Addressing participants in the international Symposium "Man-Woman: Image of God.” Pope Francis describes so-called gender ideology as the “ugliest danger” of our time, because it cancels out all differences that make humanity.
Pope Francis on Friday again spoke out against gender theory describing it as an “ugly ideology of our time”, because it erases all distinctions between men and women. To ceancel this difference “is to erase humanity. Man and woman, instead, exist in a fruitful ‘tension’”, he said.
The Symposium
The remarks came as he opened his address to participants in the international Symposium “Man-Woman: Image of God. Towards an Anthropology of Vocations” held in the Vatican on March 1-2.
The Congress is organized by Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Prefect Emeritus of the Dicastery for Bishops, together with the Centre for Research and Anthropology of Vocations (CRAV) and is a follow-up to the previous 2022 Symposium dedicated to the theology of the priesthood.
Introducing his address the Pope said he still has a cold and asked his assistant Monsignor Filippo Ciampanelli to read it out for him, "so I don’t get so fatigued.”
In the prepared text the Pope reflected on the theme of the Congress which is aimed first of all at highlighting the anthropological dimension of every vocation.
The human person is a vocation
Indeed, he remarked, “the life of the human being is a vocation” which has a relational character: “I exist and live in relation to who generated me, to the reality that transcends me, to others and to the world around me, in which I am called to embrace a specific and personal mission with joy and responsibility.”
“Each one of us discovers and expresses oneself as called, as a person who realizes oneself in listening and response, sharing our being and gifts with others for the common good.”
This fundamental anthropological truth is sometimes overlooked in today’s cultural context, where human beings tend to be reduced to their mere material and primary needs. Yet, Pope Francis said , they are more than this: created by God in His own image, man and woman “carry within themselves a desire for eternity and happiness that God himself has planted in their hearts and that they are called to fulfil through a specific vocation.”
“Our being in the world is not a mere fruit of chance, but we are part of a design of love and are invited to go out of ourselves and realize it, for ourselves and for others,” the Pope said.
“We are called to happiness, to the fullness of life, to something great to which God has destined us.”
We all have a mission in Church and society
Recalling Cardinal Saint John Henry Newman’s “Meditations and Prayers” Pope Francis further remarked that not only we have all been entrusted with a mission, but ”each and every one of us is a mission.”
The Pope therefore welcomed the symposium and the studies conducted on this topic because, he said, “they spread awareness of the vocation to which every human being is called by God”, and are also useful to reflect on today’s challenges, on the ongoing anthropological crisis, and on the need to promote human and Christian vocations.
Promoting a more effective “circularity” of vocations
He also emphasized the importance of promoting “a more effective circularity” of the different types of vocations in the Church, including lay vocations, ordained ministry and consecrated life, so they “can contribute to generating hope in a world overwhelmed by death.”
“Generating this hope, placing oneself at the service of the Kingdom of God to build an open and fraternal world is a mission entrusted to every woman and man of our time,” he said.
The courage to seek God’s will
Closing his address, Pope Francis encouraged the participants in the Symposium not to shy away from risks in seeking God’s will in their work, reminding them a living faith is not an artifact in a museum:”The Holy Spirit asks us fidelity, but fidelity moves, and often leads us to take risks”, he said.
“Move forward with the courage to discern and risk seeking God's will.”
Remember all religions are made up by people and none of it is real no matter how badly they want it to be, and “god” is just an excuse for people to be bigots
Why didn’t somebody ever make a cool religion? Like the only tenet should basically be “God is real, all powerful and all loving” and you fill all the blanks with actual science and rational thought, not with blatherings of ancient men that claimed God talked to them.
A bunch of people tried doing this and it kept aligning with whatever status quo power hierarchy already existed. The American founders tried that type of belief in God with deism, they’d talk about natural law and all that, but it turns out by natural law they meant oppression of black/native people. Brazil also had a kind of secular scientific religion, the Auguste Comte school, and they believed in strict gender roles which happened to be incredibly misogynist.
The Unitarians are pretty cool though. They’ve been consistently pro-LGBTQ for decades and don’t promote any specific beliefs about God or faith or anything.
Ok but what if we just slapped “God” on top of marxist theory and call it a new religion?
That’s literally what Jonestown was. Most of the time trying to turn communist stuff into a religion creates weird cults.
Jonestown was a CIA psyop and I know someone here has the links to a weird web1 website that proves it
Then at which point does god actually become necessary, or even have room to exist, if all the science and rational thought comes from human beings?
I know you’re just kinda joking (or maybe not, the 'tism can’t tell) but we just don’t really have any room or need for gods. We might have, through evolution, acquired the trait of “believing something is there” from the dangers of the unknown, and somewhere down the line the logic went from “I could be watched by something in the dark that can kill me” to “there is something that is always watching me and judging me even when I can’t see it”.
Thing is, we know what’s in the dark cause we acquired light, and we know what’s in the heavens cause we went there.
It’s nothing. 🤷🏿♂️
I won’t be convinced science “knows” all the big questions at least on a high level until the mystery of consciousness is convincingly resolved. Currently all the answers are lackluster IMO, including the mainstream physicalist worldview. I do not think the belief in a higher power in the abstract is necessarily irrational.
Thing is, for something to be possible it has to have some sort of precedent or at least some mechanism that could allow us to say something supernatural exists. Something that we could verify to say “yeah that’s evidence of something there” even if we can’t explain it.
We don’t have anything for that for the supernatural, so as far as I’m concerned none of it exists.
As for consciousness I don’t think it’s a mystery, just electrical and chemical signals letting us know there are things around us.
Tbh if you really think it’s not a mystery you probably haven’t really delved deep enough into it. It’s only not a mystery if you keep your thinking on the highest possible level, if you want to find out anything concrete (how exactly would a physical system lead to a conscious experience) you quickly hit a dead end, both on a philosophical level and with concrete data/models.
For example I’m entirely unsatisfied with how mainstream science handwaves the “philosophical zombie” argument, you can’t just say “it just do be like that” without having a coherent model of how it actually is like that.
Filling in the gap with “electrical signals somehow doing a consciousness” feels equally unsatisfying as filling the gap with souls and God.
I suppose? At least we have physical evidence for the electrical signals, there’s no evidence (or even room) at all for any souls or god. How could we observe the soul? Measure it? Do anything scientific with it.
I’m willing to change my mind if there’s new information that suddenly comes out but I just don’t think that’s going to happen, and I think scientists would have found the answer already; if something only exists in the abstract then it doesn’t exist in reality, does it?
You’re perhaps not observing souls but you are observing your own consciousness at every single point of your waking life, the same consciousness that doesn’t really fit into any of our physical models of the universe. “Observing” in of itself is just a process within your conscious mind, no observing ever happens outside of consciousness so it’s kinda weird to me how people can so easily handwave this away.
Well yes of course, because how could we experience or observe anything outside of our minds? Our brains are physical, the processes by which consciousness occurs are also physical, these are just the limitations we have as physical beings.
I like the religions where you like, give good vibes to the forest and ocean and stuff.