SYRACUSE, NY, February 26, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – As the debate over transgenderism grows across the country, two Catholic churches are holding what local news calls a “series of talks on what it's like to be transgender.”
The talks, which are sponsored by All Saints Catholic Church and St. Lucy's Catholic Church, were organized by the All Saints LGBT Task Force and “volunteers from Family Allies for Trans Equality in New York State.” They will all be held at the All Saints Parish's Bishop Harrison Center.
The events will conclude with an all-day workshop March 8, tackling topics such as “Understanding Transgender” and “Becoming an Effective Ally for Trans Rights.” Empire State Pride Agenda will also have a presence through Sheilah Sable, who will present on legal concerns related to the lives of transgender people.
The Diocese of Syracuse did not return a request for comment on the speaker/workshop series and whether the workshops and presentations violate Church teachings. Empire State Pride Agenda is an organization with a long history of supporting same-sex “marriage” and other issues at odds with Church doctrine.
The Catholic Church in New York State has long stood against same-sex “marriage.” In 2011, shortly after the state legalized marriage licenses for homosexual couples, Cardinal Timothy Dolan – then Archbishop Dolan – said he and the Church in that state were “deceived” about the chances of a same-sex “marriage” bill becoming law.
According to the Cathechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), “Everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity.” While the United Nations and other bodies and individuals have tried to declare all sexual relationships and definitions are equally valid, the Vatican has long rejected this stance even while opposing “discrimination and violence.”
It has also rejected resolutions from the United Nations that the Vatican says “would [make it] no longer…acceptable to have a moral or religious opinion on homosexuality.” Many homosexual activists and supportive organizations view transgender as the next barrier for “equality.”
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In December 2012, then-Pope Benedict XVI delivered a strong rebuke of gender theories that deny an individual's nature as man or woman. Modern culture often says that “sex is no longer a given element of nature, that man has to accept and personally make sense of: it is a social role that we choose for ourselves, while in the past it was chosen for us by society,” he said. “The profound falsehood of this theory and of the anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious. People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being. They deny their nature.”
“According to the biblical creation account, being created by God as male and female pertains to the essence of the human creature,” he continued. “This duality is an essential aspect of what being human is all about, as ordained by God. This very duality as something previously given is what is now disputed.”
According to the pope, flexible gender identity is a direct threat to the family unit. “But if there is no pre-ordained duality of man and woman in creation, then neither is the family any longer a reality established by creation. Likewise, the child has lost the place he had occupied hitherto and the dignity pertaining to him.”
He also said this change in sexual definition affects children, where “perforce, 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. 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.”
According to the pope, “the defence of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears. Whoever defends God is defending man.”
The next event for All Saints and St. Lucy's is on March 4, and is called “Voices From The Journey: Hearing From Transgender Persons.”
Contact:
Diocese of Syracuse main phone line: (315) 422-7203