US envoy for gay, transgender issues meets with Vatican officials
November 13, 2015
Randy Berry, the US State Department’s Special Envoy for the Human Rights of LGBTI Persons, met with officials of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State and Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace on November 10.
The Tablet reported that Berry and the Vatican officials discussed “persecution of gay and transgendered people across the world.”
Berry denied that financial pressure was being put on African nations to legalize same-sex marriage but said that in Uganda’s case, “my government did suspend certain types of aid” in order to “make sure that US taxpayer money was not used to fund legal structures that would prosecute people based on their identity.”
Asked to comment on Cardinal Robert Sarah’s criticism of gender ideology, Berry said:
I’m not sure what gender ideology is supposed to mean. What we are talking about are issues of identity. I don’t think that respecting the integrity and dignity of a person based on their identity is necessarily a threat to anyone. I think the failure to do that is a threat to us all.
The discussion is whether or not we have advanced as a people, whether we can respect the integrity and dignity of all individuals absent these aspects of identity.
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Posted by: Randal Mandock -
Nov. 14, 2015 8:23 PM ET USA
"I don’t think that respecting the integrity and dignity of a person based on their identity is...a threat to anyone...whether we can respect the integrity and dignity of all individuals absent these aspects of identity." Exactly the attitude one would expect from the atheistic state. Where the godless state acts as the ethical reference, any positive human law is enforceable. Where God serves as the absolute moral standard, a person's dignity issues solely from Him. Sex identity is irrelevant.
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Posted by: Bernadette -
Nov. 14, 2015 3:47 PM ET USA
Being a "cross dresser" (I will not say transgendered person because there is no such thing. There are only two genders: male and female He created them), or being same-sex attracted is not one's identity. We are not identified by our sexual orientation. These people are sick, mentally ill and need our compassion and help and encouragement to remain chaste and to seek treatment and counseling for these aberrations.
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Posted by: wsw33410 -
Nov. 14, 2015 6:26 AM ET USA
Why is the Vatican recognizing another lie by the UN and Obama administration? Who is benefiting from such step - surely not our Church!
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Posted by: skall391825 -
Nov. 13, 2015 9:28 PM ET USA
Maybe Randy Berry can offer to draft a section of Pope Francis' exhortation to officially close the Synod. After all, those unwellcoming African prelates wouldn't include the issue in the final report, and they even lied and said the US put financial pressure on African nations to legalize same-sex marriage.
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Posted by: Minnesota Mary -
Nov. 13, 2015 8:40 PM ET USA
I'd bet my bottom dollar that Pope Pius XII and his predecessor Popes would never have met with this Randy Berry.
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Posted by: nix898049 -
Nov. 13, 2015 6:50 PM ET USA
My question is, where have all these so called persecuted people been for most of human history? Sounds like a vast leftwing conspiracy to me that the Vatican should call out for what it is. But will it? Looks unlikely. God help us.
