Bishop Barron identifies gender ideology as an attack on marriage at USCCB assembly
Caroline MolloyBishop Robert Barron identified gender ideology and sex changes as fundamental attacks on marriage and the complementarity of the sexes established by God at the beginning of creation.
In a presentation given at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) plenary fall session this week in Baltimore, Bishop Barron said gender ideology today stands at the forefront of attacks on marriage, undermining the divine plan for man and woman and the human family.
Dubbing gender ideology a version of “self-invention” and “making oneself God,” Barron emphasized that human nature includes both body and soul, which both participate in the dignity inherent in our nature. He said it is through the body that we recognize that we are generated by our mother and father, and through the body that men and women are capable of generating other persons.
“Generation is both personal and embodied. This stands in contradistinction to attempts to obscure the connection in a dualistic way, or what St. Paul VI described as the separation of the unitive and procreative significances of the nuptial act.”
Human dignity within marriage, he argued, can be violated in two ways: First is the “desire for personal self-determination.”
Bishop Barron dubbed this “the age-old temptation to make oneself God, so characteristic of our time.”
“The second is the denial of sexual difference,” he continued.
