Benedict XVI denounces the 'gender' fallacy
and defends family and marriage as civilized
societies have sustained them for 2000 years
Translated from
December 28, 2012
It is not the first time that Benedict XVI cites a rabbi in his speeches or carries on a dialog with a rabbi in writing. The first case was Jacob Neusner, a rabbi from New York
[and more importantly, author of the book A rabbi speaks with Jesus, cited admiringly in the first volume of Benedict XVI's JESUS OF NAZARETH], whom two years ago, the Pope received at the Vatican with his wife, with whom he had a conversation as with an old friend.
[To those who may be reading about Neusner for the first time, his acquaintance with Joseph Ratzinger began when he asked him back in 1993 to write a comment about the Jesus book, which started an exchange of letters and books over the years (Neusner is also the most prolific contemporary author-commentator on Judaism today, having written over 900 books). They first met in person when Benedict XVI hosted an inter-faith encounter in Washington DC during his visit to the USA in April 2005. Their meeting at the Vatican came in January 2010, shortly after Benedict XVI visited the Great Synagogue of Rome for the first time.]
Benedict XVI's latest citation of a rabbi is from the Grand Rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, in connection with a paper he wrote on the threat to families today in Western societies
[by the very notion of considering a union between two persons of the same sex as equivalent to traditional marriage] and its consequences for civilization.
In one of his major addresses for the year, which is always much anticipated = his Christmas address to the Roman Curia - Benedict XVI focused his reflection on two main themes, the first being the current cultural battle in defense of the family, supporting in this case a recent paper by Rabbi Bernheim.
In this way, he articulated three major points himself:
- The problem of the family is, to begin with, one that is accessible to all and comprehensible to anyone who exercises human reason, but the Judaeo-Christian tradition has illuminated and shaped its formulation in a way that cannot be surpassed;
- The Church does not wish to carry on this battle by herself, and seeks, wherever possible, interlocutors and friends who can help her sustain the essential truth about the family;
- And lastly, the French government's push to legalize same-sex 'marriage' is particularly alarming because of the cultural influence that the country still wields. Moreover, the plan by socialist President Francois Hollande has so far resulted in an unusual tension between the Church in France and state secularism.
But why would Benedict XVI have tackled this issue at all in an address that is always the object of major scrutiny? He explains it with a brief statement: "Man himself is at stake in the battle for the family".
This is not about defending a series of traditional values, isolated from the fabric of life, as if it was merely an obsession to get out of the way. The Pope wished to indicate what he believes to be the heart of the crisis in our culture: who is man, what is he, and how can he live right.
It is a question that is clearly reflected in the systematic campaign to dismantle the institutions of marriage and the family that has been underway by powerful cultural and political lobbies in Western society since the 1960s.
To begin with, Benedict XVI brilliantly and sharply tackles the relationship between freedom and ties - the increasing inability of our culture to accept stable ties as an asset that allows self-realization.
The Pope asks whether a bond that is meant to last for life is in conflict with freedom at all? He himself offers the answer:
Man’s refusal to make any commitment – which is becoming increasingly widespread as a result of a false understanding of freedom and self-realization, as well as the desire to escape suffering – means that man remains closed in on himself and keeps his 'I' ultimately for himself, without really rising above it.
Yet only in self-giving does man find himself, and only by opening himself to the other, to others, to children, to the family, only by letting himself be changed through suffering, does he discover the breadth of his humanity.
When such commitment is repudiated, the key figures of human existence likewise vanish: father, mother, child – essential elements of the experience of being human are lost.
But the statement that the mass media inevitably underscored was the Pope's reference to the 'ideology of gender', about which he fully echoes the statements made by Rabbi Bernheim.
In this so-called philosophy, sex is not an original 'given' in nature that man must accept, to live and and be as fully as he was created man or woman. Rather, one's natural sex is dismissed in favor of 'gender', in which every human being decides on his own whether he wants to play a male or a female.
Benedict XVI calls this thinking 'fallacy' along with the cultural revolution it carries with it. Man denies that he has a nature pre-constituted by the sex with which he is born, and would presume to create his own nature entirely through his will and without reference to anything else.
Reprising a theme he had stated in his address to the German Parliament, the Pope pointed out that "The manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our environment is concerned, now becomes man’s fundamental choice where he himself is concerned".
It is obvious that the Pope has chosen to get into the fire - in the crater of the volcano, as it were - which no one else dares because to do so would be to turn into ashes!
If the duality of man and woman as created by God is rejected, he says, then neither does the family as a reality pre-established by natural law and "from being a subject of rights, the child has become an object to which people have a right and which they have a right to obtain"
Basically, we are witnessing the worst cultural challenge posed in 20 centuries to the first pages of Genesis. The relationship between the philosophy of gender and the pro-active atheism in various centers of Western power is evident to the Pope.
When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being. The defence of the family is about man himself.
And as a luminous prophetic corollary to close that part of his address: "It becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears. Whoever defends God is defending man".
These days, it has become much clearer that the task of opening the way for God in today's world is intimately bound up to the cause of human dignity.
[Restan ought to devote as much attention to Benedict XVI's discourse on what constitutes authentic inter-religious dialog, in the same address to the Curia.
Few Catholic commentators, who write about inter-religious dialog as if they were experts, fail to grasp the elementary fact that, by its nature, dialog between and among different religions with widely divergent bases cannot be theological. Unlike ecumenical dialog - dialog among Christians, who all share their belief in Christ.
Inter-religious dialog is at best inter-cultural, but it can lead to common and concerted action for the common good on the bases of universal values that are shared by all cultures and religions. Other than seeking to ensure that there is freedom of religion (or no religion) for everyone, that is the only practical purpose of inter-religious dialog, and not a meaningless exercise in 'kumbaya fellowship'.]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 28/12/2012 23:46]