Just in time for Pride, the Vatican Congregation for Catholic Education released its statement, dated February 2, "'Male and Female He Created Them': Toward a Path of Dialogue on the Question of Gender Theory in Education." Timing is everything. The document, which adds nothing new to the decades-old conversation on gender, has gotten far more ink than is customary for reports emanating from such obscure corners of Rome.
My best guess is that this restatement of the Roman Catholic Church's rejection of a half century of development on human anthropology is simply a trial balloon. The real thing is allegedly forthcoming from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a weightier venue that will try one more time to present a bulwark against evolving understandings of gender, sex, and how good people live their lives.
University of Chicago legal scholar Mary Anne Case lays out the contours of the Vatican's long and increasingly damaging campaign in a well-researched, complex, and convincing article, "Trans Formations in the Vatican's War on 'Gender Ideology'".
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