Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Crux (with KofC dollars) pretends not to know what a woman is

Here's the headline at Crux (paid for by the Knights of Columbus, of which I am a proud 4th degree member):

Nun ministering to transgender women 
gets thumbs-up from Pope

There's just one problem: the individuals the nun is assisting are not women.

OK, so maybe don't focus on the headline; headlines have to be brief. So let's look at the body of the article. Surely at some point, this publication will explain that "trangender woman" means a man who believes himself to be a woman, and presents himself to the world as such.

No -- in fact, neither the world "men" or "male" ever appears in the article. But women appears a lot.

Just to be crystal clear: the issue isn't the nun, or the pope. (Indeed, the pope, with somewhat convoluted language, actually makes a little clearer what Crux cannot bring itself to clarify.) I'm not objecting to the nun helping these individuals; she seems to be doing wonderful things.

And, this doesn't have to be handled in a heavy-handed way. Here's what you do:

- Put "transgender women" in quotes whenever used. And use that term sparingly.
- Explain early on what this term means, perhaps as I did, above.
- If you don't want to refer to these individuals as males or men in subsequent references (admittedly, it can be confusing or cumbersome), then refer to them as "individuals" or "people" or "the group" or "the participants in the program."

Look: I understand that our society is marching along in this fools' parade, embracing a lie about basic biology, because that's what compassion supposedly requires. But tell me why a Catholic publication needs to go along with that? Why do the Knights of Columbus need to pay for it?

To put it another way: if Catholics start participating in the lie, what hope does truth have?

8 comments:

Paul Stratman said...

If you honestly think that the KofC is an orthodox group, you need to revisit your participation.

Fr Martin Fox said...

Paul:

I am unaware of the Knights of Columbus, as an international group, is not orthodox. If you have an accusation to make, then please make it (or point to it). But if you are a Catholic, you know it is very serious business to make accusations that cannot be supported, so I will insist you be prepared to back it up; or that whoever you point to, is similarly able to back it up.

If not, then no, I don't give credence to claims that someone is not orthodox, if that claim isn't supported. That's fair, isn't it?

Catholic Left-winger said...

A number of years ago, I visited my friend's parish and met someone who had had a sex-change. It turned out that, when "he" had started treatment, it was discovered that "he" had persistent Müllerian duct syndrome (PMDS). In other words, born with full functioning external male genitalia and internal functioning female reproductive organs. I have to say, when she told me that being referred to in the neutral "they" was truly painful as God hadn't made that choice in "their" case and that "she" was as appropriate as "he", I struggled to argue. It was on the few times when I will say she of someone in this position because, honestly, I doubt it would be fair to do anything else.
Bare in mind, I hate the whole transgender agenda.

Fr Martin Fox said...

Catholic Left-winger:

There are extremely, extremely rare cases where individuals are born with both male and female genitalia, and so obviously this has to be addressed. This does not call into question the reality of humanity being organized around male and female, which of course is reflected in both the animal and plant kingdom.

TJM said...

Fr. Fox,

I was at a relative's wedding yesterday and experienced something that was very disturbing, not only to me, but many in attendance. A young woman chose to wear a tuxedo yet was considered part of the bridesmaid side of the wedding party. She walked down the aisle in the tuxedo with one of the groomsmen. I did not inquire because of my respect for the bride and groom's family.But should the pastor, if he was aware that this was to occur, forbad this?

Fr Martin Fox said...

TJM:

(Sigh...)

I haven't really dealt with anything like that yet. At least, I don't think what I've dealt with, would count...

Some time back, I had a bride who had a man as his attendant. To be clear, there is absolutely no rule against it. All the ritual says is that the couple shall have two witnesses. Without looking it up at the moment, I'm pretty sure nothing says it must be one male, one female. It says, two witnesses.

Which makes sense: if a couple wants to marry, and is otherwise qualified, why should it matter to Mother Church? It only takes an ordained minister (bishop, priest or deacon), the couple, and two witnesses. And if clergy are for some reason unavailable, even that can be dispensed.

Back to my situation. I said to the couple, that's fine, but let's not have anything cute in the procession. They agreed. I can't recall just how we did it, but there was no funny business.

Approaching it from another angle. I've had many situations where there were more bridesmaids than groomsmen, so you end up with uneven "pairings" in order to get everyone in place. One guy with two girls, or a girl walking alone, etc. Again, I can't really see anything wrong with that, if no cuteness.

So, back to your question. Is there any rule saying a bridesmaid can't wear a tux? No, there really isn't. And, you know what? I've never asked what the bridesmaids and groomsmen will be wearing. So that means I find out about an hour before the wedding.

Maybe one of these days, at T-minus 60 minutes, I'll discover one of the groomsmen in a low cut dress, or a bridesmaid in a tux. And then I'll have to figure out what to do.

TJM said...

Father Fox,

Thanks for your good humor and commonsense!

rcg said...

It could have been a low cut backless, shear number that looks as if it is about to fall off. I guess a tux is better than that....