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Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, enters the hall at the Synod on the Family in October 2015.Patrick Craine / LifeSiteNews

ROME, April 5, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — Gender theory, homosexual “marriage” and “the negation of the difference between man and woman are all deviations,” Cardinal Robert Sarah told Italians recently at a presentation of his book God or Nothing.

In France, “they corrected me, they said I cannot use the word ‘deviation’, but I would not know which other word to use,” added the prefect for the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.

“I also cannot deny that God created man and woman.”

Italian journalist Marco Tossatti reported the cardinal’s outspoken remarks on gender theory, which Catholic writer Maike Hickson has translated into English.

“Even fools recognize that, between a man and a woman, there is a difference and a complementarity. Man is nothing without a woman and vice versa,” Sarah said.

“This is not my own position, this is the position of the Church, and all Christians, all families, are called to fight against this deviation.”

“I do not understand how the European culture – so steeped in Christianity – could get to such a point,” noted Sarah.

The cardinal’s book God or Nothing: A Conversation on Faith, published January 2016, is a wide-ranging interview between the Guinean cardinal and French journalist Nicholas Diat in which the cardinal asserts, among other things, that “the most difficult thing for the postmodern world is to believe in God and in his only Son.”

According to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, Sarah’s book also offers “courageous answers to the problems of gender theory” that “clear up in a nebulous world a fundamental anthropological question.” The former pontiff noted he read it with “great spiritual profit, joy and gratitude.”

Here's how the Catechism of the Catholic Church treats homosexuality:

2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved. 

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition. 

2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.