Mrs. Amanda Prestigiacomo writes in the Daily Wire:
Blasphemy was committed on a Catholic university campus: An employee at the “Catholic” school stated her belief, rooted in Catholicism, that there are only two genders.
Mrs. Prestigiacomo no doubt meant to point out the irony here, of a Catholic at a Catholic university being investigated for a hate crime for stating a Catholic belief. However, her language betrays her surrender to the enemy. The belief that there are two genders is not particularly rooted in Catholicism, or any other religion. It is simply rooted in reality.
Human beings exist in one of two genders: male or female. Our gender (or sex) is determined at birth, and cannot be changed. Until quite recently such an idea would never be challenged by serious people, but only by the insane. We now live in an age of insanity, where many have been persuaded that their gender is a matter of choice. As I have pointed out, this is ultimately the (il)logical conclusion of the existentialist dementia which afflicts our world. Existentialists believe that existence precedes essence, and hence we can define what we are regardless of how we came into the world. The manifest absurdity of this is that existence is the act of realizing essence, so it is impossible for something to exist unless its essence is defined. You may care less about such matters, and view philosophical ontology as a pseudo-science, but even so, you should be able to see how, as Richard Weaver says, Ideas Have Consequences.
Male and female, as I have often said, are fundamental concepts in the order of reality, reality which is objective and external to us. In saner times, people accepted that we have far less control of external reality than we would like, and hence have to simply accept certain things as reality. I may wish my grandfather didn’t die suddenly, but I have to accept that he did. I may even wish to be a different sex, but alas, my sex was determined for me before I was born.
In our age of atheism, the mere suggestion that some of our reality was defined in advance for us is seen as hopelessly oppressive. “How dare I be a man when I want to be a woman?! How dare you tell me who I am?” Well, too bad. We all have to live with realities we may not like or want.
The confused student in the above story is so clearly an existentialist, I wonder if he actually realizes it. When he is confronted by the employee who points out that he is really a man, and not of a fictional neutral gender, the student tells her she has no right to deny his existence. In other words, existence requires essence, which is, in the existentialist mind, defined after existence begins. Therefore, to deny the student’s self-constructed and ficitonal essence is to deny his existence. Priceless! Never does it occur to him that if the employee denied his existence, she would not actually be talking to him.
Back to the first sentence of the article. Of course, Catholicism teaches that there are two genders, but even atheists wouldn’t seriously deny this in times past. Such a reality is grounded in the external observable world, and is a matter of fact so firmly established that to deny it is simply insane. However, the authoress, Mrs. Prestigiacomo, like so many now, couches objective reality in the language of subjectivism. The employee’s belief is rooted in her Catholicism. “Believe what you want, just let me believe what my religion teaches!” Uh, no. Reality is reality is reality. It may be ironic that a Catholic school would persecute someone in this situation, but it’s stupid that any school would. Let’s not make this subjective.
Mors Sanctorum 