The stakes in the culture war continue to rise. While much focus is placed on electoral politics, the changes and ideological battles taking place in societal institutions are often more important in the long run.
In a major shift with enormous ramifications, the Vatican announced Wednesday that transgender individuals may be baptized in the Catholic Church.
In a document published on the church’s website, the Vatican’s Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith declared that baptism is available to transgenders just as it is to “other faithful,” even after such persons have gone through sex reassignment procedures:
A transgender person, even if they have undergone hormone therapy and sex-reassignment surgery, can receive baptism under the same conditions as other faithful, if there are no situations in which there is a risk of generating a public scandal or disorientation among the faithful.
The document’s publication came as a response to questions by Bishop Jose Negri of Santo Amaro, Brazil, which he sent to the Vatican back in July. Negri’s six questions had to do with LGBT people’s participation in Catholic religious practices.
Approved by the pope on October 31, the document also stated that transgender individuals may be godparents and serve as witnesses and religious weddings, as can persons who are in a homosexual relationship.
However, the document appeared to clarify that children who are adopted by same-sex couples or conceived through surrogacy may not be baptized and that people in homosexual relationships may not be godparents.
As NBC News notes, the new policies regarding transgenders is the latest progression involving the Catholic Church’s handling of LGBT issues:
Last month, Francis signaled an openness to allowing Catholic priests to bless same-sex couples on a case-by-case basis. However, Francis, 86, added that same-sex blessings should not be seen as synonymous with heterosexual weddings.
Some leading Catholics who have advocated for the inclusion of LGBTQ people in the church praised the Vatican’s statement.
“As such, this is an important step forward in the church seeing transgender people not only as people (in a church where some say they don’t really exist) but as Catholics,” wrote Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit in the United States who performs outreach for LGBT Catholics.
Many voices from within the Catholic Church have voiced concern with the direction Pope Francis has taken it.
Speaking of the Synod of Synodality “listening and dialogue” initiative launched in 2021 under Francis, Archbishop Emeritus Héctor Aguer of Buenos Aires, Argentina said:
The Synod on Synodality is leading souls from the truth of Christ and His Church. Worryingly, there are some signs of Rome’s benevolence towards the U.N.’s Agenda 2030. On the contrary, the Church should prophetically announce the opposition of this programme to Christian anthropology and the natural order. I dwell on this issue, which is of the utmost importance. The 2030 Agenda is a globalist project of the United Nations and associated agencies, which pressures states to adopt abortion policies and “comprehensive sex education.”… The progressivism of the present pontificate reappears in the midst of the ruins it has produced….
It is appropriate to recall the discernment that Paul VI unexpectedly reached in the midst of the chaos of the 1970s: “Through some crack the smoke of Satan has seeped into the Church of today.”
Indeed, Francis has had a tendency to mix socialist politics with religion, often using the papacy as a platform to advance left-wing agenda items such as mass migration, open borders, climate-change alarmism, and anti-capitalism. He voiced even support for same-sex civil unions.
Amid Covid, Francis pushed the vaccine and was a strong proponent of limiting citizens’ rights to combat the virus, even authoring an op-ed that condemned groups that protested Covid-19 lockdowns.
“Yet some groups protested, refusing to keep their distance, marching against travel restrictions — as if measures that governments must impose for the good of their people constitute some kind of political assault on autonomy or personal freedom!” the pontiff lambasted.
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò of the Catholic Church, who has frequently spoken out against Pope Francis, the Deep State, and the “Deep Church,” has accused Francis of working hand-in-hand with globalists and Communist China.
Vigano made international headlines in 2012 by exposing the Vatican banking scandal. Six years later he again caught media attention by revealing sex-abuse coverups among high-ranking clergy, calling on the pope to resign for having protected now-disgraced ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.
The archbishop now warns of a global coup planned by Masonic infiltrators of the Vatican and governments worldwide through organizations such as the United Nations and the World Economic Forum — groups planning to set up a New World Order.
“Infiltrate and destroy from within” has always been the modus operandi of the globalist Deep State. It’s how they have corrupted the federal government; now they are implementing the same tactic against the Christian institutions that otherwise would serve as the most important line of defense against America’s destruction.
