IS IT THE CHURCH WHICH INVENTED THE GENDER IDEOLOGY?

MILENA KINDZIUK

What is the main problem of the Church? Gender ideology! In particular of the Church in Poland, certainly. Because the opposition of priests against the gender ideology results from the fact that they want to conceal their own scandals. Exaggeration? No way! Such an image of the Church is promoted today by mainstream media following the voice of a known feminist prof. Środa

Whereas, let’s take the debate on the gender ideology which has recently taken place in the Episcopal Secretariat in Warsaw, is an evidence for the fact that the reality looks different, and in fact the Church is really so open for a reliable talk on this issue. And with various groups. Because the debate was attended both by supporters and opponents of this ideology. And whatever could be said on this issue, one thing is certain: it is not the Church in Poland which invented the gender ideology.

Worse than atheism

That is true that Polish bishops issued a letter devoted to this problem (being attacked from everywhere), reminding that the Church has always taught about the equal dignity of the man and the woman, however, it sees a big danger of the gender ideology which basically rejects sex differences and ‘promotes principles completely contradictory with the reality and the integral way of understanding the human nature’.

However, we must remember that bishops of other European countries speak in a similar tone, as it was emphasized during the debate by Fr. dr. Leszek Woroniecki. The example may be bishops of Slovakia, who in their pastoral letter of December 2013 unanimously protested against the contemporary massed questioning the human nature and attacks on the family. ‘The gender ideology is worse than atheism. Under the cover of human rights and children’s rights it wants to create Sodoma which will bring God’s punishment onto us’ – they wrote. Moreover, the Roman-Catholic Episcopate of Ukrainian warned us against the gender ideology: ‘This process is overwhelming more and more countries in the world, and its influences are slowly starting to reach to Ukraine as well. We call you for defence of Your children and Your grandchildren. Oppose to the projects of the ideologists who place themselves in the place of God and are trying to impose a new vision of the world on us in the spirit of gender. This is a vision contradictory with faith and reason. It is contradictory with the Revelation and science’.

Episcopates in the West react in a similar way. Spain bishops issued a special document in 2012, entitled ‘The truth about the human love’, in which they analyzed the gender ideology, stating that it is leading to the culture which does not create life but death. Whereas bishops from Portugal, in their letter of last September reminded that this ideology ‘distorts the truth about the man and the human love’. Bishops of Costa Rica and Switzerland spoke in a similar tone. Especially there was a lively discussion on this issue in France, when the National Congregation from there legalized the single-sex couples, granting them a right to adopt children. Archbishop of Paris – cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois did not have doubts that it was just ‘the temptation of rejecting any sex difference’, typical for the gender ideology, which lies at the base of the accepted parliamentary act about ‘marriage for everybody’. So, the attitude of the Catholic Church in all countries is evidently common and coherent.

It started with the Pope

However, in fact the gender ideology started to warn Benedict XVI publicly, who used to say in 2012: ‘The deep mistake of this theory is obvious as well as the anthropological revolution subjected to it. The man questions the fact that he has got earlier constituted nature of his corporeality characteristic for the human being. It negates its own nature and decides that it was not given to the man as the prior fact but that the man has created it himself/herself’.

In his pronouncement the pope referred to the biblical description of creation, reminding that the essence of humankind includes being created by God as a man and a woman, ‘This duality is essential for the human being, as it was given by God’. So, undoubtedly, the gender ideology contains an anthropological mistake, does not want to recognize the fact that a man and a woman are equal in dignity, although they are biologically different’ – we read in the Genesis. So, the Church cannot agree with the thesis that it is the human being, not God, who decides about the choice of his/her sexes. Christianity is based on the biblical teaching about the work of creation and is based on nature. So, the teaching of the Church is based on the natural law which is not functioning separately from the culture or biology.

Women in the Church

Supporters of the gender ideology should also be reminded that it is the Church which has done the most for the dignity and promotion of women. This issue was analyzed by Alina Petrowa-Wasilewicz from the Catholic Informative Agency, a chief of the National Council of Secular Catholics for many years, reminding that women had influenced the most important decisions made in the Church. – St. Catherine from Siena convinced Gregory XI that he should return from Avignon to Rome; women initiated reforms in the Church (St. Clara with St. Francis, St. Theresa from Avilla reformed Carmel, and in Poland mother Magdalena Morteska – reformed Benedictine monasteries) – emphasized the speaker. Finally, women, as she stated, were pioneers to read out the signs of times – in Poland in XIX century Eleonora Motylowska established a congregation for the servants and God’s servant mother Róża Godecka – was the first in the world – for women workers.

Also John Paul II used to speak about the equal dignity of women and men in the Church, as well as a kind of ‘woman’s genius’ – like in the apostolic letter ‘Mulieris dignitatem’, the first ecclesiastical document devoted to dignity and vocation of women. The pope wrote that ‘the Church thanks for all women and for every single woman: for mothers, sisters, wives; for women sacrificed to God in virginity, for the women who sacrifice themselves to serve other people waiting for gratuitous love of others; for those women who are taking care of other people in the family being the basic sign of the human community; for women doing their jobs, for the women who are responsible for the society, for women who are ‘brave’ and women who are ‘weak’ – for all women: in the way they were created by God in the whole beauty and richness of their femininity; in the way they were embraced by His eternal love; like – together with a man – they are pilgrims on this land which is a temporary ‘homeland’ of people, and often becomes also a ‘vale of tears’; as they take the common responsibility with a man for the fate of humankind, according to the requirements of every day and these last destinies which the human family finds in God, in the bosom of the inexpressible Trinity’.

In the ‘Evangelium Vitae’ John Paul II wrote about the necessity for new feminism, and in the Letter for women he wrote: ‘Unfortunately, we are heirs of history of full ‘conditions’, which in all times of history and in every geographical space, hindered life of women, knowing their dignity, who were ignored and not appreciated, often pushed aside onto the margin and, finally, given a role of slaves’.

Also gender ideology will be overcome

So, the opposition of the Church to the gender ideology is not the defence of the Church, but- as bishop Wojciech Polak notes – the defence of the human being and the society.

The Church, joining this discussion, is concerned about the common welfare, the good of marriage, family, the right for life, will finally a woman’s dignity. Here we touch on the area of the natural law. Whereas its breaches finally turn against the human being and the society – Fr. prof. Piotr Mazurkiewicz, a political scientist from the University of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, explains in an interview for the Catholic Informative Agency.

So, bishops must show the danger and mistakes of this ideology, especially that The Sejm has just received a project submitted by the Democratic Leftist Alliance and Your Movement party, concerning the Act about implementation of some EU provisions in the sphere of equal treatment, and postulating the prohibition of discrimination because of the so-called sexual expressiveness and sexual identity. If this Act was passed, public declaration and manifestation of pervert sexual behaviours would be consistent with law. Whereas objection will be punished.

Will there be any amendments in law? And will there be a cultural revolution? Fr. prof. Dariusz Oko, a lecturer at the Papal University of John Paul II does not doubt: - The Church is like a rock, and communism crashed against just this rock, so gender ideology will crash against it too.

Gender ideology which, undoubtedly, belongs to big dangers of our civilization today.

(AA)

"Niedziela" 6/2014

Editor: Tygodnik Katolicki "Niedziela", ul. 3 Maja 12, 42-200 Czestochowa, Polska
Editor-in-chief: Fr Jaroslaw Grabowski • E-mail: redakcja@niedziela.pl