Italian Bishops Open Up to “Gender” Theory

The newspaper of the Italian bishops takes as its starting point the case of a transsexual student from Venice, who was being hyped by the press, declaring she had been discriminated against because a professor had refused to call her by the male first name she had selected. For Avvenire, this is a “sad affair” to be taken as a starting point for reflection: “not a threat but an opportunity to reformulate the meaning of masculine and feminine, so that no one is excluded.”

The Veronesi Foundation, whose conference is widely reported in the footnote article, bears the name of the late doctor Umberto Veronesi, former Minister of Health, known for his anti-humanist and ultra-progressive positions.

In the report, it is assumed that the conclusions of the mentioned experts are entirely correct. It explains that “gender identity” is a question that should not even be asked anymore: people can be whoever they want, independent of any natural given, the important thing is that they feel welcome.

The Inclusive Theology of the Italian Bishops

But even more disturbing is the high-flying article signed by Don Giovanni del Missier, extraordinary professor of moral theology at the Accademia Alfonsiana in Rome, who is about to hold a course on gender at the Faculty of Theology of Triveneto.

The author is presented as putting forth the authorized expression of the Church’s thought on the subject, which (speaking through his hat) “starts however from the concreteness of real life, starting with the problems of sexual identity.” 

The “theologian” advocates a change of viewpoint on transsexuality based on experience, ignoring any reference to an objective moral law.

Obviously, he begins his article by smiling at those Catholics who only feel comfortable when facing an enemy, such as “gender theory,” “perceived today as a global threat, to the point of inciting certain ecclesial fringes to entrench themselves in an extreme ‘nailed down’ defense, rather than corresponding to Pope Francis’s call for an outgoing church.”

The theologian made the assurance that those who do not manage to make such a “cultural” leap are essentially worried, remain locked in their certainties, and are probably not open to the breath of the spirit – the spirit of the times in truth, and not of the Holy Spirit – the sole guarantor of the divine evolving in man (according to modernists).

The theologian certainly appreciates the theory's attempt to include differences, while acknowledging that certain groups have made excessive instrumental use of it, although understandable for people who are emerging from a long marginalization.

If these have presented the theory as “a model of inclusion that looks a lot like the biblical Babel - a unity flattened in uniformity, which cancels out differences because it deprives them of meaning” - with Christian contribution they can do better: arriving at “the communion of differences, the model of Pentecost, the polyhedron of inclusion as opposed to the sphere of ideological homologation.”

This chilling rhetoric of a permanent Pentecost, by which the Spirit goes on to create a new revelation and a new society – and a new church – by including elements of the “world” in the modernist faith, had already succeeded in including liberalism and the revolution in the Catholic Church at the time of Vatican II. Gender is what Christians must absorb today, in their original way, to contribute to an inclusive world.

Reality is the Result of Constant Hermeneutical Evolution

He explains it in general but very clear terms: the natural fact of masculine or feminine flesh “always presents itself as an open signifier and not as a pre-established signification, that is, it asks to be invested with a properly human meaning, personal and relational, to be interpreted individually and collectively.”

Everyone can therefore go beyond what nature and the Creator have given them, giving a different – ​​and perhaps opposite – meaning to what they have received, considering that the person is a relationship and nature only a starting point.

As is typical of Gnosticism, the natural datum is seen as a cage or limit that the mind can always overcome. Nature is not a gift from the Father to be preserved and increased, but only has value if it is reinterpreted by the subject.

“Such a hermeneutical effort not surprisingly coincides with the search for the creative capacity for projection, inscribed in our human nature, which in every era must be subject to cultural reinterpretation in order to be meaningful for its time.”

A phrase that makes created and natural reality valid only insofar as it is known to man and perpetually reinterpreted by him, without a stable value of its own. The most classic modernist couldn't say it better.

The conclusion of the article is obvious, and appeals to the founding event of the Church today to muzzle any opposition:

“And to those who simply cannot break out of the vicious circle of confrontation with an enemy, it is well to remember what the Second Vatican Council teaches: ‘the Church admits that she has greatly profited and still profits from the antagonism of those who oppose or who persecute her’ (Gaudium et spes, no.44). So imagine all the good that a hermeneutical category as provocative and generating of novelty as gender can bring!”

Anyone who accepted the introduction of liberal doctrines into the Church cannot, now, not accept the introduction of those on “gender.”