Pope Francis is undoubtedly one of the most progressive pontiffs that’s ever set foot in the Vatican: he regularly advocates for the world’s poor and disenfranchised, is an outspoken critic of financial capitalism, and went as far as conceding that it is not the Church’s role to intervene in the lives of gays and lesbians.
But even the Argentinian pontiff has limits.
In closed-door remarks delivered last week to bishops in Poland and released publicly on Tuesday, Francis said he was dismayed by the growing acceptance of gender “ideology” in Western society, where children are being taught in schools that “everyone can choose their gender,” calling it “terrible.”
The Pope railed against what he called “ideological colonizing” in “very influential countries,” although he declined to name any. One such example of “colonization,” he said “ is gender” and blamed educational programs financed by wealthy people and institutions, for its diffusion around the globe.
Citing his predecessor Benedict XVI’s words, he encouraged bishops to reflect on the fact that we are entering “an epoch of sin against God the creator.”
The 79 year-old pontiff has been one of the most LBGT-friendly, and famously said “Who am I to judge?”when prompted on the question of homosexuality. Yet he still officially opposes same-sex marriage and is steadfast on the issue of transgender identity.
In an apostolic exhortation delivered last March (and widely cited by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops in their opposition to Obama’s guidance on transgender bathrooms) Pope Francis had already voiced his concerns with a progressive gender ideology.
He said that, by denying the biological basis of sex, would turn human identity into a fuzzy and volatile concept that could “change over time”:
Another challenge is posed by the various forms of an ideology of gender that “denies the difference and reciprocity in nature of a man and a woman and envisages a society without sexual differences […]
It is a source of concern that some ideologies of this sort, which seek to respond to what are at times understandable aspirations, manage to assert themselves as absolute and unquestionable, even dictating how children should be raised.