In its Oct. 1 response, the congregation expressed appreciation for the association’s work for the “defense of life, from conception to the natural end, and for a real culture of family.”
Regarding whether “anti-homophobia” laws are consistent with Catholic teaching, the congregation said that everything could be found in the Church’s magisterium, starting with Amoris laetitia.
“In Pope Francis’ post-synodal exhortation Amoris laetitia, n.56, there is a clear disapproval of gender ideology, which Pope Francis reiterated in numerous other statements,” the CDF said.
The letter then listed Pope Francis’ statements on the issue. It first referred to a 2017 address to the general assembly of the Pontifical Academy for Life.
In that speech, Pope Francis stressed that the recent proposal to advance the dignity of a person by radically eliminating sexual difference and, as a result, our understanding of man and woman, is not correct, because “instead of combatting wrongful interpretations of sexual difference that would diminish the fundamental importance of that difference for human dignity, such a proposal would simply eliminate it by proposing procedures and practices that make it irrelevant for a person’s development and human relationships.”
The letter also looked back at Pope Francis’ address to Polish bishops in July 2016, when he explained that “in Europe, America, Latin America, Africa, and in some countries of Asia, there are genuine forms of ideological colonization taking place. And one of these — I will call it clearly by its name — is [the ideology of] ‘gender.’ Today, children — children! — are taught in school that everyone can choose his or her sex. Why are they teaching this? Because the books are provided by the persons and institutions that give you money. These forms of ideological colonization are also supported by influential countries. And this is terrible!”
In 2015, Pope Francis responded to gender ideology issues in a meeting with Equipes Notre-Dame, a French movement of conjugal spirituality. Pope Francis noted that their missionary commitment “is all the more important inasmuch as the image of the family — as God wills it, composed of one man and one woman in view of the good of the spouses and also of the procreation and upbringing of children — is deformed through powerful adverse projects supported by ideological trends.”
The CDF also mentioned Pope Francis’ remarks during a general audience on April 15, 2015. The pope said on that occasion: “I ask myself if the so-called gender theory is not, at the same time, an expression of frustration and resignation, which seeks to cancel out sexual difference because it no longer knows how to confront it. Yes, we risk taking a step backward. The removal of difference, in fact, creates a problem, not a solution.”
The doctrinal office concluded by pointing out Pope Francis’ address to priests, religious, seminarians, and pastoral workers in the country of Georgia in 2016.
Responding to a question, Pope Francis said: “You, Irina, mentioned a great enemy to marriage today: the theory of gender. Today there is a world war to destroy marriage. Today there are ideological colonizations which destroy, not with weapons, but with ideas. Therefore, there is a need to defend ourselves from ideological colonizations.”
After referencing Pope Francis’ statements, the CDF noted that the behavior of Catholic faithful and politicians facing “bills similar to the one mentioned above” can be easily understood from the CDF’s 2002 doctrinal note on some questions about the commitment and behavior of Catholics in political life.
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In that note, the CDF referenced Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium vitae, when stating that “regarding the situation in which it is not possible to overturn or completely repeal a law allowing abortion which is already in force or coming up for a vote, ‘an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality.’”
The 2002 document also underscored “that a well-formed Christian conscience does not permit one to vote for a political program or an individual law which contradicts the fundamental contents of faith and morals.”
According to the document, “the Christian faith is an integral unity, and thus it is incoherent to isolate some particular element to the detriment of the whole of Catholic doctrine.”
For this reason, the note continued, “a political commitment to a single isolated aspect of the Church’s social doctrine does not exhaust one’s responsibility towards the common good. Nor can a Catholic think of delegating his Christian responsibility to others; rather, the Gospel of Jesus Christ gives him this task, so that the truth about man and the world might be proclaimed and put into action.”
Andrea Gagliarducci is an Italian journalist for Catholic News Agency and Vatican analyst for ACI Stampa. He is a contributor to the National Catholic Register.