A new summer season is approaching and there is an abundance of offers for training and cultivation of the spirit.

With Pope Francis we can affirm that We live in an information society that saturates us indiscriminately with data, all at the same level, and ends up leading us to a tremendous superficiality when it comes to moral questions. We need an education that teaches us to think critically and that offers a path to maturity in values. (Evangelii Gaudium, 64)

This is the call that the Malagón Rovirosa Classroom which for years has been developed in the Monastery of Soto Iruz (Cantabria). This space of integral formation offers us the experience of a harmonious balance between study, work and prayer. A singular and unique experience: a sign, a foretaste, imperfect of course, of the society we would like to build.

In the classroom we are invited to learn to to be people, to be family. In these times, this means that we must travel the road from the self-referential and narcissistic "individualist" to the "person" that we are called to be. A person who can never be understood without relationships, without "family", without the solidarity of others in the present and in history. To travel a path that goes from isolation, which disassociates us and destroys us, to encounter, to permanent commitment. 

There is another very important experience we can live in the classroom. Perhaps the most important. That of the listenWe need silence. Not an evasive silence, organized to leave aside the anguish of everyday life. But a silence that helps us to stop, to listen. At first, we can only feel the roar of our storms. We come from the noise. The heart is filled with an unbearable din of crickets, of anxieties and anguish, of fears, of shadows of sadness. Only after a while do we discern among the noise the important messages: What have we done with our life? What have we done with our neighbor? What have we done with our weaker, more vulnerable "brothers" in this global world? Why this permanent war against the dignity of human beings? This silence, for Catholic believers, becomes daily and on many occasions Prayer.

We are all invited to this unique and singular experience. In it we welcome the call of Pope Francis to protect our common home through concern for the whole human family, dialoguing about how we are building our society and convinced that things can change if we all take responsibility for each other. Fraternity is possible!

You can find out more about the retreats and meetings at www.solidaridad.net

CARF had announced the issue, Hypersexualization, as a "growing problem in which our society is immersed: the sexual value of people is emphasized above any other quality". And the reflection meeting with Benigno Blanco lived up to expectations. The speaker has been a high-ranking official in the governments of José María Aznar, although he is almost better known for his years at the head of a civil society institution, the Spanish Family Forum. And for some years now, for his conferences on gender ideology. His analysis at the CARF was direct and argumentative.

At the outset, as a good teacher, he justified the topic he was going to address. "Our young people today, unless they live in families well anchored in a humanistic formation and a Christian vision of life, live in a hyper-sexualized world. The music they listen to, the fashionable clothes, the models of sexual behavior and the bodies offered to them by the series, the discourse that encourages this consumerist mentality of sex, to which is added the force of gender ideology, which turns one's individual conscience or the subjective perception of one's sexuality into one's identity (I am what I feel, I am what I feel like, my body does not determine me), makes our children, together with the easy access to pornography since they have a cell phone, are subjected, no matter how humanist or Christianly they have been educated, to a brutal pressure of hypersexualization of their look, their way of thinking, of understanding love, of understanding interpersonal relationships".

On the other hand, he referred to the consumption of sex from a very early age. "The age of first access to pornography is already between 8 and 10 years old in children, and it is also estimated that at 13-14 years of age about 70 percent of Spanish adolescents are addicted to pornography. Not that they watch something from time to time, but that they are addicted. Pornography is very addictive, it is like a drug. In fact, it has been studied how the same brain circuits are activated in the brain, with the compulsive and addictive consumption of pornography, that are activated with the consumption, for example, of cocaine".

"The pornographic gaze generated by the consumption of pornography that leads to seeing bodies as something usable at the service of my pleasure; this culture of sexual exchange without consequences that have allowed contraception and abortion; and the progressive commodification of the body and sex, lead to what we call hypersexualization"; the speaker pointed out.

Like slavery in the first century

Consequently, "our children, all this world of trivialization and hypersexualization, will influence them, because they are people of our time. Just as a child of a Christian family of the first century was influenced by the trivialization of slavery in the Roman society of that time. It was difficult for Christian parents, I think, to convince their children that slaves should be treated with respect and affection, because nobody did it".

"Today we do not have to be afraid that our children, our grandchildren, are subjected to a pressure of trivialization of their sexuality and the sexuality of others, brutal, almost unbearable. This is what we have to manage. There is no point in complaining or crying, because our parents had others, but this is one of the problems of our time, without any doubt", he stressed.

"Sex education needs to be taken care of."

"First conclusion: today we must be concerned about sexuality," said Benigno Blanco in his speech, who warned of the risks of not doing so. "In other historical eras, humanity's basic convictions about sexuality were widely shared. But today they are not. Because there are many forces in the environment, economic, consumer, ideological, political, philosophical, scientific, or scientistic, that can deeply deform the perception of sexuality of our children and grandchildren."

"That is why today's parents must take care in a very special way, absolutely indispensable, of the affective-sex education of our children. Today, if we do not take care of the affective and sexual education of our children, our children will be corrupted. There will be exceptions. A rose can grow splendidly in a dunghill, but it is normal for it to grow in a well cared for, well watered and well tended garden".

Educating in human sexuality

How to educate in affective-sexual matters at home, asked the CARF speaker, adding that "what I say for the family is valid for the school, for the parish, for friendships, etc., with due adaptations. Because in the end, educating is nothing more than taking care of the immense potential for good that exists in the people we love, to help them to actualize it. I take care of educating my children, or my grandchildren, or gaining their friendship, because I love them, and because I love them, I want them to be happy. Therefore, I try to give them the idea that I have of what it means to be happy, to be a good person, which is to be happy. And that implies having clear ideas about sexuality".

At this point, the speaker explained in brief outlines what human sexuality consists of. "Today we have to know how to explain human sexuality. And it is not easy, because it is an obvious fact". Benigno Blanco summed it up in a few strokes, which we must necessarily cut down as well. Perhaps these brushstrokes are useful: "It is enough to look at human beings. Sexuality is what we are. If we look at human beings without prejudice, we see boys and girls, there is nothing else. There may be malformations, as in everything human. But there is no such thing as a human being in the abstract. The human being only exists as a sexed being, in male or female. Therefore, we are our sexuality. We are sexed in everything we do, we are not only sexed when we practice sex, when we love, but in everything we do".

"I am male when I practice sex, of course, and also when I think, when I look, when I pray, because I do everything in male because I can't do it any other way. Because I am a male. I am my sexuality. Hence the importance of this subject. We are not talking about an accessory, circumstantial, temporary facet of the human being, but about what we always are. And that is why, if someone is wrong about his sexuality, he is wrong about himself, he will not understand himself".

Masculinity and femininity, complementary

"To understand what to do with our life, we must understand what it is to be a human being. And sexuality is the GPS for that," he continued. "By understanding our sexuality, we have what orients us in our life toward happiness. From understanding or not understanding sexuality derives understanding or not understanding our humanity and, therefore, the possibility of being happy, which is what matters to me for the people I love, that they can be happy. That's why, when a parent deals with giving criteria on sexuality to his children, it is not to impose a moral or prejudices of another era. What I want is for him to be happy. And to be happy, you have to be clear about humanity, you have to be clear about sexuality".

"We are sexual beings," emphasized Benigno Blanco. "Masculinity and femininity allow us to understand a form of interrelation between male and female. Because it so happens that the masculine and the feminine are corporeally and psychically complementary. Boy/girl, penis/vagina, sperm/oocyte, child. Of course, sexuality has a meaning. It is self-evident. Because we are binary sexed, male and female, putting together these respective masculinity and femininity, we can become fathers and mothers, to do something as wonderful as creating another human being. It is incredible to have that power. That sexuality can be used for other things, of course. But that it consists in that, in the potential to be a father or a mother, is evident. That's not a Christian doctrine, not a philosophical doctrine, not an Aristotelian or Thomistic doctrine. That is how we human beings are.

Educating the body to love: chastity

The speaker left aside at that point the fact that we are free, that is, that we can do diverse things with our sexuality. "That's another story," he commented. "One thing is what we are, and another what we can do with our freedom. This is good affective-sexual education. It's not explaining kamasutra, etc. to children. It is to understand the wonder that we have a sexed body, what sense that has, what potential it has to articulate our life in a structure of love. Because human beings, apart from being sexed, we are chronological, biographical beings, not instantaneous".

"Everything human has to be built and educated over time," Blanco pointed out. "We educate our intelligence through study, reading, to optimize our possibilities of knowing. Or for example in sports. For the same reason, our capacity to love with our body must be educated over time. We must put our body in optimal conditions to be able to love. That educating the body to love, in the moments of fullness, when it is mature enough to be a father or mother, is what the old wisdom of the West always called chastity. Chastity is not a set of arbitrary rules about what to do or not to do, that would be stupidity; it is human wisdom about how to help our body to be in the best conditions to win the gold medal of love".

"That implies studying, practicing sports, a certain accessibility, there are things that don't help and others that do. Therefore, to compromise our freedom with that possibility of loving that we want to optimize in the future. This is what we have to teach young people. It is not to transmit a rule of forbidden or allowed. It is to transmit what we humans have learned in millions of years. If you want, you can put your body in unbeatable conditions to give yourself, to love and to be loved. And there are things that help to be master of one's own sexuality to give it to the other person, and things that do not help".

"Wanting generates happiness".

The final part of Benigno Blanco's exhibition had a lot to do with happiness.

"We must try to educate our young people, and this goes for the elderly, to a sexuality that is not centered on ourselves, on our satisfaction, on our pleasure, but on the capacity to give ourselves to others. And love generates happiness. This is something that young people are not clear about either, because they lack life experience, and it is logical. When you become a venerable old man, like me, you realize that there are people who have made a reasonable effort, even with their blunders, to invest in loving, or to put themselves at the service of the love of others, and in sexual matters of your wife, and the women of her husband".

"Invest in loving."

"And when you reach this age, those who have invested in love, normally (in everything human there are exceptions), have been generating around them a warp of loves that make them deeply happy. You live loved and being loved. But that is not improvised. That is because you have invested in loving. In putting your sexuality at the service of giving life, of loving, not at the service of your pleasure alone," the speaker pointed out.

And on the contrary, the lecturer put on the sore spot of "casual and frivolous weekend sex", which is "like having a drink, what difference does it make. Having a drink is no more, but getting drunk is more. Making a mistake in matters of sexuality does not give more. We ask for forgiveness. To internalize a way of understanding sexuality that puts oneself at the service of oneself, does give more. Like alcoholism. It has consequences."

Before concluding his speech at the CARF, Benigno Blanco asked himself how to explain this to young people. His answer focused on example: "There is only one effective way, apart from words, to tell what I am telling. If they see that you are happy living as you say it is worth living. Our age, in a phrase of Paul VI that I make my own, because it is a great truth, does not need doctors so much as witnesses. It is the main thing that we old people, fathers, mothers, teachers, can bring to our children, so that they understand this marvel of human sexuality. It is worth educating in responsible sexuality. If they see that we, trying to live as we advise them that it is worth living, we are happy, because all human beings want to be happy. There is no human being who does not want to be happy".

Last year, despite the pandemic, it was possible to hold the Congress on the defense of life. It was not in person, "but it had a great projection, thanks to the media and new technologies, with a high following, perhaps even greater than the previous one.

The This year's Congress has as its theme Political correctness: freedoms at risk, and we trust it will be held with full normality or almost close to it," he began by saying in a meeting with journalists, Rafael Sánchez Saus, who will also be in charge of this year's edition in November.

He then added: "The subject this time is perhaps not as obvious as life, freedom of teaching or the action of the Church, raised in the previous ones. In fact, there are people who do not know exactly what we are talking about. Therefore, it is necessary to explain the reason for this issue".

The original idea came from the General Assembly of the Catholic Association of Propagandists (ACdP), which in October 2020 proposed to deepen the phenomenon of "political correctness, unstoppable growth in the West. And the Executive Committee of the Congress decided in January of this year to support this option and dedicate the 23rd Congress "to this disturbing issue".

His reflection began by alluding to the two thousand years of Christianity and the cultural heritage of the West. "I think that when we talk about political correctness, regardless of the ideas we have about society, of our own political ideas, we all identify a set of initially scattered ideologies, perhaps united by gender ideology as the most visible element, although there may be others, which are posing to society, from politics, the demand for a profound cultural and attitudinal change that reaches the mentality of the people."

"We are concerned about this as Catholics, as ACdP, and personally, as director of this Congress, for two reasons. First, because what political correctness as a whole really aspires to is a change in the cultural canon. By reformulating the cultural canon of the West, and making a devastating criticism of the true cultural roots, this has tremendous consequences on the Christian cultural legacy.

"Christianity," continued Rafael Sánchez Saus, "throughout its two thousand years, has created a civilization with very different expressions, depending on the time, depending on the geography, but in which practically, and I think there is a very broad consensus, at least in the field of history, which is my own, a good part of the advances that have taken place in the last two thousand years, in almost any place where Christianity has been received, have been inspired".

Good and evil are redefined

"The danger that we are beginning to see in recent decades is that the very basis of these contributions is beginning to be questioned. Everything that was good is now questionable, is bad, or requires a re-reading. The matter goes even further, and this fully justifies the need to deal with political correctness. Apart from the danger that all this poses for the transmission of the faith, for the adherence of Catholics themselves to their history, to their tradition, without which it is difficult in today's world to remain Catholics, we must be aware that all this is leading to a redefinition of good and evil. This is of tremendous gravity for all of us who adhere to the vision of good, which comes from the tablets of the Law, and which then, naturally, through the Gospels, is completely defined in the Christian sphere.

This redefinition of good and evil that in a very short time we have observed, first with concern and perplexity, and then with real alarm, leads to an ever greater difficulty, not only in transmitting the faith, but also in proclaiming it. This is something that in some countries, for example in the United States, has begun to be seen for some time now, and also in Europe," said the Congress director.

"Christianity, relegated to the negative."

At the meeting, Rafael Sánchez Saus pointed out that from the political sphere, from the sphere of legislation, it has begun "through that confusion, that fact so typical of our times, of confusing the legal with the moral, and what is good and what is bad begins to be defined. And Christianity, with its moral code, remains in many cases in the politically incorrect, in the negative, in that which has only contributed to the maintenance of structures that today are felt as structures of oppression.

"It is against this that the Congress, in essence, intends to stand up," the professor stressed. "And it is worth warning: be careful, because political correctness, which is often presented to us as an instrument of liberation of historically oppressed minorities, can become an instrument of real oppression of civil liberties, civic freedoms, not to mention religious freedoms, starting with freedom of conscience, and continuing with freedom of expression of what our conscience dictates.

Prominent personalities

José Gómez, archbishop of Los Angeles and president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), who will speak about the effects of political correctness on religious freedom, informed Rafael Sánchez Saus.

Speakers include Polish philosopher Ryszard Legutko, spokesman in the European Parliament for the Law and Justice party; historian and intellectual Rémi Brague, professor emeritus at the Sorbonne University; the vice-president of the Villacisneros Foundation, María San Gil; actor and playwright Albert Boadella, and the former director of ABC, Bieito Rubido. In addition, as usual, there will be several workshops on different areas. In the Youth Workshop, the colloquium will be moderated by omnesmag.com contributor Javier Segura.

Affects numerous fields

Political correctness, according to the director of the Congress, has its expression in various fields, and is already involving the family, education, memory, "also historical memory, specifically in Spain, because do not think that this is a problem only in Spain, although here we live it with special intensity. The problem of memory is manifesting itself not only in a civil war, but in the legacy of Western culture practically all over Europe, and we see it in America. A few days ago, for example, we saw how in Colombia they are removing, tearing down, the statues of Columbus, a character that has given birth to the name of the country itself".

Related"In transhumanism we have to distinguish science fiction from what we will be able to see."

Oxford University Professor, Anders SandbergIn the inaugural conference of the Congress on Transhumanism at the Francisco de Vitoria University, he stated that "the fundamental debate on this issue is whether through transhumanism we will continue to be human, or, on the contrary, we will lose our human essence". Well, from different approaches and angles, several speakers alluded to this question, in one way or another.

The last one to do so was Professor of Philosophy Juan Arana, of the University of Seville, who, in his closing remarks, pointed out that "our struggle is not against transhumanism, but for the survival of man". In addition, Juan Arana wondered about the essence of what is human in the face of the different transhumanist currents; and affirmed that "the philosophy of transhumanism is full of holes", and that "it is necessary to measure the consequences of our capabilities".

"All transhumanism is a hollowing out and transposition in techno-scientific terms of what it is to be human." "We will continue to think about what it means to be human and to work on transhumanism and posthumanism. For the moment, we are not cyborgs but sapiens," he said. Elena PostigoThe director of the Open Reason Congress in the conclusions. Postigo referred to the desire for immortality and transcendence to which mankind is called and, as he pointed out, "the desire for immortality and transcendence is the only way to achieve it. in an interview with OmnesHe reiterated that "it is in our hands to know how to use science and technology prudently and responsibly, at the service of people and the common good.

Professor Elena Postigo revealed to Omnes that "it was María Lacalle who, exactly one year ago, proposed this Congress to me". So it seemed logical to talk to María Lacalle, Vice Rector for Faculty and Academic Planning at the University Francisco de Vitoria, and Director of the Instituto Razón Abierta. We talked with her, particularly on the subject of her specialty, the family, and transhumanism. In addition to her university work, María Lacalle is the mother of six children and has four grandchildren.

The first question is obvious: How did you come up with the idea for this Congress? Normally, intuitions are the result of work.

̶ It was not my illumination, but that of the whole team. From the Open Reasoning Institute we try to promote in the University the proposal of Benedict XVI to propose an open reasoning approach to university work. He said that the university is the house where truth is sought, and to know the truth we must try to see the whole of reality, not just a small part of it, fleeing especially from the scientistic reductionism that is so frequent nowadays. Combining this aspiration to know the whole truth, it is a matter of asking reality the most relevant questions for the human being, going beyond the limits of each science. And also taking into account what John Paul II told us, that the University has to investigate the challenges of each time, trying to offer proposals that are for the good of the person and the common good. Thinking about what is around, one of these challenges is transhumanism, which also, as it is transversal, has an impact on all areas of knowledge and allows the inclusion of the entire university community.

The first day of the congress has passed. The second day has just begun. At the risk of being unfair, because perspective is needed, can you comment on anything that has struck you about this first day?

̶ Something that we have just discussed in the team is that outside speakers are surprised by how we approach things in a way that is intrinsically related to philosophy. That is, philosophical reflection is not a cherry on top of a purely technological talk, but here we approach things in an integrated way. And we've been delighted that people outside recognize that difference, because that's what we're trying to do.

We have seen round tables with a historical, cultural, medical, engineering, etc. approach. You are participating in one on family, with a strong title: 'Towards the dissolution of the family in a post-human utopia'. How can transhumanism impact such a vital institution for society as the family?

̶ Here we could ask ourselves about what anthropological conception underlies transhumanism. Throughout yesterday we saw that, on the one hand, one sees a materialism and a mechanicism; on the other hand, as a spiritualism, that proposal that Sandberg made to us at the beginning, the aspiration to scan our brain and upload it to the cloud. Be that as it may, the two currents, although apparently opposed, in the end coincide in something, which is an unfair understanding of corporeality. And from a realistic anthropology we must affirm that we are bodily beings. We are body, a body open to infinity, an incarnated spirit, but we are corporeal; we do not have a body, but we are body. And without corporeality there is no family, conjugal love is a carnal love, it is a love that includes sexual surrender, procreation is corporal.

And what do we find in these transhumanist proposals? That in a certain sense they also converge with the gender proposals. There are two major issues. One, what they call morphological freedom, to modify or manipulate the body as one wishes, including sexual identity; and on the other hand, the aspiration to free women from the 'unbearable burden' of pregnancy and motherhood. It is an ancient claim.

It seems that these things are coming up now, but we can remember Simone de Beauvoir, when she said that women are imprisoned in an annoying body and that they must be freed from that body; and above all from motherhood. To achieve this, work is being done to achieve asexual reproduction. And we are familiar with the pretension of obtaining artificial wombs, generating gametes artificially, in such a way that it is not the woman who has to carry this heavy burden. And also, by the way, it will be possible to dispense with men as well... Well, this is a joke...

Through in vitro fertilization there is already some of that....

̶ There is already some of that. We already see how at a given moment sexuality is detached from procreation, and now what we see is that it is not only sex without procreation but procreation without sex. What impact does all this have on the family? Obviously, it destroys all the basic family relationships: the conjugal relationship, the filiation, the kinship relationship, etc. We do not have time now to go deeper into the matter. Besides, between family and person there is a biunivocal relationship, isn't there? The person cannot develop properly without healthy family relationships, and at the same time, without a balanced person, a family cannot be constituted.

To the extent that a person is more machine-like and less human, what would those relationships be like? What kind of relationship can there be between a person and a machine? What about feelings, emotions, etc.?

̶ Indeed, it would not be a personal relationship, and therefore there could be no love relationship. In any case, I have not investigated that part of transhumanism that aspires to the cyborg, or the man-machine hybrid, but rather that part that converges with gender anthropologies, and that aspires to a self-construction, manipulating our body, toward a society genderlessAs they say, in a society in which sexual bimorphism has ended, everyone is free to build themselves, and therefore maternity and paternity must be taken out of the equation, we must make it happen through artificial means, so that children do not hinder us...

My research has not been so much on the science fiction side. Because what I'm talking about is already here, in part. The artificial womb has not yet been achieved. Now, is it a fully human form? What will happen to the children thus gestated? Because we know that in gestation there is not much interaction between mother and child. If we put it in a plastic bag, how is that child going to develop?

What can we do to help science and technology serve the human person?

̶ Of course, the key is training. Universities have a very big responsibility. In our vision, we want to be a reference in sciences and professions centered on the person. That is to say, we want to train our students so that when they go out into the working world, they carry out their profession from the centrality of the person, which means seeking the good of the person and the common good. If scientists took this into account, they would surely abandon certain lines that clearly go against the dignity of the person. Sometimes the scientific community reacts, as against this Chinese man who genetically manipulated twin girls. He seems to have been put in jail, although everything that comes from China is so opaque... But there are others asking for licenses in other parts of the world to do research. The key is for scientists to put the good of the person at the center, not commercial or other interests.

How was this case in China?

̶ A Chinese scientist genetically engineered two embryos of twin girls to be resistant to the HIV AIDS virus, because the girls' father had the virus. He implanted the embryos, and the girls were born. Until now, there had been experiments of this type, but they had not been able to implant the embryos. In this case, the embryos were implanted and the girls were born. These are two girls who have been genetically manipulated, with all that this implies. We think we are God, but we are not aware of what we are doing. Life is very powerful, and to touch anything.... Here we would have to talk to a geneticist.

Related"In transhumanism we have to distinguish science fiction from what we will be able to see."