Beware Church Use of ‘Transgender’ Language, by Leila Marie Lawler

Synodality and the Strickland Case, by Phil Lawler
November 18, 2023
Daily Scripture Readings and Meditation: Always Pray and Do Not Lose Heart
November 18, 2023

*Image: Sleeping Hermaphroditus (Hermaphrodite endormi) by an unknown Roman sculptor, 2nd century AD (after a Greek original of the 2nd century BC) [The Louvre, Paris]. The mattress upon which Hermaphroditus sleeps was made by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in 1620.

By Leila Marie Lawler, The Catholic Thing, Nov. 18, 2023

Leila Marie Lawler is the author of The Summa Domestica: Order and Wonder in Family Life, a three-volume work on the home and the woman’s role in it, and God Has No Grandchildren, a guided reading of Casti Connubii. She co-authored The Little Oratory with David Clayton. She writes at Like Mother, Like Daughter and Happy Despite Them.

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The most important issue about the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s recent response regarding “transgender” baptism is the use of the word “transgender.” A quick “so-called” is not enough of a qualifier. No real answer to the various problems it involves can be given before we have a free and frank conversation about what this word signifies and why it is used as an identity.

Accepting the word “transgender” and using it in an official document represents a capitulation to an ideology that is completely contrary to, and the enemy of, the Catholic faith and indeed reality itself. This is not the first time, either. For years now, bishops have used this word in, for instance, statements on bills before legislatures on bathrooms and pronouns. They lose the argument before it begins, for defining terms is everything in seeking the truth and helping others find it.

The late Fr. Paul Mankowski, in his First Things review of Fr. James Martin SJ’s book, Building a Bridge, pinpointed the word “gay” as, above all, political: …

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