Why Today’s Church Is Feckless Against Transgenderism 

As I write this, a “1 Million March 4 Children” against gender theory indoctrination is taking place in Canada. Whether a literal million people will march is yet to be seen, and whether it will have any effect is also not certain.

I must say, however, that I am a bit enthused that such a thing is taking place in Canada, given how my country has become the brunt of jokes the world over for our ridiculous Prime Minister and the legion of other ridiculous things that have taken place under his watchful eye. It seems like only 15 minutes ago that an activity such as a national march against the rainbow cause du jour would be anathema in Canadian public life, but here we are.

At any rate, as interesting and exciting as it is to see a resurgence of sanity in Canada, it is also a bit disheartening that the Catholic Church in Canada is largely—almost completely—radio silent on the issue of gender theory indoctrination in Canada. Of course, this event is not an officially Catholic event, and it was not organized with a Catholic intention. In fact, the roots of the event are inspired mainly by conservative Muslim parents and Evangelical Christian parents; a curious combination to say the least. 

However, given that ecumenism has been all the rage since Vatican II, and that Catholics have been force-fed a steady diet of syncretism and interfaith ceremonies, it would seem only natural that the Modern Catholic hierarchy in Canada would stand in “solidarity” with our idol-worshipping, heretical, and diabolically inspired “brothers and sisters.” 

Why can the Catholic bishops of Canada—so concerned with social issues—not stand hand in hand with imams and pastors as they soar on eagles’ wings and make a difference? After all, we are called to act with justice, to love tenderly, to serve one another, and to walk humbly with God. What better way to show that we shine with the joy and the love of the Lord and that we are called to be light for the kingdom, to live in the freedom of the city of God, than by doing so with our separated brethren? Okay, I promise I will stop with Gather Hymnal theology. Why can the Catholic bishops of Canada—so concerned with social issues—not stand hand in hand with imams and pastors as they soar on eagles’ wings and make a difference? Tweet This

All joking aside, the modern Church is utterly feckless against transgenderism and other anti-Catholic isms because of the dangerous isms that have animated the theological and philosophical landscape of the Church for decades.

Modernism has infected the Church’s intellectual life root and branch. As a result, the leadership is in no place to effectively combat the evils of our present culture, many of which have been at least tacitly facilitated by the philosophical and sociological direction of the Catholic intelligentsia. 

The synthesis of all heresies, Modernism is really a distillation of Modern/Enlightenment philosophy inspired by Descartes, Kant, and Hegel. There are others who could be mentioned, but these three are the biggest influences in my estimation.

Descartes gave us his cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am). Kant gave us his transcendental idealism which, with its unknowable noumena, denied the reality of essences as they had always been understood. And Hegel one-upped Kant and made the noumena evolutionary and dialectic, as if the substrate of reality was in a constant striving toward a richer and higher existence.

If it is the case that Modernism has infected all areas of the Church—which I think even a skeptic of the crisis would have to admit is true—then it is true that these philosophical errors have infected the theological atmosphere of the Church. Therefore, we ought to consider how these errors have given us the framework for transgenderism and how, as a result, the modern Church finds itself without the philosophical underpinnings to deal with the problem effectively.

Although some attest that Descartes died a faithful Catholic—I hope for his sake he did—it cannot be denied that his revolution in philosophy was really a revolution in that it turned everything around and discombobulated the whole enterprise. For Descartes, reality did not start with sensory data known from the exterior, as was the case for Aristotelians and Thomists; no, reality started in one’s thoughts. 

Just like we might expect to hear from Gen Z, “You were wrong Galileo, I am the center of the universe,” we might also hear something similar from Descartes. If reality begins in the mind, then it is very hard to see how we could validate reality from outside the mind. If “I think, therefore I am” is sufficient to prove that I, in fact, am, then we cannot escape the temptation to define reality as we see it in our mind.

Kant, picking up where Descartes left off, did not necessarily doubt the reality of external things—as is not uncommon for a Cartesian—but he did conclude that created things could not really be known the way even a child knows things. If there is no essence, then we cannot look at a flower and say it is a nice flower or that it smells good. We can only say, “Look at those things which appear to have the characteristic of what is called beauty and which seem to correspond to the image of what I perceive as flowers because they look like other things I perceive to be flowers.” 

Combining Descartes’ self-referential ontology and Kant’s concrete agnosticism, we can look at what has always been called a man, dressed like what has always been called a woman, speaking in a way that has always been thought to be gay, and only say, “This appears to me, in my own perceptive experience, to be what appears to be a creature with the characteristics that I subjectively associate with what is categorized as human, and who—if there really is a who—is adorned with clothing—well, what is called clothing by some—that corresponds to what is associated with what is called female humans by some; and since reality begins in the mind and there is no such thing as male or female or man or woman in the old sense, I must conclude—if I subjectively desire to do so—that this so-called person represents his or her—or whatever gender may or may not exist—self-referential perception of what he or she or it or not it, perceives as a female human.”

Perhaps you are laughing, or crying, or both, or maybe drinking. But, don’t laugh too hard, because as much as I write in jest, I could probably book a gig ghost-writing for Judith Butler with what you have just read.

Hegel took that insanity even further and proposed that not only is there a subjective nature to reality, and not only is there no such thing as an essence, but the substrate of reality is really a dialectic between thesis and antithesis, from whence we get the synthesis. This synthesis is a higher being or reality than what came before, and reality evolves continually to an unknown point of perfection which will come at some point, just ask Teilhard de Chardin—or his disciple Pope Francis.

With Hegel, we can say that transgenderism merely represents a state in reality where the thesis and anti-thesis of male and female have collided to give us the higher reality of Bruce Jenner and Dylan Mulvaney, not unlike how Budweiser took the thesis and antithesis of beer and water and gave us Bud Light. 

These insane ideas have imbibed Catholic thinking over the decades, even if the most extreme conclusions have been rejected.

But think: since the Council, the emphasis has been on man (Descartes), with a complete rejection and undermining of Thomas, which safeguarded against such thinking. It has been replaced by a non-scholastic modern philosophy (Kant). And the best attempt we have made at reconciling the Church with her past has been to propose a synthesis of the Modernism that has plagued the Church with the Tradition that made her (Hegel).

The reason the Church cannot fight this Cartesian-Kantian-Hegelian nightmare of transgender theory is that she has lost her traditional philosophical tools and therefore forgotten how to fight. Can you imagine a modern bishop—save for a few —standing up and saying triumphantly to the public, “It is utterly impossible to change genders due to the fact that this is manifestly impossible as per the norms of sound thinking and right reason, and for someone to adopt such an absurd conclusion would be a rejection of not only reality, but sanity itself.”

At best, we can expect some bishops to speak about the dignity of woman and how it is affronted, or the nature of gender found in biology, blah blah blah. But the problem is that modern Kantian-Man does not care about biology! Biology is but a social construct created by evil white men who believed that reality was real!

As it stands, there is no arguing with the gender-theory mob because the mob does not believe that arguing can lead to a true conclusion because true conclusions do not really exist. Therefore, there is only force, which Antifa and other gender-crazy mobs are happy to facilitate.

If there is any hope for a return of sanity to Catholic theology—and there is—then it must be found in the past. And the prelates of the Church must ensure that Catholics are reeducated, which is to say truly educated for the first time, with the Realism of Thomas and Aristotle. 

[Photo Credit: The Canadian Press]