Catholic Church reaffirms Bible: God dictates gender, which does not exist on a spectrum and cannot be changed

One day after Pentecost Sunday — the Christian holiday that commemorates the early church receiving the Holy Spirit — the Catholic Church issued an official declaration rejecting postmodern gender concepts and affirming the biblical vision for complementary genders.

What are the details?

The Vatican's department for Catholic education released a document titled "Male and Female He Created Them" — a reference to the biblical creation narrative — that reaffirms the traditional view that an individual's gender is established by God and cannot be altered

The document claims there is an "educational crisis" stemming from culture-based education surrounding gender and sexuality.

It denounces "calls for public recognition of the right to choose one's gender, and of a plurality of new types of unions, in direct contradiction of the model of marriage as being between one man and one woman, which is portrayed as a vestige of patriarchal societies."

"The disorientation regarding anthropology which is a widespread feature of our cultural landscape has undoubtedly helped to destabilise the family as an institution, bringing with it a tendency to cancel out the differences between men and women, presenting them instead as merely the product of historical and cultural conditioning," the document explains.

Addressing the concept of gender fluidity — or the idea gender exists on a spectrum — the document says the liberal idea is "founded on nothing more than a confused concept of freedom in the realm of feelings and wants, or momentary desires provoked by emotional impulses and the will of the individual, as opposed to anything based on the truths of existence."

The document was created in February, but released Monday during the heart of "Pride Month."

Pope Francis did not sign the document. Instead, Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi, the head of the Congregation for Catholic Education, signed it, along with secretary Archbishop Angelo Vincenzo Zani.

What has Pope Francis said?

Not only does the document reflect traditional biblical teaching, but it also mirrors the view of Pope Francis, who in 2015 so strongly denounced gender theory and its catastrophic impact on culture that he compared it to nuclear arms.

"Let's think of the nuclear arms, of the possibility to annihilate in a few instants a very high number of human beings," Francis said. "Let's think also of genetic manipulation, of the manipulation of life, or of the gender theory, that does not recognize the order of creation."

"With this attitude, man commits a new sin, that against God the Creator," he added. "The true custody of creation does not have anything to do with the ideologies that consider man like an accident, like a problem to eliminate."