By Nicholas de Cardenas

Madrid, Spain, November 21, 2024 / 08:00

Marta Rodríguez Díaz, a Catholic expert on gender ideology, said that rather than combating gender ideology, the Catholic Church’s mission is to “seek to shine light in the darkness” and offer a critical dialogue.

Rodríguez also stressed that “if the Church is not credible today in terms of gender, it is not for lack of having much to say but because there is a lack of educators who know how to convey their message globally and precisely. .”

Rodríguez was chosen by the Spanish Episcopal Conference to train diocesan delegates in family and life ministry on the challenge that the issue of gender ideology represents for the Catholic Church.

She holds a doctorate in philosophy from the Pontifical Gregorian University and is a professor in the philosophy department of the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum. She is also the academic area coordinator of the Institute for Women’s Studies.

Rodríguez is also the academic director of the course on gender, sex and education at the Francisco de Vitoria University in collaboration with the Regina Apostolorum and was part of the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life.

She recently spoke with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, about gender ideology, Catholic anthropology and its connection to today’s culture.

ACI Prensa: How should the Church combat gender ideology?

Rodriguez: I don’t know if I like the word “battle”… I think the mission of the Church is to be light and to seek to shine light into the darkness. Being light means proposing the whole truth about the human being, educating and also warning and reporting ideas that contradict the dignity of the person or that do not help them achieve their fullness.

Personally, I would prefer that we, as a Church, devote ourselves more to a dialogue capable of seriously addressing the ideologies of our time rather than to total denunciations that only those who already think like us understand.

Depending on the data you offer, pastoral workers either have a vague understanding of Catholic teaching on the subject, or do not know it or do not understand it at all. What steps should be taken to reverse this situation?

Training, training, training. It is necessary to provide training in Christian anthropology. My experience is that pastoral agents have insufficient knowledge of it and are not capable of offering it in all its beauty and depth. Furthermore, it is necessary to provide training in moral theology so that they know how to discern the appropriate pastoral applications in each case, without blurring the truth about the (human) person. It is also necessary to offer training in a pastoral style that connects with the postmodern world and offers the eternal beauty of the Gospel in a language understandable to today’s world.

I think that if the Church is not credible today on gender issues, it is not because it does not have much to say but because there is a lack of trainers who know how to transmit its message in a global and precise manner.

There is a crisis in the family, in which the roles of men and women are confused. Is this a major cause of confusion among young people on the question of gender? What other elements are pushing in this direction?

Clearly, the crisis of femininity and masculinity that we are experiencing has a very strong impact on young people. Without attractive role models, it is difficult to complete the process of identifying with one’s own gender, necessary during adolescence. Added to this is the crisis of the family itself: many dysfunctional families, with absent fathers and mothers.

Media, social media and movies certainly also have an influence, because they so clearly emphasize a single message. In short, I think that children today are bombarded with ideas that confuse them and that they have no solid points of reference to guide them.

You say that knowing things haven’t been done well so far is “liberating.” In what sense?

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In the sense that it makes us see what depends on us and where we can improve our speech to be more credible. Personally, I am very worried when it is said that the cause of all the confusion among young people comes from social networks, the media, laws… because all this is true, but it is also true that it does not seem let that be the case. will change in the coming years.

But if, at the same time as we recognize the impact of all these external elements, we recognize that as a Church we have not always been up to the task; that we have not been able to offer the message with the depth and beauty that our times demand… then we have things that depend on us, and which allow us to hope that the landscape can, indeed, improve.

You list some risks in the educational field. What do you mean by “scientifically untested medical practices?” »

(I’m referring to) hormonal treatments for children and adolescents. I’m not a doctor, but many doctors and psychologists have raised serious objections to this type of practice. In other countries we are going backwards, but in Spain we continue to experiment.

You assert that “it is not necessary to declare war on the term ‘gender’: it is possible to approach it critically.” What part of this speech is acceptable according to the magisterium of the Church?

The problem is not the term gender but the anthropology from which it is inspired. Amoris Laetitia No. 56 states that “gender and sex can be distinguished, but they cannot be separated.” The same thing is said in Male and Female, He created them at numbers 6 and 11. And Dignitas Infinita repeats this statement. I believe that the consolidated trend of the magisterium in recent years has been to stop declaring war on the term and to engage in critical dialogue with what I call “theories of gender.”

Gender is the cultural development or interpretation of sex. It is right to distinguish it from sex, but not to separate it from it.

What makes this era different from others in terms of cultural change and the distance between generations that makes dialogue on these issues so difficult?

I think the difficulty lies in what Pope Francis calls “a change of era”. Culture is always evolving, but there are times in history when a true change of era occurs. It is a moment of rupture, where time “changes its skin” and where a deeper adaptation of language, perspective and vision is necessary.

Veritatis Gaudium recognizes that “we still lack the culture necessary to face this crisis; we lack leaders capable of embarking on new paths. It is about learning to offer the beauty of Christ and man in a postmodern world. This requires a new prophetic word.

How can we reconcile the reception of the wounded by gender ideology as the Good Samaritan would do, with the proclamation of the anthropological truth of the creation of man and woman as the image of God and what follows from this affirmation?

In Jesus, there is no contradiction between truth and charity. The same Jesus who proclaims the Sermon on the Mount and says that adultery begins in the heart lifts up the adulterous woman.

Affirming that sex is a constitutive reality of the person and that it permeates the body and the soul does not contradict the recognition that identity in the psychological sense is bio-psycho-social and that the person has the task of integrating different elements: body, psyche, culture…

You can say that I was born a woman, but at the same time I must become a woman. This process is not simple, and even less so today. I believe that everyone’s experience must be seriously taken into consideration.

Christian anthropology is not a theoretical truth that we have to throw at people… If we believe that we are well created (by God), we know that the truth is in each of us and we can recognize it in the aspirations of our heart.

Perhaps the task of the Christian companion is to walk with people as Jesus did with the disciples (going to) Emmaus, helping them enrich the grammar with which they interpret their story. If we believe that “the truth sets us free,” then perhaps we need a lot of patience and love to accompany people to be more and more authentically themselves.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It was translated and adapted by CNA.

Nicolás de Cárdenas has been ACI Prensa correspondent in Spain since July 2022. During his career as a journalist, he has specialized in socio-religious topics and has also worked for local and international civil associations.