Question 6.110

6.110 You often denounce the modern drama of fanatical egalitarianism, whether ideological or societal. What do you mean by that?

Soviet Communism showed how possible it was to lead mankind into misery while promising absolute equality. In my country we experienced true hell under Sékou Touré, who claimed to fulfill Marx’s promises with the class struggle. The myth of equality resulted in a bloody dictatorship. God willed that human beings should be complementary so as to aid and support one another mutually. Equality is not God’s creation.

Today gender theory seems to be toying with this same illusory battle for equality. The dream, the illusion, and the artificial paradises very quickly turn into a nightmare. Man and woman form a unity in love; the denial of their differences is a destructive utopia, a deadly impulse born in a world cut off from God.

Egalitarianism is an ideology that thrives when religion is forgotten. All ideologies end up disappearing, like Communism. Thus the fall of ideologies is inevitable inasmuch as they are nothing but mere products of man without God. But at what cost!

In April 2014, Pope Francis denounced the harmful consequences of the egalitarian ideology of gender for the development of children. Speaking to a delegation from the International Catholic Child Bureau, he plainly affirmed, in his characteristically direct language: “the right of children to grow up in a family with a father and a mother capable of creating a suitable environment for the child’s development and emotional maturity”. He added that “children and young people. . . are not lab specimens! The horrors of the manipulation of education that we experienced in the great genocidal dictatorships of the twentieth century have not disappeared; they have retained a current relevance under various guises and proposals and, with the pretense of modernity, push children and young people to walk on the dictatorial path of ‘only one form of thought’. A little over a week ago a great teacher said to me: ‘At times with these projects-referring to actual educational projects-one doesn’t know whether the child is going to school or to a re-education camp.’ Working for human rights presupposes the vital aim of fostering anthropological formation, of proper knowledge of the reality of the human person, and knowing how to respond to the problems and challenges posed by contemporary culture and the mentality propagated by the mass media. Obviously this does not mean we should take refuge in hidden protected areas that today are unable to foster life, that belong to a past culture. . . No, not this, this is not good. . . We should face the challenges the new culture launches with the positive values of the human person. For you, this means offering your managers and operators continuing formation on the anthropology of the child, because that is where rights and duties have their foundation. It is against this background that educational projects must be planned and developed, mature and adapt to the signs of the times, always respecting the human identity and freedom of conscience.”

And so, when a female advocate of women’s rights, within the very precincts of the United Nations Organization, in October 2014, called on members of Planned Parenthood International to denounce the distribution of outdated contraceptives, which are dangerous to the health, to poor, defenseless African women, she was fully joining the battle of Pope Francis.

In abandoning God, man loses his reason and becomes blind. The ideological search for equality is an unreal path that fuels the worst tragedies.