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Archdiocese of Denver
XXX STATE OF THE ISSUE
The good news of the Gospel communicates true freedom through the love of
God, the love that has made us in his image and likeness and which remakes us
through adoption as sons and daughters of the Father. Truly, it is only in Jesus
Christ that we can understand our true identity and realize it through the grace
that comes from his Cross and Resurrection.
2
Christ reveals the splendor of the
human person to us.
Many people today, however, experience confusion related to life's meaning
and purpose, especially as related to their own identity. This personal experience
relates to a long trajectory of cultural change and secularization of society. West-
ern culture, for instance, has very quickly abandoned traditional understandings
of sexuality and has embraced an ideology that presents human sexuality as
non-binary (not confined to male and female) and "gender" as fluid. This ideol-
ogy now permeates our media, entertainment, politics, law, and education, and
is being promoted and advocated for in unprecedented manners. Characterized
by its proponents as an altruistic movement to be compassionate, loving, and
inclusive, the ideology is one that through incomplete and agenda-driven medi-
cine and psychology has disregarded sound medical and psychological protocols
which exist to protect people from undue medical and psychological harm.
The Church stands against this new ideology of human sexuality out of its
concern for the true good of the human person. The Church's task is to help
people to understand their true dignity and, even amid suffering and confusion,
to come to accept it with the help of God's grace. The National Catholic Bio-
ethics Center, for instance, explains why the Church must continue to commu-
nicate the truth in love:
Human persons act against their own good when they directly intend what is
contrary to their own nature, purpose, and identity and thereby impair their
flourishing. An act that is incapable of being ordered to the good of the per-
son will not bring about individual flourishing: under no circumstances can it
be consonant with the person's genuine fulfillment.
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2 See Gaudium et Spes (1965), 22, "The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word
does the mystery of man take on light."
3 See National Catholic Bioethics Center, "Brief Statement on Transgenderism" (Feb. 22, 2017),
https://www.ncbcenter.org/resources/news/ncbcs-brief-statement-transgenderism/.
