Nordic bishops reject gender ideology in pastoral statement (Coram Fratribus)

The Catholic bishops of the Nordic countries have issued a letter criticizing gender ideology and urging their people to become better acquainted with the Church’s teaching on human sexuality.

Recalling how, in the book of Genesis, God shows the rainbow to Noah as a sign of his covenant with mankind, the Nordic bishops say: “As disciples of Christ, who is God’s Image, we cannot reduce the sign of the rainbow to less than the life-giving compact between the Creator and creation.”

The letter—signed by the Catholic bishops of Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, and Sweden—was read at Mass in parishes throughout those countries this past Sunday. In it, the bishops proclaim: “The point of the Church’s teaching is not to curtail love but to enable it.”

In their letter the bishops state their opposition to unjust discrimination of any kind, but continue: “We declare dissent, however, when the movement puts forward a view of human nature that abstracts from the embodied integrity of personhood, as if physical gender were accidental. And we protest when such a view is imposed on children...”