The Bad Theology of Gender Ideology

Gnosticism rearing its ugly head

As usual, I was reading Thomas Merton the other day. Currently, I am slowly making my way through Contemplative Prayer, the last book Merton wrote before his untimely death.

As I was reading, one section stood out to me for the way it can easily be interpreted as a commentary on today’s society-wide identity crisis.

Under the pretext that what is “within” is in fact real, spiritual, supernatural, etc., one cultivates neglect and contempt for the “external” as worldly, sensual, material and opposed to grace. This is bad theology and bad asceticism. In fact it is bad in every respect, because instead of accepting reality as it is, we reject it in order to explore some perfect realm of abstract ideals which in fact has no reality at all.