"too sophisticated to categorize people by their physiology"

thehelenjoyce.com

"Proclaiming that transwomen are women is a way of showing that you are a member of an elite intellectual tribe—university-educated, left-leaning and too sophisticated to categorize people by their physiology."

     Helen Joyce, Trans:  when ideology meets reality (London:  Oneworld, 2021), 289.  Next sentence:  "Adherence is signalled with pronouns in email signatures and social-media bios."  p. 290:

     The final indication of a crony belief is that nothing important is allowed to ride on it.  To show that this is true of gender-identity ideology, I offer the following thought experiment.  Picture a person who insists that that transwomen are women in every circumstance.  If transwomen commit crimes, they belong in women's prisons; if they play sport, they belong on women's teams.  If they are attracted to women, lesbians must regard them as potential sexual partners.  Such a person will accept no distinction between sex and gender.  Transwomen differ from 'cis women' only in having been mistakenly 'assigned male at birth'.  Now, what will our true believer do if they need a gestational surrogate?"

p. 295:

In everyday life, sex matters less than it used to—but when it does matter, it is sex that matters, not gender identity.

"it is a lack of faith not to have faith in the faithful."

Pseudo Jacopino di Francesco

"Just as the wickedness of heretics should be crushed by the zeal of true faith, so the integrity of genuine confession [(verae confessionis . . . integritas)] should be embraced.  For if trust in one who confesses faithfully [(fideliter confitenti)] is despised, the faith of all men is made doubtful, and deadly sins arise from inconsiderate strictness. . . .  Let us consider this, dearest brother, with great care, and not allow anyone who truly professes [(veraciter profitentem)] the Catholic faith to be afflicted under the pretext of heresy, in case (Heaven forbid!) we allow heresy to grow stronger under a pretext of correcting it."

     Gregory the Great, Letter 6.15 to John, Bishop of Constantinople, September 595, trans. John R. C. Martyn (The letters of Gregory the Great, vol. 2, books 5-9, Medieval sources in translation 40 (Toronto:  Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2004), 413.

"it is a lack of faith not to have faith in the faithful [(Nam nullus ambigit infidelitatem esse fidem fidelibus non habere)]. . . .  For not trusting someone who confesses truthfully [(veraciter profitenti)] is not purging heresy, but creating it [(non est heresem purgare, sed facere)]."

      Gregory the Great, Letter 6.16 to Maurice, Augustus, September 595, trans. John R. C. Martyn (The letters of Gregory the Great, vol. 2, books 5-9, Medieval sources in translation 40 (Toronto:  Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2004), 415.
     Latin from MGH (not dMGH) here.

     I was put onto these passages by Blaise Pascal, Provincial letters no. 17, trans. M’Crie, who quotes them in defense of the Jansenists somewhat differently:

If . . . we refuse to believe a confession made in conformity to the sentiments of the Church, we cast a doubt over the faith of all Catholics whatsoever. . . .  your object is to make these persons heretics in spite of themselves; because to refuse to credit those who testify by their confession that they are in the true faith, is not to purge heresy, but to create it—hoc non est haeresim purgare, sed facere.

"the courage to refuse things that it is not right to taste" (i.e. pretence)

Christoph Weigel

'"Such pretense is not worthy of our time of life, . . . lest many of the young should suppose that Elea′zar in his ninetieth year has gone over to an alien religion, and through my pretense, for the sake of living a brief moment longer, they should be led astray because of me, while I defile and disgrace my old age.'"

     Eleazar/Eleazaros the scribe, at 2 Maccabees 6:24-25 RSV.  NETS (Joachim Shaper):

"'To pretend [(ὑποκριθῆναι)] is not worthy of our time of life, . . . for many of the young might suppose that Eleazaros in his ninetieth year had gone over to allophylism, and through my pretence [(ὑπόκρισιν)], for the sake of living a brief moment longer, they would be led astray because of me, while I defile and disgrace my old age.'"

Speaking to the dead

"in the [elaborate] medieval [Latin burial] service at the moment of committal of the corpse, the priest addressed the dead person directly, whereas in the Prayer-Book rite the minister turned instead to the living mourners round the grave and spoke about the dead only in the third person. . . ."

     Eamon Duffy, "Preface to the new edition," The stripping of the altars:  traditional religion in England 1400-1580 (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 2022), xvi.  Cf. p. 475 of the first edition:

The theology behind the 1549 book [of common prayer] was well advanced towards reformed teaching, and there was an evident unease about prayers which implied that intercession might effect any change in the state of the dead.  Yet the funeral service of 1549 did contain prayers for the dead, and emphasized their community with the living, 'they with us and we with them'.  That sense of the continuing presence of the dead among the living was vividly expressed in the Sarum funeral rite and in the 1549 prayer-book by the fact that at the moment of the committal of the body to the earth the priest turned round to the corpse, scattered earth on it and, in Cramer’s translation, said 'I commend thy soule to God the father almighty, and thy body to the grounde, earth to earth, asshes to asshes, dust to dust.'  The dead could still be spoken to directly, even in 1549, because in some sense they still belonged within the human community.  But in the world of the 1552 book the dead were no longer with us.  They could neither be spoken to nor even about, in any way that affected their well-being.  The dead had gone beyond the reach of human contact, even of human prayer. 

Cf. also "The burial of the dead:  from medieval to modern perceptions," Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Association of Great Britain 1 (1986):  1-13.

"The Holy Spirit is at once more selective than we, and apparently more democratic."

      Samuel M. Shoemaker, With the Holy Spirit and with fire (1960), chap. 7 ("The Holy Spirit and the church"), The Samuel Shoemaker library (Waco, TX:  Word Books, 1972), 95.

Ultimately, a rejection of the Incarnation

IHES news

      "In our time, the rejection of the flesh and body [of the truth that can be known and of intelligible knowledge considered] as [an] organic whole takes different forms in the world of knowledge:  [1] that of the refusal of the transmission of specific findings [(savoirs)] among the new doctrinarians of the primary and secondary schools; [2] that of the postmodern rejection of the structuration of [such] findings [(savoirs) into a [good and] beautiful whole (?)], [the] fruit of understanding, on the part of many influential university [professors] and their epigones in the world of teaching; [3] that of the indifference, disinterest, or contempt displayed by the majority of scholars for the heart of rational knowledge:  the philosophy, the theology, and the great literature that is, nonetheless, the true science of man."

     French mathematician and 2002 Fields Medalist Laurent Lafforgue, "En université, une communauté de personnes passionné par la verité," an address delivered to a "Conférence . . . à Rome le 6 mars 2009, dans le cadre d'une réunion d'universitaires organisée par le mouvement 'Communion et Libération'," translation mine.  Lafforgue claims to be channeling Edith Stein by way of Emmanuel Gabellieri.

In the world of [2] the universities, the learned, and the scholars, the refusal of th[e] intrusion [of the light of truth], that is to say the determination to keep a prudent distance from the truth, takes the form of positivistic objectivism and, in particular, scientism.

the rejection of the transmission of specific findings [(savoirs)] in [1] the schools of our time is a kind of rejection of the Incarnation.

the postmodern refusal of [2] the structuration of [human] knowledge [(connaissances) into a [good and] beautiful organic whole (?)] is tied to the rejection of the church as the mystical body of Christ.

Etc.  Thus,

the intuition of the trinitarian structure of the truth . . . is . . . at the root of the 'idea of the university' invented by medieval Latin Christianity.

More strikingly,

the appearance of the first fact, of the first particular truth, can be considered a prefiguration of the Incarnation.

God is still incarnate

"What benefit do we receive from Christ's ascension into heaven?"

". . . that we have our flesh [(unser Fleisch)] in heaven, as a sure pledge that he, as the Head, will also take us, his members, up to himself. . . ."

     Heidelberg Catechism, Quest. 49.  Cf. Quest. 57.