Contact: Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, 212-371-3191, pr@catholicleague.org

NEW YORK, June 9, 2015 /Standard Newswire/ --  Bill Donohue comments on remarks made yesterday by Pope Francis to the bishops of Puerto Rico:

Is Bruce Jenner on the pope's mind? It seems that way. Why else would he attack gender ideology in a speech that had nothing to do with the thesis of his address? As I pointed out last week, Pope Francis has not been shy about condemning gender ideology. Here is what he said yesterday:

• "Allow me to draw your attention to the value and beauty of marriage. The complementarity of man and woman, the vertex of the divine creation, is being questioned by gender ideology, in the name of a freer and more just society. The difference between a man and a woman is not meant to stand in opposition, or to subordinate, but is for the sake of communion and generation, always 'in the image and likeness of God.'"

The pope could have made these remarks about the complementarity of man and woman—this is a staple of Catholic thought on sexuality—without addressing gender ideology. By criticizing the postmodernist idea that nature is a fiction, and all that exists is a social construction, he deliberately took aim at the philosophical underpinnings of sexual reassignment surgery. That he also questioned the conventional wisdom in the academy that gender ideology is a liberating force is significant: he understands that freedom does not lie in contradiction to nature and nature's God.

The mainstream media will ignore the pope's address, even though the subject of sexuality and gender ideology, unlike climate change, lay squarely within the domain of faith and morals