Given that the meeting coincides this year with Easter and that the annual White House Easter egg artwork contest forbids, among other things, spiritual symbolism, some believers are consternated by a proclamation from the nation’s next Catholic president regarding a transgender-themed occasion.
President Joe Biden delivered his annual information for the “International Transgender Day of Visibility” on March 29th, in which he praised the incredible courage and accomplishments of transgender Americans and reiterated our government’s commitment to creating a more perfect union.
The executive director of Transgender Michigan and its Transgender Michigan support line, psychiatrist Rachel Crandall-Crocker, established the observance in 2009.
According to Crandall-Crocker, her intention was to make a joyful day unique from the “Transgender Day of Remembrance” on November 20. In a 2012 Huffington Post writing, leader Gwendolyn Ann Smith cited the need for awareness around anti-transgender crime that the event was founded in 1999.
At the same time, the White House instructed children participating in its traditional Easter chicken craft contest to desist from designs with “religious symbols” and “overtly spiritual themes”, as well as “partisan political statements”, cruel and unfair material, and “any controversial content”.
Easter, or Pascha, is the main spiritual holiday observed in all Christian churches to honor the resurrection of Jesus Christ from dying on Good Friday. The history of bleached “Easter egg” is believed to have originated with Persia’s earlier Christians, as a symbol of Christ’s reincarnation, with the practice steadily spreading to the other Eastern and then Northern churches.
Easter is a holiday that is supposed to coincide with the Jewish holiday of Passover when the Gospels claim that Jesus underwent his death, suicide, and resurrection on a Sunday. It alters annually in accordance with a complicated calculation of the lunar month in the spring and the thermal calendar. Easter is observed in the Catholic Church and other Christian churches on March 31, but most Catholic churches observe Easter on May 5 according to calendar differences.
Biden’s statement, the continuous times of Easter and the transsexual compliance, and the White House competition rules combined to fire outrage on social media.
Catholic pro-life advocate Lila Rose was one of those who expressed their opinions on X, formerly known as Twitter, on March 30. She wrote on X that the White House “will proudly celebrate the religion of the trans cult, but ban Christian ‘symbols or themes’ on the biggest Christian holiday — Easter.
Our “Catholic” President mocks and denigrates the faith when it is convenient as a selling point, according to she wrote.
Being man or being woman is a reality that God has made perfect in the Catholic Church, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church: both men and women have an inalienable dignity that comes from God their Creator. In the image of God, man and woman are both blessed with one and the same dignity. In their ‘being-man’ and ‘being-woman,’ they reflect the Creator’s wisdom and goodness.”
In March 2023, the U.S. bishops’ doctrine committee issued a 14-page statement declaring that surgical, chemical, or other interventions that aim “to exchange” a person’s “sex characteristics” for those of the opposite sex” are not morally justified.”
“The human person, body and soul, man or woman, has a fundamental order and finality whose integrity must be respected,” said the committee, chaired by Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville, Texas”. Patients, physicians, researchers, and anyone else who has any other rights over the body must adhere to the order and finality enshrined in the embodied person because of this order and finality.
The doctrine committee made it known that “many people are sincerely looking for ways to solve real problems and suffering.”
However, according to the doctrine committee, “any technological advancement that disobeys the fundamental order of the human person as a unity of body and soul, including the sexual difference embodied in the body, ultimately does not help but rather harm the human person.”
OSV News’ multimedia reporter, Gina Christian. Follow her on X (formerly Twitter) at @GinaJesseReina.
