(LifeSiteNews) – Cardinal Gerhard Müller excoriated the LGBT movement in recent remarks, describing transgender ideology as “self-mutilation of mind, soul, and body” that supporters have given a “totalitarian position” in society at the expense of young people and religious and scientific freedom.
The German cardinal and former prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (previously the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) made the comments in a March 30 statement to German magazine Tichys Einblick.
Cardinal Müller was responding to controversy over an episode of a German kids’ TV program that sparked parental outrage for glorifying “gender transitioning.” The episode, released ahead of so-called “Transgender Day of Visibility” last week, featured a character named Erik reemerging on the show as a cross-dressing “trans woman” named “Katja.“
“A trans person is a person who was born a girl, but is actually a boy, or the other way around,” a presenter, who opened with episode with LGBT “pride” flags, told the child audience.
Asked for his take on the controversy, Cardinal Müller spared no words, blasting the promotion of transgenderism as a “serious sin” against children and young people.
“When the self-mutilation of mind, soul, and body is peddled ideologically and politically as an alleged ‘self-determination,’ then that is nothing less than a serious sin against the well-being and salvation of children and young people who are in a process of maturing and finding their identity,” he said. “Hopefully, they have good parents and friends who encourage them to accept themselves as human beings in the manner of men and women.”
“According to the Christian faith, the baptized understand themselves in Jesus Christ as sons and daughters of God, their Creator, Redeemer, and Completer,” he added.
The eminent German prelate explained that a person’s nature as male or female is unchangeable and serves as a precondition for genuine love and the future of humanity.
“Man is born as a man, and not as an animal, plant, or raw material, without anyone asking for his consent beforehand,” he said. “Since male or female sexuality is part of the expression of our individual body, we cannot change it essentially, but either develop within it positively or rebel against it to our detriment.”
“The distinction between man and woman is positive,” he continued, “both for the individual and for the community (also for the succession of generations).” The two sexes are “the precondition for two people to love each other and say to each other: You alone and forever, until death do us part. In this way, they become husband and wife to each other; and then, if God so wills, also father and mother to their common children.”
The LGBT movement fundamentally rejects man’s immutable, God-given nature, Cardinal Müller observed.
“LGBT ideology is not about the dignity of individuals who feel that they are of the opposite sex, but is rather about the negation of the nature of human being as male and female in general, as God inscribed it into creation,” he said.
This anti-Christian, anti-scientific ideology, the cardinal added, “has succeeded in turning a persecuted minority into a persecuting one.” “It has been given a totalitarian position of power in politics, the judiciary, universities, and the media that is destroying religious freedom, undermining the rule of law, and trampling on scientific freedom.”
Cardinal Müller’s comments reflect those of Archbishop Charles Chaput, archbishop emeritus of Philadelphia, who characterized transgenderism last year as “the final rebellion against God.”
Today’s “gender issues,” Archbishop Chaput told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson in June, are “the prime example” of people seeking to take the role of God, “where we’re not even satisfied with the body that we’re born with, that we think we have the power to become something that we were not created, that I can become a woman or a woman can become a man.”
“That’s something God does, not something we do. But in some ways, that’s the final rebellion against God,” he said.
The Magisterium of the Catholic Church upholds the biological reality that there are only two sexes and that God creates every human being either male or female. As stated by the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “God created man and woman together and willed each for the other.” “Holy Scripture affirms that man and woman were created for one another: ‘It is not good that the man should be alone,’” it adds.
“By creating the human being man and woman, God gives personal dignity equally to the one and the other. Each of them, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity,” the Catechism also affirms.
The transgender lifestyle, as Cardinal Müller suggested, causes extreme physical and psychological damage, particularly to young people, as LifeSiteNews has extensively reported.
“Gender transition” drugs, like puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, are linked to serious and potentially fatal side effects, such as heart attack, increased risk of stroke and cancer, osteoporosis, emotional disorders, and sterilization. “Sex change” surgeries typically follow, resulting in irreversible mutilation.
RELATED: Sweden recommends against puberty blockers for children in setback to trans movement
There have been no randomized controlled trials or longitudinal studies on the use of transgender procedures in children or adolescents with gender confusion. Multiple countries, including Sweden and Finland, have moved to restrict hormone drugs for gender-confused minors in recent years, citing massive health risks and a dearth of scientific evidence.