Pope continues to take a vocal stand against ‘gender theory’ that would ‘cancel humanity’

Mar 5, 2024 by Dave Doveton

By Elise Ann Allen, Catholic Herald.

The Pope has again criticised so-called gender theory, highlighting how it cancels humanity.

In an audience with participants in a March 1-2 conference titled “Man-Woman Image of God: For an Anthropology of Vocations”, the Pope says that the movement to deconstruct gender “cancels differences” and therefore “cancels humanity”.

When he was elected Successor of Peter in 2013, Pope Francis asked the pontifical academies to study the phenomenon of human trafficking, making the fight against it one of the first and most enduring hallmarks of his papacy. But as time has gone by during his papacy, it seems he has set his sights on gender theory as an even greater concern.

Francis has repeatedly condemned gender theory throughout his nearly 11-year reign, calling it at various junctures “ideological colonisation”, a “mistake in the human mind”, an expression of “frustration and resignation”, a “war on marriage”, and summing it up as “nefarious.”

At the start of the March conference, Francis said that the event held great importance “because today the ugliest danger is gender ideology, which cancels differences”.

“I asked that studies be done about this terrible ideology of our time, which cancels differences and makes everything the same,” he said, highlighting that to cancel differences is “to cancel humanity”.

He then, as he often has, referred to twentieth century novel Lord of the World by Robert Benson, an apocalyptical work centring on the reign of the antichrist, calling the book “prophetic, because it shows this tendency to cancel all differences”.

The two-day conference, which has drawn scholars, theologians, philosophers and other experts from around the world, was organised by the Center for Research and Anthropology of Vocations (CRAV), established in 2020 by Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect emeritus of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Bishops, who serves as its president and is widely considered to be a close papal aide.

Read here.