Abp. Cordileone: Gender Ideology Threatens Catholicism

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Speaking in Manhattan Wednesday at the Sacra Liturgia conference aimed at promoting the Traditional Latin Mass, San Francisco archbishop Salvatore Cordileone denounced "gender ideology" and its rise in popular culture, saying it threatens the Catholic faith.

"The clear biological fact is that a human being is born either male or female," said the archbishop. "Yet now we have the idea gaining acceptance that biological sex in one's personal gender identity can be at variance with each other, with more and more gender identities being invented."

Highlighting the absurdities behind gender ideology, Cordileone pointed out that some major universities have "a grand total of 14 different gender identities" that he believed would only expand as time went on.

Though not mentioning him by name, the talk was no doubt inspired by Bruce Jenner's calling himself a woman on the cover of Vanity Fair.

Moving beyond just being a mere culture warrior, the archbishop expanded his talk by warning, in the same vein as Pope Francis, that gender ideology means total destruction for the Catholic faith, because it undermines the biological reality of the God-given "complementarity" of the male-female relationship.

"God has used marriage as the primary sacred sign of a relationship with Him," he said. "God's marriage covenant with Israel is fulfilled in the Blood of Christ on the Cross, establishing the new and eternal covenant between Him, the bridegroom, and His Bride, the Church."

"When the culture can no longer apprehend those natural truths," he continued, "then the very foundation of our teaching evaporates, and nothing we have to offer will make sense."

Cordileone then cautioned that if this trend continued toward its final results, then we will revert back to a culture of "paganism of old, but with unique, postmodern variations on the theme, such as the practice of child sacrifice, the worship of feminine deities or the cult of priestesses."

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