The world is on fire, fascism is rising, and your god is dead.
ETA: I actually personally left the Catholic Church over their stance on trans people. I had had other issues for a long time, and was firmly pro abortion, gay marriage, and female priesthood, but those were things I thought I might see them come around on. But then I got to trying to figure out why I was so damn miserable. Long story of self discovery later I learned I’m trans and that the psychological agony I’d been in my entire pubescent life was gender dysphoria and that’s why nothing was fixing it. The Catholic Church’s stance was that I either accept easily curable pain for the rest of my life that has little downside or a loving god will punish me forever when I die. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I took a year off of Christianity to cleanse my palate as I transitioned expecting to go episcopal or Quaker and wound up atheist -> pagan with an understanding that I will choose gods by their morality rather than choosing my morality by my gods.
I left the Catholic Church shortly after leaving Catholic school. Like, in Catholic high school, they taught us about the “issues” (read: CA scandal) the church was “going through” and how we all need to “pray for the victims” of these “isolated incidents.” You then step into the real world and learn that the church protected monsters from the law for DECADES (and continues to do so), it really fucks with your head. In college, I went “spiritual but not religious” for a while and then landed squarely into atheism town… been a resident there now for more time than I was ever Catholic.
If nothing else, I’ll say that the Catholic Church really doesn’t seem to have an official stance on “transgenderism”. There’s lots of priests and bishops who will try to convince you it does, and there are plenty of them talking about how “gender ideology” is “colonizing the family” or some other similar things, but even the Pope who just said all this also says of trans women that they are “daughters of God” and meets with them regularly. There’s are groups in the church made of bishops, Cardinals, and priests who explicitly support LGBTQ people and trans people in particular.
Also worth noting that just because a Pope says it doesn’t make it the stance of the church. For all that he has basically unlimited power of government, he (and popes generally) doesn’t address major points of doctrine.
The thing is, he’s said more than one thing? He’s such a politician. He definitely says “gender ideology” is bad because it “erases differences” when he’s in front of conservative bishops, but he also genders trans folks correctly and actually talks to them and treats them kindly (according to them even) apparently regularly. I don’t know if you have been a trans woman trying to talk to a bigoted priest before, but they tend not to be great at being kind to you and they certainly don’t call me “she”.
The world is on fire, fascism is rising, and your god is dead.
ETA: I actually personally left the Catholic Church over their stance on trans people. I had had other issues for a long time, and was firmly pro abortion, gay marriage, and female priesthood, but those were things I thought I might see them come around on. But then I got to trying to figure out why I was so damn miserable. Long story of self discovery later I learned I’m trans and that the psychological agony I’d been in my entire pubescent life was gender dysphoria and that’s why nothing was fixing it. The Catholic Church’s stance was that I either accept easily curable pain for the rest of my life that has little downside or a loving god will punish me forever when I die. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I took a year off of Christianity to cleanse my palate as I transitioned expecting to go episcopal or Quaker and wound up atheist -> pagan with an understanding that I will choose gods by their morality rather than choosing my morality by my gods.
I left the Catholic Church shortly after leaving Catholic school. Like, in Catholic high school, they taught us about the “issues” (read: CA scandal) the church was “going through” and how we all need to “pray for the victims” of these “isolated incidents.” You then step into the real world and learn that the church protected monsters from the law for DECADES (and continues to do so), it really fucks with your head. In college, I went “spiritual but not religious” for a while and then landed squarely into atheism town… been a resident there now for more time than I was ever Catholic.
If nothing else, I’ll say that the Catholic Church really doesn’t seem to have an official stance on “transgenderism”. There’s lots of priests and bishops who will try to convince you it does, and there are plenty of them talking about how “gender ideology” is “colonizing the family” or some other similar things, but even the Pope who just said all this also says of trans women that they are “daughters of God” and meets with them regularly. There’s are groups in the church made of bishops, Cardinals, and priests who explicitly support LGBTQ people and trans people in particular.
Did you even read this article? Frank made his stance very clear that he is making trans people his enemy.
Also worth noting that just because a Pope says it doesn’t make it the stance of the church. For all that he has basically unlimited power of government, he (and popes generally) doesn’t address major points of doctrine.
The thing is, he’s said more than one thing? He’s such a politician. He definitely says “gender ideology” is bad because it “erases differences” when he’s in front of conservative bishops, but he also genders trans folks correctly and actually talks to them and treats them kindly (according to them even) apparently regularly. I don’t know if you have been a trans woman trying to talk to a bigoted priest before, but they tend not to be great at being kind to you and they certainly don’t call me “she”.