Do you remember the Mister Rogers song that went like this: "Only girls can be the momies [twinkly piano...] Only boys can be the dadies, yes sir ... Everybody’s fancy, everybody’s fine ... Your body’s fancy and so is mine"? Well, it seems what may have been true in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood is not true in Mister Beatie’s, an Oregonian "man" who recently announced that he is five months pregnant.

 

The news was everywhere at the end of March. Some of the Headlines read: "A Pregnant Man: It’s Incredible"; "He’s Having Their Baby"; "Pregnant Man Stuns Medical Profession"; and "She’s Pregnant, But She’s a He."

 

What gives? In case you haven’t heard – she is not a he, rather "he" is a she. Thomas Beatie is actually Tracy Lagondino, a woman who had her breasts surgically removed and has been pumping her blood stream with male hormones in order to grow facial hair. Her ovaries and womb, however, have remained intact. She stopped injecting testosterone in order to ovulate and, as she herself says, my body "regulated itself after about four months."

 

To "regulate," of course, means to bring order, to conform something to the truth of things. She, herself, by acknowledging that her body "regulated itself" admits that she is a woman. Wait a minute ... even as I write this, I am baffled by the boggling absurdity of needing somehow to demonstrate that "she is a woman." How could it be otherwise?

 

Let us allow Mister Rogers, in his own simple way, to inject a little sanity: "Boys are boys from the beginning [twinkly piano] ... Girls are girls right from the start, yes sir ... Every body’s fancy, every body’s fine ... Your body’s fancy and so is mine."

 

I don’t mean to make light of the situation, or in any way to turn it into a joke. This is not a laughing matter. Tracy Lagondino is not a man "trapped" in a woman’s body. There is no such thing. Rather, she is a person tragically cut-off from her true identity as a woman. This is not a physical problem, but a spiritual and psychological problem. The solution is not for her to mutilate her body. The solution is for her to experience the healing of her soul.

 

How did the modern world ever get to this point? Pope Benedict offers a penetrating insight in his letter Saved in Hope. He observes that "the foundations of the modern age ... appear with particular clarity in the thought of Francis Bacon" – an English philosopher and scientist who lived at the turn of the 17th Century. Bacon championed "the triumph of art over nature." The novelty of this vision, Benedict says, "lies in a new correlation between science and praxis [what we can do with it]. This is also given a theological application: the new correlation between science and praxis would mean that the dominion over creation – given to man by God and lost through original sin – would be reestablished" (n. 16).

 

When I first read this line, I immediately closed my eyes and shuddered at the implications. It crystallized for me: modern man, precisely through Bacon’s scientific method, has reclaimed dominion over creation not as God originally desired it for him, but as fallen man desires it for himself. "It’s my body; I can do whatever I want with it" – that says it all.

 

Then I opened my eyes and read the very next line of Pope Benedict’s encyclical: "Anyone who reads and reflects on these statements attentively will recognize that a disturbing step has been taken: up to that time, the recovery of what man had lost through the expulsion from Paradise was expected from faith in Jesus Christ: herein lay ‘redemption.’ Now, this ‘redemption’ ... is no longer expected from faith [in Christ], but from the newly discovered link between science and praxis [what it can do for us]" (n. 17).

 

Because of the tragedy of original sin, Tracy Lagondino went looking for redemption from the pains and difficulties of her life, just like we all do. The tragedy is that the "Baconian" version of salvation either reached her first, or she found it more convincing than what often passes today for the Christian version of salvation. Lord, help us to reveal the glory of your salvation to the world!