Editor ' s Note
SUMMER 2017
During a visit to Poland in July 2016 , Pope Francis met with the Polish Bishops and answered a variety of questions confronting the Church in Europe and around the world . Commenting on the situation faced by many countries today , the pope commented :
In Europe , America , Latin America , Africa , and in some countries of Asia , there are genuine forms of ideological colonization taking place . And one of these - I will call it clearly by its name - is [ the ideology of ] “ gender ”. Today children - children ! - are taught in school that everyone can choose his or her sex . Why are they teaching this ? Because the books are provided by the persons and institutions that give you money . These forms of ideological colonization are also supported by influential countries . And this terrible !
This was not the first time that the pope had waded into one of the most controversial topics of our time . In a 2015 book , Pope Francis : This Economy Kills , written by Italian journalists Andrea Tornielli and Giacomo Galeazzi , the pontiff gave an interview with the authors in which he noted the crisis of gender ideology and compared it to the threat of nuclear weapons . “ Let ' s think of the nuclear arms , of the possibility to annihilate in a few instants a very high number of human beings ,” Francis warned . “ Let ' s think also of genetic manipulation , of the manipulation of life , or of the gender theory , that does not recognize the order of creation . With this attitude , man commits a new sin , that against God the Creator . The true custody of creation does not have anything to do with the ideologies that consider man like an accident , like a problem to eliminate . God has placed man and woman and the summit of creation and has entrusted them with the earth . The design of the Creator is written in nature .”
The human person - made in the image and likeness of God - has emerged as one of the most urgent battlefields of ideas in modern culture . As Pope Francis notes , not only is the obliteration of the proper understanding of the created person now a common objective in the developed countries of the West , it is now also being imposed as part of a wider campaign that he terms “ ideological colonization ” along with abortion , contraception , the destruction of authentic marriage and euthanasia . Countries in need of genuine economic and social developments are finding increasingly that aid and support from many NGOs and western nations are contingent upon the acceptance programs and ideologies antithetical to the family and to the dignity of the human person . Gender theory has now taken its place in that growing list of imposed concepts .
As gender ideology is accepted and imposed with mounting vehemence by media , political , and social institutions , it is even more essential to deepen our understanding of its key concepts .