:4)

Once we lose sight of the beauty, complementarity and reciprocity of being made male and female, we will lose sight of who God is, we will lose sight of His plan for us, and we will lose sight of what makes us truly happy.

As one of the Vatican II documents, Gaudium et Spes, tells us, “When God is forgotten… the creature itself grows unintelligible.” (GS, no. 36)

Our core identity does not come from our sexual orientation, but from the fact that we are children of God, infinitely loved into being by Him. Therein lies our dignity. As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, noted, “The human person, made in the image and likeness of God, can hardly be adequately described by a reductionist reference to his or her sexual orientation [or in the present context, his or her sense of gender identity].” (Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, no. 16)

He continued: “Today, the Church provides a badly needed context for the care of the human person when she refuses to consider the person solely as a ‘heterosexual’ or a ‘homosexual’ and insists that every person has a fundamental identity: the creature of God, and by grace, His child and heir to eternal life.”

Conclusion

1. Every person, regardless of sexual orientation, ought to be respected in his or her dignity;
2. Everyone, including those who experience gender dysphoria, should be regarded with respect, compassion, and sensitivity;
3. Gender theory is problematic because, for one, it entails a rejection of God’s gift to us in making us male and female;
4. Gender theory denies the beauty of the complementarity and reciprocity of the male and female bodies, a means through which we not only can see who God is, but also His plan for us for all eternity to be united to Jesus our Bridegroom in the wedding of the Lamb;
5. Our core identity does not come from our sexual orientation, but from the fact that we are children of God, infinitely loved into being by Him.