If you're in touch with current events in pop culture, you're certainly aware that Sonny and Cher's daughter Chastity Bono has undergone "gender reassignment surgery."  She now "self-identifies" as a man and goes by the name "Chaz."  The media, of course, is touting her (they would say "him," but this is to deny the truth of the matter) as a hero and holding her up as a model of great courage.

 

In no way do I wish to make light of this situation.  I can't imagine the interior pain that would lead a woman to mutilate her body in an attempt to "become a man."  My heart goes out to her in all sincerity.  What I wish to reflect on here is a statement she made in a recent interview on Good Morning America.  "To me," she said, "gender is between your ears, not between your legs."  In other words, gender is nothing but a construct of the mind.  It has nothing to do with your God- given sex.

 

This dissonant view of existence is a direct descendant of Rene Descartes famous dictum: "I think, therefore, I am."  When human identity is posited in "thought," man becomes a "mind" divorced from his body.  In turn, the body comes to be seen as a "thing" to be dominated and manipulated at will.  The body doesn't say anything about reality.  Rather, the "mind" sets itself up as the determinant of reality - "I think, therefore I am."  Subjective thoughts are no longer answerable to objective reality.  "Reality" is reduced to what I think and feel about it.

 

Listen again to the ringing "Cartesian-ness" of this statement: "To me, gender is between your ears, not between your legs."  And these statements, with which she backed up her main point: "I've felt male as far back as I can remember ... As a child it was really clear, I felt like a boy."  I feel like a boy, therefore I am a boy - that's her operative philosophy.  In discussing the difficulty of her decision to undergo the surgery, she said, "Finally, it came down to ... this is who I am, I need to finally be who I am."

 

Having fallen prey to the Cartesian split between body and soul, Chastity Bono has reduced the God-given sex of her body to something merely bodily - as if her body and its sex were merely a shell that her "‘male' mind" inhabited.  But the human being is not a spirit or mind housed in arbitrarily sexed-flesh.  Because of the profound unity of body and soul in God's design, the human being is a"sexed being" through and through, physically and spiritually.

 

As the Catechism makes clear, "Sexuality affects all aspects of the human person in the unity of his body and soul" (CCC 2332).  It "is by no means something purely biological," John Paul II told us.  Rather, sexuality "concerns the inner-most being of the human person" (Familiaris Consortio 11).  The body reveals the deepest truth of the person, John Paul II reminded us.  "It is, thus, in all its materiality... penetrable and transparent, as it were, in such a way as to make it clear who man is (and who he ought to be)" (TOB 7:2).

 

What, then, is the charitable response to Chastity Bono and others like her?  As Pope Benedict XVI has helped us see, we cannot separate charity from truth.  "Truth is the light that gives meaning and value to charity," he wrote.  "Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality.  Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way" (Caritas in Veritate 3).

 

Those who go along with the deception that Chastity Bono is now a man are not loving her.  Rather, they are fostering an incredibly harmful illusion.  To love her demands speaking truth.  Of course, that truth must be presented in love.  Love without truth does not do justice to the person, but nor does truth without love.

 

So, in love, it must be acknowledged that Chastity Bono is not a man and never will be.  She is a woman tragically cut off from her true sexual identity.  The solution is not for her to mutilate her body.  The solution is for her to experience the healing of her soul.  This is a healing that, in the final analysis, only the Savior of the world can offer.  This, indeed, is why he died and rose again - so we could know who we truly are.  This must be our desire for Chastity Bono.