FAMILIES, BECOME WHO YOU ARE!

This is a reflection from December 28 - the feast of the Holy Family.


The headlines read: “A Pregnant Man: It’s Incredible!” “He’s Having Their Baby!” “Pregnant Man Stuns Medical Profession.” The whole frenzy is over the story of a man, Thomas Beatie, living in with a woman, who decided that he will be the one who will get pregnant since the woman had her womb removed by hysterectomy (because she thinks she’s a man). But reading through the article, we discover that “he” (Thomas), is actually a “she.” So much for media sensationalism.

Thomas Beatie was born Tracy Lagondino, a woman who decided she wanted to be a man. She had her breasts surgically removed (mutilated is the proper word), and began injecting herself with large doses of testosterone to make herself look and sound like a man. And so came the transformation — she became a he. From the Tracy Lagondino story, we learn that truth is not a matter of personal opinion. Truth does not depend on what one feels or sees. She may look and feel like a man, but deep inside, she is still the woman God created and intended her to be. That’s why she became pregnant.

Today, many countries debate over the real definition of marriage and the family. Should it really be between a man and a woman? The late Archbishop Fulton Sheen is known to have once said, “Truth is truth even if no one believes it. Error is error even if everybody believes it.” Truth is not subjective, i.e., what I feel or think. Truth is primarily objective, based on the reality and nature of a thing — the natural moral law.

We say that the family is the basic unit of society because the family is pre-political. Before there was even a government or state, the family was there already. In a sense, the family is above the state. It is not the State that defines the family; on the contrary, it is the family that occasioned the creation of the State. The State’s reason for being is to protect the institution of the family. Thus, it is not for the state to define the nature of the family.

Let this be the grace that we ask from God today, on the feast of the Holy Family.

~ Fr. Joel Jason