by Robert Royal
The late American Catholic novelist Walker Percy once remarked that the contemporary vision of a human being is a brain connected to a pair of "genitals" (the actual term he used is a bit salty for the present site). There seems to be nothing in between for us. C.S. Lewis, another great Christian writer, called us "men without chests." Other things that once made us human – wisdom, courage, self-discipline, sacrifice, loyalty, above all love (the whole spectrum, not just sex) – barely have names among us any longer.
Just last week, for instance, we were treated to two comic dramas in the capital of the world's sole superpower. Naturally they involved sex. Lawyers argued before our Supreme Court that "trans" girls (i.e., boys) have the "right" to play girls' sports. When asked how to define "boy" or "girl," the high-priced legal mouthpieces suddenly became tongue-tied. In some circles, it's now self-evident (i.e., needs no explanation) that "gender" means something other than the "sex assigned at birth," a ridiculous phrase that suggests some nefarious power is seeking to pre-empt a baby's right to choose its sexual identity.
Similarly, in a Congressional hearing last week, Senator Josh Hawley asked Dr. Nisha Verma, an ob-gyn specialist, whether men can become pregnant. She, too, immediately went doolally. If she said yes, she well knew she would be stating what everyone not brain-damaged by gender ideology knows is false. If she said no, she was risking her career, not least from her woke-subservient colleagues in the medical profession. So she punted, suggesting that raising the question was "divisive."
Walker Percy, who was a medical doctor with a wicked Southern sense of humor, satirized what he foresaw as the coming collapse of medicine, law, and the whole culture. Which is why he once explained that he converted to Catholicism, because, "What else is there?
The Church is the living embodiment of a tradition of both the great ancient philosophical heritage as well as the metaphysical vision of the Old and New Testaments. She's the only institution in the Western world that still retains enough substance and sheer life – despite spectacular failures – to counteract the emptiness and nonsense around us.
If our leaders, that is, are up to the challenge. Which is urgent. It's not the Church's business to "make the world a better place." That's best left to former student council presidents and graduation speakers. Her business is much larger: to get us to Heaven. Yet there are many things needed in the meantime to put us on the right road.
Pope Leo, in a recent address to the Vatican diplomatic corps, struck a new and much-needed note that, unlike many papal speeches, pointedly responds to our current plight:
It is painful to see how, especially in the West, the space for genuine freedom of expression is rapidly shrinking. At the same time, a new Orwellian-style language is developing which, in an attempt to be increasingly inclusive, ends up excluding those who do not conform to the ideologies that are fueling it.
The excluded are, often and notably, Christians and other sane people.
But the pope went even further, explicitly criticizing abortion and even surrogacy: "By transforming gestation into a negotiable service, this violates the dignity both of the child, who is reduced to a 'product,' and of the mother, exploiting her body and the generative process, and distorting the original relational calling of the family."
So have our American bishops, along with the trans assault on the very notion of truth and falsehood. In November, the U.S. bishops voted overwhelmingly to ban "gender-affirming care" from Catholic hospitals. And good for them. Because much of the world is paralyzed by the false claim that failing to "affirm" the current social madness will lead to many suicides.
But we need a follow-up. We have a pro-life movement, various ministries to people with same-sex attraction. Where is the like s...
