By Gwendolyn Ann Smith
Pope Francis recently released an encyclical — a letter the pontiff sends to all the Roman Catholic Church's bishops — addressing climate change. As you can imagine, many on the right-wing have been up in arms over it long before it had even been penned.
This particular encyclical letter, titled "Laudato si,'" speaks of the need to reduce the causes of climate change, putting the blame squarely on humanity in the process. It's a great move by a pope who has been largely praised for being very progressive and forward thinking, especially in light of Pope Benedict XVI.
Yet buried in this 184 page letter is something only tenuously related to the climate, and something much more in line with the core beliefs of the right-wing than perhaps anything else in the encyclical.
Pope Francis started by quoting his predecessor, who said in a 2011 address that, "Man too has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will. Man does not create himself. He is intellect and will, but he is also nature, and his will is rightly ordered if he respects his nature, listens to it and accepts himself for who he is, as one who did not create himself.
From this, Pope Francis said the following: "It is enough to recognize that our body itself establishes us in a direct relationship with the environment and with other living beings. The acceptance of our bodies as God's gift is vital for welcoming and accepting the entire world as a gift from the Father and our common home, whereas thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation. Learning to accept our body, to care for it and to respect its fullest meaning, is an essential element of any genuine human ecology."
"Also, valuing one's own body in its femininity or masculinity is necessary if I am going to be able to recognize myself in an encounter with someone who is different," he continued. "In this way we can joyfully accept the specific gifts of another man or woman, the work of God the Creator, and find mutual enrichment. It is not a healthy attitude which would seek 'to cancel out sexual difference because it no longer knows how to confront it.'"
This is not the first time Pope Francis has made similar statements, and indeed, the last part of the previous paragraph referred to an address of his from last April. That address, on the family and subtitled "male and female," contained many attacks on gender theory.
"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," said the pontiff in that address. "Yes, we risk taking a step backwards. The removal of difference in fact creates a problem, not a solution."
The pope was even more direct than in "This Economy Kills," published in February.
"Let's think of the nuclear arms, of the possibility to annihilate in a few instants a very high number of human beings," he stated. "Let's think also of genetic manipulation, of the manipulation of life, or of the gender theory, that does not recognize the order of creation. With this attitude, man commits a new sin, that against God the Creator."
This last quote reminds me that it was Christine Jorgensen who, in 1952, pushed atom bomb tests off the front pages when she returned to the U.S. after her gender reassignment — but that's about as close as I can get to equating those like me with the world's nuclear arsenal.
I was not raised Catholic, and aside from assisting my father in photographing weddings at St. John Vianney, my personal experiences with Catholicism are largely academic. Indeed, my whole childhood experience has caused me to have a very strong agnostic streak. I don't mind any belief that any one wishes to hold dear, provided it harms none. With the pope's words, he's gone against that.
I think he is spot on when he speaks of the environment, about man's greed and how that has damaged Mother Earth — but to take that same opportunity to tell transgender people to somehow "suck it up" seems nothing but hurtful.
One of the hardest things for a person such as me to come to terms with is the very fact that their own physical body lies. It's not a simple matter of accepting "what God gave me," any more than it is for someone born with a cleft palate. All the things that others like me go through simply to be comfortable in our own skins has little to do with having "absolute power over creation."
I would also contend that it is Pope Francis, not I, who is facing some crises around being able to recognize his self and somehow "confront" gender differences. To borrow the old Queer Nation slogan, "We're here. We're queer. Get used to it."
I want a better world, and I want the harm done to our environment to be addressed. I am happy to see the pontiff speak out while so many other leaders won't. Yet this continual cycle of attacks on "gender theory" and transgender people from the pope is tiresome and hurtful. How many transgender people, brought up in the Catholic Church, is this harming — and how many may take their lives as a result?
With that in mind, I don't feel the good done by Pope Francis in "Laudato si'" fully outweighs the harm it can cause to transgender people — and he needs to take a new look at transgender people if he expects to be as progressive as many claim him to be.
