Pope Francis has been heavily criticized for slamming transgender people such as Caitlyn Jenner, and he has urged followers of the Catholic Church to value their “own body for its femininity or masculinity.”
The view of Pope Francis on the topic of the transgender community has come as something of a shock for some who regard the pontiff as a very progressive and liberal Vatican boss.
The Express reports that Pope Francis made his damning remarks behind closed doors in a top secret Vatican meeting. In a heated discussion with a gang of bishops, the pope apparently expressed his dismay at the growing acceptance of transgender people and called such a trend “terrible.”
The perturbed pontiff also hit out at the growing number of children being taught about transgender choice, and he slammed such educational policies as “unhealthy.”
The pope described the process of a man becoming a woman or a woman becoming a man as the means which enabled the “annihilation of man as an image of God.”
“Today, in schools they are teaching this to children — to children! — that everyone can choose their gender.
“And why do they teach this? Because the books come from those people and institutions who give money.”
Pope Francis’s predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, who retired in 2013, was also very vocal about the transgender community and described transgender surgery as “the epoch of sin against God the Creator.”
“God created man and woman, God created the world this way, this way, this way, and we are doing the opposite.”
Earlier this year, Pope Francis stated that young people should learn to accept the bodies they were born with and be happy with the way they were created.
Although Pope Francis is still a fierce critic of divorce and same-sex marriage, when once asked about his views on homosexuality, the pontiff simply replied, “Who am I to judge?”
Perhaps the most famous transgender personality of our time is Caitlyn Jenner. When she first appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair in a breast-enhancing swimsuit, the former American athlete known as Bruce was applauded for her bravery and received tweets of congratulations from U.S. President Barack Obama.
Triumphant headlines across the world informed us that Caitlyn had posed in a corset, complete with hair extensions and a chest enhanced by hormone pills, because the 65-year-old grandfather wanted to “debut her new identity.”
At first glance, Jenner’s new identity as Caitlyn Jenner appeared pretty much standard for any celebrity in the modern age – photoshopped, manipulatively posed, and boosted by silicone — in other words, unreal.
Yet, many feared that when the applause died down and the glare of the spotlight moved on, Caitlyn would regret the sex change and grow to hate the narcissistic nature of a culture that so publicly promoted, used, and profited from it.
A few lone voices in the wilderness struck a bum note amongst the manic applause for Caitlyn Jenner. One was Matt Walsh of the Blaze, who wrote that Caitlyn most closely resembled a “mentally disordered man who is being manipulated by disingenuous liberals and self-obsessed gay activists.”
“The idea is to make the 65-year-old grandfather look like a college girl, but the effect is that he looks like a distorted version of neither.
“Far from having the appearance of a genuine woman, he reminds me of someone who is being abandoned to his delusions by a culture of narcissistic imbeciles. I feel a great deal of compassion when I gaze upon this tragic sight.”
As Walsh pointed out, “We’re talking about sex change like it’s an Apple product.”
And therein lies the biggest problem of all.
In the Spectator, Brendan O’Neil penned a piece titled “Call me Caitlyn or else: the rise of authoritarian transgender politics,” in which he described how people are supposed to bow down before Caitlyn Jenner because she had become a “Virgin Mary with testicles.”
“It’s an image we’re all expected to bow down to, whose essential truth we must imbibe; an image you question or ridicule at your peril, with those who refuse to genuflect before it facing excommunication from polite society
“There is a palpable religiosity to the wild hailing of Bruce/Caitlyn as a modern-day saint, a Virgin Mary with testicles.
“A writer for the Guardian describes Caitlyn as a ‘queen’ and instructs us to ‘bow down, bitches’, telling us her icon on the front of Vanity Fair is ‘life-affirming’. Treating Caitlyn as a kind of Christ figure, only in a push-up bra rather than smock, Ellen DeGeneres says this goddess brings ‘hope for the world’, and we should all try to be ‘as brave as Caitlyn’. Susan Sarandon celebrated Bruce/Caitlyn’s mysterious ‘rebirth’ while Demi Moore thanked him/her for sharing with humanity ‘the gift of your beautiful authentic self’.”
Although Pope Francis may appear to be seemingly intolerant of the transgender community, he once threw open the doors of the Vatican for a private audience with a transsexual man once dubbed the “devil’s daughter” by a Spanish priest.
As the Inquisitr reported in 2015, “Diego Neria Lejárraga, was born a woman, but since then, the 48-year-old has undergone sex reassignment surgery to become a man.”
“Last year, Diego wrote to Pope Francis explaining he felt like an outcast from the church, and how he was rejected by some his fellow parishioners at his church in the western Spanish city of Plasencia, where a priest denounced him as ‘the devil’s daughter.’
“In a landmark gesture of acceptance by a pope, Francis, who is renowned for his moderate tone on homosexuality, rang Diego on Christmas Eve and invited Mr. Lejárraga and his female fiancee to the Vatican for a private audience.”
Obviously, individual choice is an individual’s choice, but when others are asked to recognize it as something holy, it can cause a problem, especially if you’re the head of the Catholic Church and they call you the pontiff.
[Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images]
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