Pope Francis has released the Dignitas Infinita, which translates as “Infinite Dignity.” The message was pointedly about human dignity, and it included transgenderism.

These days, following the Vatican on social issues can give a guy whiplash. It was just months ago that Pope Francis was effectively advocating for the blessing of same-sex couples, although it was couched with a clarifying statement that the pontiff was not blessing same-sex unions.

Thus, when this most recent message from the Vatican was published, it may have come as a surprise just how directly and unequivocally it condemned transgenderism.

The document was five years in the making, and it reaffirms the Catholic Church’s teaching on topics like abortion and surrogacy. But highlighting transgenderism was a welcome response to the culturally destructive ideology that has spread like cancer across the Western world. One key passage reads as follows:

Regarding gender theory, whose scientific coherence is the subject of considerable debate among experts, the Church recalls that human life in all its dimensions, both physical and spiritual, is a gift from God. This gift is to be accepted with gratitude and placed at the service of the good. Desiring a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes, apart from this fundamental truth that human life is a gift, amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God, entering into competition with the true God of love revealed to us in the Gospel.

The Vatican hits at the heart of transgender ideology as a rebellion against God. Indeed, it is the sin of seeking to make oneself god. In a very real sense, transgenderism is rooted in the first sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. They took the forbidden fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil because they wanted to be like God.

The document also addresses transgenderism as it relates to God’s creation of mankind:

Another prominent aspect of gender theory is that it intends to deny the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings: sexual difference. This foundational difference is not only the greatest imaginable difference but is also the most beautiful and most powerful of them. In the male-female couple, this difference achieves the most marvelous of reciprocities. It thus becomes the source of that miracle that never ceases to surprise us: the arrival of new human beings in the world.

Further, it notes the transgender ideology’s explicit attack on the nuclear family, as well as its effort to assert unquestionable authority over children’s development.

Unsurprisingly, the document was met with objections from transgender activists who called it “hurtful” because it did not include any input from real “trans” people. As self-identified German “non-binary,” “transgender” activist Mara Klein asserted, “The suggestion that gender-affirming health care — which has saved the lives of so many wonderful trans people and enabled them to live in harmony with their bodies, their communities and (God) — might risk or diminish trans people’s dignity is not only hurtful but dangerously ignorant.”

Of course, the obvious issue for the transgender activist is the insistence on elevating feelings over objective reality. As the Vatican is recognizing here, there is no such reality as a “transgender” person. God created mankind as binary beings of two sexes, male and female, who are designed to work in complementary roles and thereby produce more human life.

Klein’s claim that transgenderism produces “harmony with their bodies” is a blatant lie. It is essentially claiming that mankind knows better than God and that people who feel that their bodies are a sexual mistake have a right to be surgically or pharmaceutically corrected.

Thankfully, the Vatican has spoken directly and forcefully against this destructive lie.