Not even the ones who seem nice and kindly. They’ve all got a dogma driving them. Pope Francis has said some stupid things, as the Daily Wire gleefully reports.
“Gender ideology, today, is one of the most dangerous ideological colonizations,” Francis said. “Why is it dangerous? Because it blurs differences and the value of men and women. All humanity is the tension of differences. It is to grow through the tension of differences. The question of gender is diluting the differences and making the world the same, all dull, all alike, and that is contrary to the human vocation.”
What is “gender ideology”? Because, near as I can tell, it’s simply that all people are of equal worth, no matter what their sex or gender or sexual preferences. Gender is not an ideology. It’s just who people are.
He thinks it’s dangerous because it blurs the differences and value of men and women. I think men and women are of equal value, so “blurring” doesn’t matter. What differences in value is he concerned about? Also, I’m not seeing any blurring of differences, I’m seeing a celebration of differences, where people with non-mainstream ideas are being allowed to flourish.
What are these “tensions” he’s talking about, and how does the “question of gender” (what question?) dilute them? Diminishing differences, requiring everyone to fit into one of precisely two molds, is what would make the world dull and all alike. Would it make the world less dull if we told all the florists you’re only allowed red roses and white lilies? It would certainly increase some tensions.
Also, a Catholic pope does not get to complain about ideological colonization. Catholicism is definitely an ideology, unlike gender, and has been on a campaign of forced ideological conversion for over a thousand years. It’s ironic to complain about “ideological conversion”, but I guess that only applies to imaginary ideologies he doesn’t like.
I always listen to opinions and take advice from Catholic leaders on issues involving sex and/or gender, because we know Catholics are never ever the least bit screwed up when it comes to that stuff.
Always good to remember that this Pope hired an Opus Dei-affiliated Fox News correspondent to be his PR head.
Ah, but all are equal in God’s eyes.
But, the preferred are just a lot more equal.
I’ll turn to the pope for advice, if I ever need to hide a bunch of child rapists from the public while feeding them a steady stream of new victims! It’s obviously what they do best.
I believe that “gender ideology” and other uses of “ideology” are a new way authoritarian conservatives are trying to belittle anything they don’t like. I believe I’ve heard DeSantis, F**cker Carlson, and similar twits using the word in this punching down kind of way. Oddly they are all intense ideologues complaining about other people’s ideologies…pots, kettles, black.
Shorter Pope: Trans people are why Pride parades are so dull.
Their clothes need to have more glitter and bigger hats, like mine.
Now, how quickly will liberals whitewash this news?
Um…dude, trans people are getting bashed on for NOT being the same as the rest of us! Seriously, where does he get this “all dull, all the same” rubbish? Does anyone, of any ideological persuasion, ever go to a Pride parade and think “OMG these people all look the same, they’re all so blah, and they want everyone else to look like them!”?
Pope Francis has said a lot of stupid things, but this just might be his stoopidest utterance yet. Maybe not his most harmful, but definitely his stoopidest.
Also, didn’t reactionary sexists like the Pope and other Christian church “leaders” also say exactly the same thing about (cis) women advocating equal legal rights to men? I certainly remember quite a few men complaining about how those nasty ugly feminists were trying to make women and men the same — “all dull, all the same” — instead of celebrating the wunnerful God-given differences between women and men. So, um…good on them for recycling their toxic waste, I guess…?
I was watching some glam rock videos from the early seventies this morning — Mott the Hoople, Sweet, Queen, etc. — and I couldn’t help thinking that the glam rock era would never have been allowed to happen in the conservative America of today. DeSantis would have been firing teachers for daring to mention the existence of these bands in school.
Also, the buzzword-leaden statement very strongly implies the Pope really has no clue what he’s talking about, and may in fact have been given those lines by someone else. What is “gender ideology?” Does anyone in the Vat have any actual useful definition in mind? And how is it a “colonization?” Is that just the latest meaningless general-use epithet, like “Communism” used to be?
@Raging Bee: “Someone else” like a former Fox News correspondent? See @2.
Isolated old man says uninformed thing…film at 11! Also, it’s only ok for the clergy to wear dresses, not you other people!
Of course, transvestmentism has been a common practice for thousands of years…!
He must mean the sort of thing “gender-critical feminists” come out with :-p
So that is what a word salad from and educated supposedly intelligent person sounds like.
I wonder how many philosophies, ideologies, and/or religions are desperate, convoluted methods men create for getting out of doing the dishes?
Frank was elected to his Pope job on this day, March 13th, in 2013. So I guess this is his 20th Pope-versary message. He was a lot of first: first Franciscan pope, first pope from the Americas, and first from the southern hemisphere. Otherwise, same ol’ same ol’.
Ah, you young’uns should’ve heard the more ancient popes, who decried women in slacks and then later, women in miniskirts and utterly ignore priests diddling altar boys.
As a hint, my father was born in 1930 and he knew about altar boy abuse by priests, being ancient news to him.
This is absolutely tame in comparison, while still much the same (although slightly less tired of a retread) ancient argument. As I recall, the pope also decried The Jitterbug dance.
Of course, in really ancient times, priests were allowed to marry and have kids. But, laws changed and importantly, inheritance laws changed, with questions being asked as to would inherit parish churches and cathedrals, so suddenly women and marriage became evil.
Three points:
Religious thinkers, no matter how innately intelligent, become intellectually handicapped so long as they hold on to their faith — as demonstrated here by Francis. Francis’ idea here is so poorly conceived, it remains very incoherent…but I don’t think he is this stupid of a person.
Theology is nothing more than a specific form of propaganda — it’s the reason Goebbel’s was obsessed with so-called “religious philosophy” throughout his life (okay…kinda sorta Godwin’s Law, but still an informative comparison to remember whenever the Pope speaks).
Theology is the art of “opening one’s mouth and removing all doubt” i.e. that the speaker is in fact giving support to a very stupid notion.
What an odd statement from the supposedly celibate man who cross dresses on the regular.
Biology is not an ideology, nor is the fact that people come in more than two genders a dangerous blurring.
Glam rock. Sweet
I’m frequently pointing out to modern kids that the AWESOME music of the 60s and 70s was full of gender-bending artists, besides David Bowie. Even white-bread mainstream groups like The Osmond Brothers dressed in satin, rhinestones, and capes for live performances.
I wonder if sir pope ever watched the Sweet video for Ballroom Blitz? I feel he would get his mitre in a bunch the second he saw Steve Priest.
Ready Steve? uh-huh
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z_jdiU47bFA
@9. Raging Bee :
Pedantry but its reusing not recycling. Recycling would be breaking that down and remaking it into somethi9ng useful rather than just using the ame tired old lie against another group of people.
“Gender ideology” coming from the same peopel that gave us “the Gay agenda” i.e. scary buzzwords used to punch down on already marginalised and stigmatised others.
“All humanity is the tension of differences.”
God forbid (literally) that we “all get along”, in the immortal words of Rodney King.
Why do people do this? “recycling” clearly works far better in this context than “reusing”.
An obvious counterexample: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=recycled%20air
I encountered a couple of Nazis (literally, per the flyer they handed me) harassing the local Story Time with Miss Angel and told them that Jesus wore a dress. All they could do is stammer “Jesus wore a dress?” and cluelessly blabber about “deviants”.
Is flamboyant a gender?
“Also, a Catholic pope does not get to complain about ideological colonization.”
Amen! (pun intended)
@11 Raging Bee
“Also, the buzzword-leaden statement very strongly implies the Pope really has no clue what he’s talking about, and may in fact have been given those lines by someone else.”
Yes, obviously. And I like your adjective phrase, which may be a typo, or may be intended, but it certainly is a “leaden” statement.
And nobody did shiny & sparkly like the country & western acts in the 1960s. I think there was even makeup on some of those guys, not to mention enough hair gel to fuel a bonfire.
Well, it is a law: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison
involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”
“He must mean the sort of thing “gender-critical feminists” come out with :-p”
Yup:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_views_on_transgender_topics
You’re on the wrong bus.
AFAICT, “gender ideology”, as used by people like Insantis, means any idea about gender other than that there are two, and they’re immutable. I.E. it’s not so much about equal rights as about trans-bashing, which is really the fashion of the day for fascists.
On the other hand, I find this definition:
which also seems on point.
specialffrog @ # 2: … this Pope hired an Opus Dei-affiliated Fox News correspondent to be his PR head.
Note that Francis also fired Greg Burke in 2018.
@23: Yeah, “tension of differences” is another meaningless fuzzphrase. Whatever it means (assuming the people using it even have a clue about that), why can’t trans people be part of it?
It’s almost like some hardcore bigots told the Pope what he had to say, and the Pope is trying to say it in the most hazy meaningless way possible. Or perhaps he knows it’s bigoted rubbish, but the bigots are too entrenched to call out, so he’s trying to make their party line sound ridiculous instead. Okay, those guesses just used up my week’s ration of Christian charity, so maybe Pope Smirky is just another bigoted fool who really doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Re: my @ 32 – And Greg Burke joined the Vatican flak corps under Benny Hex, not Francis the First.
“Catholicism is definitely an ideology, unlike gender, and has been on a campaign of forced ideological conversion for over a thousand years.”
Unusually for deep historical events, we can actually point to the precise year Christianity switched from suppressed/barely tolerated to aggressively expansionist, and that is the year 312. It took a few years until Constantine had accumulated enough power to start actively persecuting non-Christians, but this was the moment it changed.
7&30 Jim- I could be wrong, but I think Akira is talking about liberal Catholics making excuses for Francis’ regressive statement.
Me, I’d trust a Pope to shit in the woods.
…
Oh, wait. To be Catholic. Right.
Has anyone figured out what is wrong with Jim Balter?
@ ^ John Morales :“Me, I’d trust a Pope to shit in the woods.”
I imagine it would be rather a scandal if he publicly did that – at least now! mental image evoked ala the famous Bridesmaids movie scene.. But given the surrounding bodyguards, staff, followers etc .. can’t see it happening. As for him being Catholic, well as usual it depends which sect you ask. pretty sure there are some (Mel Gibsons one?) that dispute it and demand an even more regressive backwards or slightly doctrinally different faith. That this Francis is consdiered a relative mdoerate shows how appalling bad this overgrown cult is.
@24. Jim Balter : Hmm.. Yes. Recycled air is a counter-example and I guess there are others but re-using still makes more sense to me here because its the same bad “argument / line” being used again rather than transformed into something different. Big fan of the 3 r’s (Reduce, re-use, recycle) here myself.
@21. Tethys : “What an odd statement from the supposedly celibate man who cross dresses on the regular.”
Cross dresses? I see what you did there and I like it! Dresses with crosses and wish history would cross them all out. (Peacefully by changing minds that is.)
chigau, I haven’t even figured out why some people think there’s something wrong with Jim Balter.
Something only an ignoramus would essay. That’s not how it is.
He’s the fucking Pope. Boss dude. Papal infallibility.
Anyone calling themselves Roman Catholic have by their adult years made oaths and affirmed credos granting the Church Pope supreme status. Vows made.
Anyone and anything that disputes the Pope on matters of faith and dogma is perforce a heretic. And, back in the day, when Popes had power, heretics did not fare well.
Anyway. Catholicism. The one and only True Faith, handed down from the very Apostles and continuing on for a couple of millennia so far.
No sects. Only dogma and the teachings of the Vatican.
Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dicastery_for_the_Doctrine_of_the_Faith
PS
You like the implicit gender essentialism? OK.
(Perhaps consider why cross-dressing is even a thing)
They do too. Quite explicit, really.
https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccatheduc/documents/rc_con_ccatheduc_doc_20190202_maschio-e-femmina_en.pdf
@38 Be sure to let me know if you do.
@36
a) Akira often bashes liberals.
b) I take the statement to refer to the generally positive attitude of liberals toward Francis because of his relatively liberal stances on several issues. A description from someone who opposes those stances: https://www.amazon.com/Political-Pope-Delighting-Abandoning-Conservatives/dp/1455570168 “Francis is the first pope to approve of adultery, flirt with proposals to bless gay marriages and cohabitation, tell atheists not to convert, tell Catholics to not breed “like rabbits,” praise the Koran, support a secularized Europe, and celebrate Martin Luther.”
@39 As long as we’re pedantically belaboring this: “reuse” doesn’t go with “toxic waste”. If you’re going to substitute “reuse” for “recycle” then you have to replace the entire quip. The underlying point here being that such quips are meant to be humorous rather than precise uses of language and aren’t sensible targets for such pedantry.
@39, Mel Gibson? My G2 shows him as a member of Opus Dei, so yeah, he’d likely consider the Pope not Catholic enough. And even money, he’d find Jesus was too Jewish or something.
I’ve saw several ways in which idiocy gets reused, a retread (just a new sticker, such as the anti-gays in the military arguments being verbatim arguments against desegregating the military), recycled (idea is at least updated to not be verbatim, even if tired, worn out and disproved and reused in like new condition, thoroughly updated and retooled for the new victim at hand.
It’s rare to see the outrage machine produce a brand new product.
I saw a truck tire retread tire come apart once, delaminated and flew over the center highway divider, straight into the windshield of an oncoming car in front of me. Destroyed the windshield, damaged the hood and roof and while the car was badly damaged, no multiple care wreck occurred. A relief to me, as I was right behind him. Retread arguments, well, they just turn instantly into a wreck on a wreck. Total Acme dynamite kit level self destruction with just a few words.
The messiest recycle event: Russian antisemites recycled a French forgery originally aimed at freemasons. The new old forgery was read by a failed artist in Vienna.
The stupidest recycling: Scientology recycled the “evil spirits trapped underground” idea dreamed up by madame Blavatsky.
chrislawson @ #35, for anyone interested in the topic, I’m reading There Is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ: Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire:
My progress is slow since other books keep intervening, but it’s fascinating. (For a less academic and more polemical take, there’s also Catherine Nixey’s The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World.)
“Gender ideology” really is the prescriptive conjecture that there are only two sexes (and only two corresponding genders) that are fixed at conception and determine someone’s role and value in society. This obviously false and damaging ideology is spread mostly (though not exclusively) by white conservative cishet men as a means and an end in controlling other people’s hearts and minds. It is pseudoscience at best and plain evil at worst.
@49 You’re right. TERFs are a small fraction of feminists and an even smaller fraction of the whole population who promote the hateful ideology and so it’s a distortion to call out any sort of feminist on this. Mea culpa.