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Considering recent events and developments at some Catholic universities, which have apparently advanced ideas like “gender spectrum” and criticism of the “gender binary,” The Cardinal Newman Society reached out to theologians from faithful Catholic universities to garner a theologically sound understanding of sexual identity.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that “man and woman have been created… in their respective beings as man and woman.” Additionally, “‘being man’ or ‘being woman’ is a reality which is good and willed by God” and “they reflect the Creator’s wisdom and goodness.”

However, Fordham University hosted a lecture earlier this year with a “gender theorist” who reportedly posited, in a previous statement, that being a man or being a woman isn’t an “internal reality,” but rather “it’s actually a phenomenon that is being produced all the time… I know it’s controversial, but that’s my claim.”

Villanova University recently hosted a lecture during “LGBTQ Awareness Week” that was titled “Moving Beyond the Gender Binary: What We Need to Know About Gender Expression.”  The lecture reportedly “discussed the spectrum of gender and how individuals engage in different kinds of gender expression.”

Also, DePaul University’s LGBTQA Student Services office is piloting a service for “newly out students” to connect with student mentors.  In the application to sign up for the program, students can indicate gender neutral pronouns and express interest in activism.

And during the recent “Coming Out Closets” event at the University of Notre Dame, according to The Observer, “crowds of students” walked through a mock-doorway covered in rainbow banners to “‘come out of the closet’ as whatever they wished, in an attempt to spread a spirit of acceptance of personal identities across campus.”

Last year, The Observer reported on a panel discussion at Notre Dame at which Dr. Maureen Lafferty, who works at Notre Dame’s counseling center, said, “I think sometimes folks who identify as bi or experience the world as a both-and world can bring the perspective that perhaps love is not based on gender, that perhaps what we have in common is more important than what separates us and that things are complicated.”

Dr. Leroy Huizenga, associate professor of theology and chair of the theology department at the University of Mary, explained in an interview with the Newman Society what some proponents of the “gender spectrum” school apparently believe.

“Many people now believe that gender is separate from sex, that sex is a matter of raw biology [and] gender is a matter of fundamental identity rooted in one’s interior self-perception,” he said. “[In] this view, our embodied nature as male or female doesn’t matter. But the Christian view is that the body does matter.”

“We are bodies; they’re not mere shells or machines we inhabit,” said Huizenga. “And that’s not merely a matter of Scripture but a matter of nature and reason.”

Dr. Jeremy Holmes, assistant professor of theology at Wyoming Catholic College, expanded on this point. “People rebel at the idea that ‘mere’ biology can decide how we should live, because they do not see the biological realm as inherently meaningful,” he explained. “Why should having a female body involve a calling to motherhood? Why should having a male body involve a responsibility to family?”

“Scripture teaches in Genesis 1 and 2 that humans are made male and female, and that males and females are meant to join together in marriage for unitive and procreative reasons,” Huizenga added. “In Ephesians 5, St. Paul will also quote from Genesis 2 in affirming that male and female join together in marriage as a sacramental image of the Church.”

In the first chapter of Genesis, man and woman are commanded to “be fruitful and multiply.” Holmes explained that “just as their masculine and feminine bodies show that they are meant for one another, their bodies also show that they are meant to serve others, their children first and eventually the world-wide society founded on their procreative love.”

“The human spirit’s calling to community is made visible through the gendered body,” said Holmes.

“When our culture abandoned the idea of any ‘nature’ of the body, it also abandoned the idea that society is ‘natural,’” Holmes noted. “Individuals are seen as absolute, autonomous, while society is something artificial we make for the sake of convenience. Even the family, the most obviously natural society, goes out the window when the natural meaning of the body is lost,” Holmes said.

The complementarity of man and woman is being reinforced by Pope Francis and the Vatican, which is currently hosting an inter-faith conference on the complementarity of the sexes and the importance of marriage and the family.

According to the translation by Zenit, Pope Francis stated in the opening address for The Complementarity of Man and Woman: An International Colloquium that complementarity is a reflection of “the dynamic harmonies at the heart of all Creation.”

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The conference is running from November 17-19 and is sponsored by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The University of Mary and Wyoming Catholic College are recommended in The Newman Guide for their strong Catholic identity. The Cardinal Newman Society recently released the newest version of the Guide along with an innovative new “Recruit Me” program that allows students to sign up so recommended colleges can compete for them.

Reprinted with permission from The Cardinal Newman Society.