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I heard Fr. Rick Walsh say in this excerpt: "we are Christ", "Christ is a woman", "Christ is lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer" and "in Christ I am lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer" (link to the whole homily)

But I only have heard the statements: we belong to Christ, we are of Christ or we are in Christ. And that Christ is our new identity.

Are these conclusions in the homily correct?

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  • I suppose he is trying to say in "We are Christ", everyone is included, without exception. Not that Christ is literally a woman. At least I hope so...
    – kutschkem
    Sep 2, 2020 at 5:56

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No, the conclusions are not correct. The line of reasoning underlying this homily amounts to a conflation of metaphors.

We are Christ

This one is tolerably permissible. It's a truncation of "We are the body of Christ" (e.g "Now you are the body of Christ, and members of member." 1 Corinthians 12:27). This would have to be understood as all baptized Christians belong to the one body ( the Church) of which Christ is the head.

Christ is a woman Christ is lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer

These are not only incorrect but by Catholicism they would be considered blasphemous and heretical. The name Christ refers to the Hypostatic Union of the Word of God and the man. Christ, as a man, was male ("And after eight days were accomplished, that the child should be circumcised, his name was called JESUS, which was called by the angel, before he was conceived in the womb." Luke 2:21). Catholicism also is clear that humans are born either as male or female; there is no metaphysical possibility of being born in a body of the wrong sex and thus it would be heretical to ascribe such a state to the God-man.

For example, Genesis 1:26-27 says "And he said: Let us make man to our image and likeness: and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth. And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them." The Church has understood this to mean that an individual human has a spiritual soul and is created by God as male or female.

The Council of Vienne (1311-1312) condemned the position that "the rational or intellectual soul is not of itself and essentially the form of the human body" (DH 902 as cited in Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, Ludwig Ott, pg. 107). The "form" of the human body is in contrast to the Platonic and Cartesian idea of an external union like a pilot with a ship. While Catholic theologians are undecided on whether the soul itself is male or female, it remains impossible for the form (potential) and body (actual) to differ in an essential quality and thus the question is if the soul isn't the source of the other sex, what is? Ultimately, there is no part of the human person where that attribute could originate as a result of the direction creation of God.

in Christ I am lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer

(and his similar statements around racial and gender categories)

These are incorrect but bordering on nonsensical. These seem to derive from taking statements like "There is neither Jew nor Greek: there is neither bond nor free: there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28) in a more than literal way. The context both here and for the similar line in Colossians 3:21 is not that those categories don't exist anymore or that by belonging to Christ you assume those categories from others who belong to Christ, but rather that all people regardless of those categories can be redeemed from their sins and saved.

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  • @Will I have attempted to elaborate the theology underlying the metaphysical conception of the soul and sex
    – eques
    Sep 2, 2020 at 16:53

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