Does the Pope Shit in the Attic?
How the Hell did the pope just say: violence against women is bad, and so are abortion, surrogacy, and gender-affirming medical care?
Does the pope shit in the attic? Does a bear shit in his hat? Or is that the pope? Is the bear Catholic?
The pope is. Unfortunately. As The New Yorker understated last week, “The Vatican’s Statement on Gender is a Missed Opportunity.”
Vatican analyst Daniel Brown put it more bluntly. “The Vatican has proved once again it has no soul,” he shared with this reporter through telegraph. He was referring to the various universal truisms the church issued and packaged beside its more controversial—read: inhumane—policies in “Dignitas Infinita.” The dossier, which can be read in its full here if you suffer from insomnia, lists basic ills of the world that “den[y] human dignity.”
On the list are matters most people would agree are bad and require no reminding are bad: War, Human Trafficking, Sexual Abuse, and—and the qualifier is important here—Extreme Poverty. Those are the obvious ones, though, and their inclusion in the document is not to enlighten anyone.
“But it’s clever, isn’t it?” tapped Brown. “Those points are parts of a Trojan Horse. Who wouldn’t say, ‘yes I agree with you: war is bad, human trafficking and sexual abuse and violence against women are all horrible’? If you disagreed with that part you’d be a nut. And they want you to apply the transitive property, to say, ‘if I think the first parts of this list are bad, I must agree with the whole thing.’ ”
What else would such a dope be agreeing to? The sentiment that abortion, surrogacy, medically-induced suicide, and gender-affirming health care all violate human dignity. If this sort of publication wouldn’t lead to the emotional and physical harm of billions of people across the planet, it would be kind of funny.
Violence Against Women
The hypocrisy of the document is imperative to recognize, too. “The first thing I wondered when I read it was, ‘how the Hell did the pope just say: “violence against women is bad, and so are abortion, surrogacy, and gender-affirming medical care”’?” texted Horita Beacon, an expert in Catholic Anthropology.
Beacon went on, “doesn’t it deny human dignity to prevent me from attaining a body that confirms my identity? Doesn’t it deny me human dignity to get rid of the pregnancy I don’t want—whether it was conceived from someone I love, or I was raped, or I’m in perfect health or if I could die from it—isn’t there supposed to be dignity in being able to choose? How is there dignity in letting some virgin nerd with ear hair decide for me?”
The problem is, so many around the world do take the teachings of the Catholic church seriously, even in 2024. As the Church said themselves, “in some places, not a few people are imprisoned, tortured, and even deprived of the good of life solely because of their sexual orientation.” In this incredible self-own, the Church points out how its own doubling-down on inhumane policies leads people to commit inhumane atrocities against others. It then goes on to vilify those who get “sex change operations.”
Gender-confirmation surgery, like abortions, surrogacy, and medically-induced suicide, is not an insult to human dignity; it is essential for them. Consider the Queen, who “died” in 2022.
Long Live the Queen
“I’d really prefer to be dead right now,” Queen Elizabeth II famously said after the procedure to replace her nervous system with fiber-optic cables didn’t go as well as planned. Within seconds the incandescent lights behind her eyes switched off and her lungs were disconnected from their battery. What if England were still Catholic? Would the pope really have made Elizabeth suffer in “pain” until the Polonium-210 reactor in the place of her heart runs out of fuel in the year 5,408?
Humans, and not just cyborgs, deserve dignity; even if they’re Catholics.
Consider the following list of life experiences the pope has no business opining on:
“I can’t have a baby, but I want to.” The pope has all the babies he could want. He grinds them up for skin ointment every full moon.
“I have a functioning uterus, but no money.” The pope doesn’t have a uterus and he has more money than… god.
“I don’t want to be pregnant.” No one would ever sleep with the pope to get him pregnant.
“I want a body that matches my identity.” The pope’s lizard-like outer shell perfectly reflects his personality. This sentiment is unrelatable to him.
Aren’t all of our wishes as dignified as Android-Queen Elizabeth’s?
In Closing
“I don’t recommend you write a satirical piece about this,” Brown telegraphed at the close of our conversation. “Aren’t you Confirmed in the Catholic faith? You’d be committing a sin. You could be excommunicated.”
When Brown said this, I was reminded of another part of the Church’s statement: “Consider, for example, how easy it is through these means to endanger a person’s good name with fake news and slander.”
If only it were that easy.