Two documents on sex, gender and ideology from the Argentine Episcopal Conference

A document – the second in just a few weeks – on the themes of sexuality, gender and the so-called gender ideology, also in regard to the cultural and political debate going on in Argentina. It has been published by the Commissions on the Laity and the Family, for Catechesis and for Health Pastoral Care of the Argentine Episcopal Conference.

“Sex and gender – contemplates the document – are profoundly connected realities, but are not the same thing.  Christian experience helps us to safeguard and harmonise a person’s various dimensions”. Vice versa, “the so-called gender ideology distinguishes sex and gender, but separates them thus preventing a harmonious integration of the various aspects of the human person”.

If gender “is a useful category for cultural analysis, a way to understand reality”, the Magisterium of the Church, however, “realises the risk today of certain ideological positions which seek to impose themselves as a single thought.  Among these, the so-called ‘gender ideology, within which gender is thought of as the product of a multi-dimensional, fluid and self-constructed action, regardless of biology”.

In this context, “personal identity could be configured by starting from the autonomous, subjective desire of each person” and the Cristian vision cannot but reject such an ideology.

The document continues: “Therefore, we are convinced that Christian anthropology possesses an eminently valid potential for humanity to illumine the quest fo r truth and happiness”.

The text resumes and relaunches what has already been written by the Episcopal Commission for Education and the Commission for the Laity and the Family at the beginning of October.. In that case, it recalled that, after the lacerating debate on abortion over the past months, “sexual education is currently on the agenda of political, social, cultural and educative dialogue” in Argentina. For this reason, the Argentine Church has “realised that we need to start again with a sex education able to integrate all the dimensions of a person”. This is a task to which families, schools (and above all catholic schools) and all educational institutions are called.

To read the full documents: www.episcopado.org