I received this from the Cardinal Newman Society.
Father, another Catholic college (Marquette) has fallen to the gender-neutral bathroom trend. This time, they actually responded. Can you believe what they told us?
“We are installing gender-neutral signage outside some restrooms in university-owned residence buildings to better serve the needs of all our students, which includes transgender students… Many other Catholic and Jesuit universities have adopted, or plan to adopt, similar policies.”
But a Marquette alumni group told us that these actions are “not about ‘justice’ or ‘Jesuit values.’ It’s about selling out to secular mores and lawsuit prevention, i.e. cowardice.”
Would you care to share? Marquette Changes Restroom Signs for Transgender Students and Guests, Blasted by Alumni Group
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I wonder what a University has to do to actually officially lose it’s Catholic identity? I mean where a Bishop will officially strip a university of it’s Catholic identity? What will it actually take? It seems that they can do almost anything now with impunity.
What’s next, Ouija boards and crystals as course req1uirements?
“It’s about selling out to secular mores and lawsuit prevention, i.e. cowardice.”
Similar to allowing secular, pro abortion groups to promote their agenda on the walls of St. Peter’s. The days sure have become dark in the Church. How much more abandonment of Christ and His Church will we have to bear witness to? The though is indeed frightening.
You know, even though I don’t agree with this whole modern movement of fluid sexuality, I do believe that we need to help people who are in this situation.
Though we have long-term goals of revolutionizing the culture that needs to happen, in the interim there are plenty of people, especially on college campuses, who do not believe that they are the gender that they were born. A lot of these people, many of whom are my friends, often feel uncomfortable using either gendered bathroom, mostly out of fear of stigma and harassment. Is it really unreasonable to provide gender-neutral bathrooms for these students on college campuses? I think not.
Papa Clemens XIV, ora pro nobis.
Domnall:
Of course they need help. Validating, valorizing, and enabling their wrong choices is not help.
“Is it really unreasonable to provide gender-neutral bathrooms”
Yes.
The road to revolution never begins with Good capitulating to Evil. That’s the road to destruction. Revolution begins with Good saying “No.” It is not our business to make people feel comfortable, but to help them be good.
Between now and when abortion is once more illegal, is it really unreasonable to permit birth control?
Between now and when marriage is properly recognized again, is it really unreasonable to let same-sex and remarried couples receive communion?
Between now and when Catholycs finally Get It Right About The Priesthood, is it really unreasonable to ordain women deacons?
Domnall, I couldn’t disagree with you more. Why do you think that right trumps my right, as a female, to use a restroom without being nervous about who may be in there? Their right should not trump my right, since my right has existed for a thousand years, there is precedent, after all. Now every woman must be on high alert just to use the facilities. Absurd.
Now every responsible parent must go in to the restroom with their child and check the stalls. They can never again assume it is safe and send their child in there, because now it is not.
People complaining about this is just baloney. Use the bathroom of the sex you were born with. It’s about neutralizing sexuality and for some, having access to children, which of course is going to happen.
I just can’t see at all why their rights always trump everybody else’s. If we don’t learn to stand up to fanatics, it’s going to get a lot more ridiculous, but don’t look to educational institutions to do it, “Catholic” or otherwise. They are the very people who came up with this insanity.
veritasverevoncet – totally agree. thank you
Or this, on a different subject.
In a wide-ranging interview with the BBC, Cardinal Turkson suggested that birth control could help alleviate some of the impacts of climate change, particularly the lack of food in a warmer world.
“This has been talked about, and the Holy Father on his trip back from the Philippines also invited people to some form of birth control, because the church has never been against birth control and people spacing out births and all of that. So yes, it can offer a solution,” he said.
“Having more mouths to feed is a challenge for us to be productive also, which is one of the key issues being treated over here, the cultivation and production of food, and its distribution.”
BTW, your Eminence, thanks to the end of the Little Ice Age, and the slight warming since that time to now, we have been able to produce enough to feed all the people. Of course, using valuable farmland to grow crops for fuel, that is taking food off the table.
I would agree that this isn’t a positive development…but looking at this from a “choose your battles” standpoint, and presuming this isn’t a situation where genetic men would be allowed in the women’s bathrooms or vice-versa (i.e., if it was a situation where there was a men’s room, a women’s room, and now a third “gender neutral” restroom), this MIGHT not be the end of the world.
Arguably, the school could take the position of: “We uphold the Church’s teachings on sexuality and gender, but we understand that there are some people who are, de facto, enduring real suffering from gender identity issues. Out of a charitable desire to avoid exacerbating their suffering, we are providing an additional gender-neutral restroom for their use.”
There is nothing morally illicit about providing an additional restroom per se, and showing that the Church wants to be compassionate even to people whom we regard as objectively gravely mistaken in their anthropological outlook might be a way for the Church’s message to gain a more receptive hearing in secular society.
While I agree that there are many issues in the culture with regards to sexuality and gender, are people missing the fact that this only applies to single person lockable restrooms? This isn’t going to allow men (who might feel that they are women) to use a woman’s restroom, nor women (who may feel that they are men) to use a men’s restroom. Instead, the single bathrooms will be labeled just as restrooms instead of men’s restroom and women’s restroom. “The change in signage applies to single-person restrooms that require a key for entry.”
While I understand concern about the appearance of giving in, the specific instance doesn’t appear to be problematic to me.
Is not the therapeutic term for this enabling?
Rule of thumb: when they say “to serve you better” they always mean “to serve you worse”.
Jesuit does not necessarily equate with Catholic anymore, despite the vow of obedience to the Supreme Pontiff that each takes.
what Everett said.
As for cowardice: one must, at any cost, refuse to commit something actually sinful. In what is not that, what still can be, say, rationalized in some manner… preventing a lawsuit seems a pretty strong reason to do things you don’t really like, to me.
Servant of God, Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J., pray for your brother Jesuits!
Transgenderism is a satanic lie. One makes a mistake giving the concept credence, what world am I living in?!
“Though we have long-term goals of revolutionizing the culture that needs to happen, in the interim there are plenty of people, especially on college campuses, who do not believe that they are the gender that they were born. A lot of these people, many of whom are my friends, often feel uncomfortable using either gendered bathroom, mostly out of fear of stigma and harassment. Is it really unreasonable to provide gender-neutral bathrooms for these students on college campuses? I think not.”
The first question is why an orthodox Catholic would have a circle of friends which included those who are as disturbed as these folks are.
I think the ‘logic’ of this post answers the question.
“Gender” is another one of those words that doesn’t have the meaning it is popularly understood to have. Human beings do not have gender. They are either of the male sex or the female. Nouns have gender. A gender-neutral bathroom would either be one in which all nouns are permitted or perhaps one in which only neuter nouns are permitted. Also, ‘male’ and ‘female’ are not genders, though ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ are.
I’m not trying to be all semantic, but words matter. The other team understands this and regularly wages war against language. Somehow, I feel this is reason #283971 for Summorum Pontificum…because words matter.
“Gender” is another one of those words that doesn’t have the meaning it is popularly understood to have. Human beings do not have gender. They are either of the male sex or the female. Nouns have gender. A gender-neutral bathroom would either be one in which all nouns are permitted or perhaps one in which only neuter nouns are permitted. Also, ‘male’ and ‘female’ are not genders, though ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ are.
I’m not trying to be all semantic, but words matter. The other team understands this and regularly wages war against language. Somehow, I feel this is reason #283971 for Summorum Pontificum…because words matter.
First of all, to “change signage” is really super easy and practically cost free. Given the way intolerant totalitarians bully others in academe, it’s a no brainer really. Now, to advocate for and offer protection for something the bullies hate, like developing life in mothers’ wombs, while too it is only, on the surface, a matter of acting with precision in “signage” or verbiage, the commitment costs something in real life terms, it requires heroic sacrifice, a Christ like love which offers tolerance in the broadest and most beautiful sense.
As a graduate of Fordham College, Class of ’84 – I didn’t realize Jesuits were still Catholics.
Charles
Gotta love how they say “Catholic and Jesuit universities”. Like, you’d think the latter would imply the former, but we’re going to spell it out as though they were theoretically separate anyway.
“…But a Marquette alumni group…”
What, both members?
Honestly, can we leave the dear people with gender dysphoria alone? I think they’ve suffered well enough.
As if gay bashing was not enough….
Is the Pope Jesuit?
Gender dyshoria is a recognised health condition, hardly a ‘satanic lie’ anymore than cancer is a satanic lie. As s health condition it should be treated as such surely. By that I mean people should be treated with compassion and reasonable adjustments made, such as gender neutral toilets, should be provided – I am not saying that easy access to radical surgery or anything should be available no questions asked, or everyone else should be forced to use gender neutral toilets. But accusing those who live with this condition as basically wanting to destroy society as we know it in some satanic plan is just not fair.
In recent years but before the transgenderism fad. we began to see restrooms for single persons of either sex along with traditional single sex communal restrooms. They have legitimate uses. Someone needs assistance and a caregiver has the opposite sex. There is a parent and child of opposite sex and the child is too young to safely use the appropriate restroom. Etc, etc. These facilities seem to be the solution. As a man, I do not want to share a restroom with a biological man dressed as a woman or a biological woman dressed as a man. Women don’t want these situations either. It doesn’t matter what hormones these people take or how they have been surgically mutilated. We should not treat these facilities as accommodations specifically for transgender people but everyone will be more comfortable if they use them.
“Gender dysphoria” is a mental illness. We should not humor people with one set of chromosomes who think they are trapped in the body of the opposite sex. We should not play along with their delusions any more that we should treat starving anorexics as if they were obese.
A Catholic university can have facilities that accommodate transgender people but they should not be promoted as an accommodation for transgenderism.
Baritone, Avogadro’s number ‘dittos’!
What a relief that gender neutral nouns at last have their own toilet facilities!
“Many other Catholic and Jesuit universities have . . . . .”
Well, at least they recognize the difference.
Before anyone hyperventilates about “bashing”, I posted previously about my personal resistance to sharing bathrooms with men. Sorry, just don’t want to, and I’m positive there are many women who feel the same way. Now in some cases we are talking about a single-use bathroom, but that is not what is always the case. In some cases it is going to be “one size fits all” and there would be men and women sharing bathroom facilities. There are great problems inherent in this situation, and my point is, since we have the precedent and the tradition of separate facilities, and speaking as a woman I can vouch that sharing facilities makes me very apprehensive, why do we see nonstop caving in to the “new model” of neutralizing the facilities? Why should one group’s rights trump another groups rights?
I have known, and am related to, people who suffer from gender confusion or gender dysphoria. I completely get how difficult this reality is for people. It is a terrible burden, and a heartbreaking one at that. It can break up families, so disruptive is it to the daily happiness and functioning of a human being. In my opinion these disorders are all related, because what I have observed is the individual is haunted, haunted by this issue, unable to be happy in their own skin or assigned sex role. They obsessively pursue what they are not, but feel they are. It is a terrible cross, but today’s mindset is that it is a gift. Well it’s a gift any sensible person would return if they could, because I can verify, it’s no joy ride. Yes, we ought to be sensitive. My heart breaks at the idea of someone being unaccepting or cruel to my loved one, or anyone who endures this, because of their struggle, and I’m always touched by the stories of others. It should go without saying we should be exceedingly kind at all times.
But that does not negate the rights of other individuals to use a bathroom facility without worrying about the sex of the person in the next stall. It just doesn’t, unless as I said, you are willing to sacrifice one set of individuals wellbeing and sense of security for another’s you deem more important. What’s fair about that?
My comment about children being unsafe is due to the reality of sending children into situations where mixed sexes are using a bathroom. Anyone who can’t figure out the possible problems in this situation is just dodging the reality. My feeling is children’s safety and rights trump everything else, in all situations, at every conceivable moment. If no one cares about the safety and security or privacy of grown up women, we all ought to be able to put children’s safety first.
But children don’t weigh in on these issues, they just rely on the grownups to come up with rules and regulations that protect them.
I wish to add that I do feel gender dysphoria can be due to a combination of psychological or experiential factors, and also genetics, some hormonal influence, even during gestation. Personally, I do believe there may be a genetic factor.
I know the current thinking is “don’t insult me by pitying me”, but I’ve seen this situation up close, and it is no picnic, no matter how people today want to celebrate it. People today are confirmed in their disorders, told they are all good the way they are. This is wrongheaded and does in some cases great harm to individuals ultimately. But it’s so easy to ignore that and cheer.
Kathleen10: Well said
acardnal: Amen to that
“…But a Marquette alumni group…” What, both members? . . .
To use the “dear” (and truly to be compassionated) gender-dysphoric as a stalking horse for the evil of gender ideology — on which Marquette, like too many nominally Catholic institutions, is in the process of going “all in” — is disingenuous at best, and the (accustomed) cheap shot is just piling on. I respectfully request, reverend sir, that you knock it off.
How is something as clear-cut as a “c”atholic university giving in to gender ideology silliness causing debate *here*? Did I accidentally stumble into the Fishwrap combox?
Because taking a sign off the wall outside of an already single-use bathroom that requires a key isn’t a big deal, and making a big deal out of it actually makes us look petty. Allowing transgender people to use a gendered bathroom would be a problem, but that isn’t what Marquette is doing. We don’t want to be the boy who cried wolf on things that don’t matter, resulting in people not listening when they do matter.
The problem is we are beginning to see things like this ridiculous Illinois decision happening in our schools and the federal government is behind it.
There is a slippery slope and the door is being opened to it. Kathleen10 has truly valid concerns that I also share.
http://dailycaller.com/2015/12/04/illinois-school-district-settles-with-feds-to-let-cross-dressing-boy-shower-in-girls-locker-room/
Gee-what could possibly go wrong?
Do any of the politically correct care how the girls “feel” about this since this is all about one boy’s feelings?
Gender ideology nonsense must be opposed early and often. Waiting until the camel’s nose is firmly inside the tent is too late.
Everett, whether or not we “look petty” matters not one iota to me. If being petty creates safe zones in bathrooms for decent women and for children, sign me up for pettiness. This fascist movements makes progress in inches, and this is just another step forward for them. Good for them if you don’t detect it.
You said this is crying wolf and people “won’t listen to us when it does matter”.
Can you really not imagine a scenario where privacy or safety is compromised, for women or for children? Can you really not imagine that? This does matter, it matters greatly! Pettiness pales in comparison.
And I don’t believe these hypothetical “people”, who would call us petty, would listen anyway, and we shouldn’t compromise common sense or beliefs to pander to hypothetical people, or actual people, for that matter.
Kathleen10, your comments are spot on. Could not agree with you more.
Domnall, you said, “A lot of these people, many of whom are my friends, often feel uncomfortable using either gendered bathroom, mostly out of fear of stigma and harassment.” Not to be rude, Domnall, but I have a very hard time seeing how these people can possibly be uncomfortable visiting the bathroom assigned to the sex they were born with. How can they possibly fear stigma and harassment in that situation? I don’t buy that AT ALL.
It is very simple. Use the bathroom that corresponds to the sex you were given by God at birth. How hard is this? Allowing anything other than this creates unsafe situations for women and children.
” If being petty creates safe zones in bathrooms for decent women and for children, sign me up for pettiness…Can you really not imagine a scenario where privacy or safety is compromised, for women or for children?”
I would agree that safety trumps everything. That being said, young males can be stalked in a locker room by adult male just as young females by adult females, so I think the issue is a bit of a red herring.
For the most part a locker room or bathroom is not a very sexualized environment and I expect the the people who are most concerned about this is adults; I suspect that the youth are pretty open minded about these matters.
@ frjim,
I teach high school seniors. Your suspicions are wrong. Even they, who are constantly drenched in this culture of moral relativism see a big problem with this. If a person doesn’t stand up against something this basic, they generally come to the conclusion that said person probably won’t stand up for anything.
“Father” Jim,
I do not want to walk into a locker room or bathroom with my toddler daughters and come face to face with a man dressed as a woman. My children should not be forced by current societal sympathies to be exposed to this. Period. It is the same as exposing my toddlers to pornography. I would be livid if I walked into a family restaurant and they had a pornographic movie playing on the televisions on the walls.
“Just don’t look” is not a viable answer, and I don’t want my children to learn to be “open minded” about intrinsic disordered thinking. They need to learn how to pray and do penance for those not being prayed for (indeed instead being encouraged in their disordered behaviors).
I pray for you as always.
For anyone interested, I just happened to see a post by the group MassResistance, a Massachusetts group on the front line of the culture war. They announced a “new initiative” coming out in public schools, “Transgender Month”. Children will be REQUIRED, to wear a button that labels them the opposite sex, or one that says “ask me” (what pronoun I use to describe myself). I’m certain this will be mandatory in fascist Massachusetts, but it will come to your school, sooner or later.
This is where that non-issue of bathroom use leads. People do not have any idea of the intentions of this movement.
” I suspect that the youth are pretty open minded about these matters.”
Only those too young to know better or those old enough to actually be ‘open minded’ and the immoral perverted left have already indoctrinated. Do you not remember being a ‘youth’? I do, and I was even more modest then than now. It is natural for preteens and teenagers to be very protective of their bodies as they are starting to change. Only the immoral sexual deviant adults are pushing to normalize this ‘open mindedness’ you speak of, pushing nudity and sex into the faces of our youth through TV, including commercials during sporting events and other family friendly programming, music, and schools, as Kathleen10 points out. As Marx said, if you get the youth early enough and indoctrinate them, you can have them do as you wish. That’s why Homosexuals and their advocates want this nonsense taught to our kindergartners and are even pushing for earlier schooling. They know they have to get them young or they’ll never accept deviancy. I know from personal experience that a ‘youth’ left untainted by indoctrination will be repulsed by the very idea, as I was when I first learned there was such a thing at the age of about 12. I know from my own eldest child, when she was about 11-12 too, and thinking she would not know about it, since I had never really broached the subject until something came on the radio, and she asked what they were talking about. She knew about the ‘gay and lesbian people’, and before telling her a thing, I asked, “What do you think about that?” Her honest youthful innocence answer, “It’s kind of gross.” Children know the truth; it is written on their hearts. It is our duty, and yours FATHER Jim, to protect their innocence and guide them on the path of truth so that they may stay on the straight path to Our Lord.
“But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea.” That is a really scary warning, at least it is to those who believe in Our Lord.
I am a woman and mother. 2 weeks ago I was at our Cathedral for an evening Mass. I took of my two little ones into the bathroom with me when I discovered a very large male doing who knows what, but he wasn’t using the bathroom. One of my children walked into one stall and as I walked into the other that man was hiding in the other. The man mumbled something about having a sex change. As if that makes it okay for him to be in there. He was dressed like a man and certainly as big as a man. He shifted from side to side staring at me and my child all the while I was waiting for my other child who was using the restroom. I could not leave my child in there with this person who was clearly unstable. The man started to leave, turned around came right up to me, started for a second and then left. I can tell you I was terrified and really angry! I went to the priest and I think he sent someone to go see about it but I didn’t feel safe anymore as the guy just stayed in the back of the church staring at people. I left and went to a different Mass. Men, stay out of our bathrooms!