Over the course of a few days in mid-January, the U.S. Supreme Court (“SCOTUS”) heard oral argument in a major Title IX case, a U.S. Senate committee held a hearing about the danger of chemical abortions, and Pope Leo gave an address to foreign diplomats. What do these disparate events have in common?
All three expose the importance of truthful communication and the real-world danger of the abuse and misuse of language. At SCOTUS, lawyers and justices referred to boys and men with feminine pronouns, and used nonsensical words like “cisgender” and “transgender”; in the Senate hearing, an obstetrician from an elite medical school refused to answer the question, “can a man get pregnant?”; and in his address, the Pope lamented the loss of shared meaning in the words we use.
Taken together, these three proceedings remind us that we live in perilous times—times in which the very concept of truth is not merely elusive, but proactively denied by large, influential institutions. It is a time when, for some, words mean whatever any particular interest group says they mean, and that these meanings will be imposed by force if necessary.
The words matter
In a pivotal scene of Robert Bolt’s play A Man for All Seasons, about the martyrdom of St. Thomas More, the English statesman is confronted by his daughter Margaret and her husband Will Roper after Parliament passed the Succession to the Crown Act of 1533. Among other things, the Act required any British subject, if commanded, to swear an oath recognizing both the legitimacy of Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn and Henry’s supremacy over the Church in England. The provision for the oath was added to the Act solely to test the loyalty of clerics and government officials—especially Thomas More—by forcing them to repudiate the authority of the Bishop of Rome.
When news of the Act became known, Margaret, Roper, and More had the following exchange:
Margaret: Father, by this Act, they’re going to administer an oath.
More: An oath! On what compulsion?
Roper: It’s expected to be treason!
More: What is the oath?
Roper: It’s about the marriage, sir.
More: But what is the wording?
Roper: We don’t need to know the wording—we know what it will mean!
More: It will mean what the words say! An oath is made of words! It may be possible to take it. Or avoid it.
Later in the play, Margaret visits More in the Tower of London, where he has been imprisoned for his refusal to take the oath. Margaret, in despair over her father’s inevitable execution if he does not consent, urges him to say the words of the oath, but think otherwise to himself.
More: You want me to swear to the Act of Succession?
Margaret: “God more regards the thoughts of the heart than the words of the mouth.” Or so you’ve always told me.
More: Yes.
Margaret: Then say the words of the oath and in your heart think otherwise.
More: What is an oath then but words we say to God?
Margaret: That’s very neat.
More: Do you mean it isn’t true?
Margaret: No, It’s true.
More: Then it’s a poor argument to call it “neat,” Meg. When a man takes an oath, Meg, he’s holding his own self in his own hands. Like water. [He cups his hands] And if he opens his fingers then . . . he needn’t hope to find himself again. Some men aren’t capable of [holding firm], but I’d be loath to think your father one of them.
Of course, both these lines of dialogue were invented by Bolt for his play. But they are derived from and consistent with various writings and letters of More and Margaret. In any event, both scenes are cautionary tales about the times in which we live.
Live not by lies
The January 13 SCOTUS arguments concerned laws in Utah and West Virginia that restrict participation in girls’ and women’s athletics competitions to . . . girls and women. Like laws in some 25 other states, the purpose of these statutes is to guard the integrity of girls’ and women’s competitions and to protect athletes from unreasonable risk. The context is the rise of boys and men intruding upon women’s sports and other spaces by calling themselves “trans girls” or “trans women,” thus denying opportunities to women while endangering their health and safety. These terms are contrasted by the words “ciswomen” or “cisgender,” for example, indicating, well, women who are actually women, rather than men cosplaying as women.
The argument before the Court seemed to indicate that Utah and West Virginia’s laws will be upheld by the Court. Even so, the argument was replete with the use of false words, terms, and categories, even among justices who seemed inclined to protect girls and women. The prefixes “cis” and “trans” are rooted in the pernicious, false ideology that, for example, men can become women or that there are two categories (at least) of women, the kind with ovaries and a vagina and the kind with testes and penises.
To use the terms “cis” and “trans” is implicitly to accept that these false assertions are true. If I use the term “cisgender woman,” it necessarily implies that I have agreed that there are other kinds of women. Words and phrases derive their meanings from communities of discourse; their definitions are determined by intellectual commitments to those linguistic communities. Thus, to use terms like “cis” and “trans” is to engage in speech that is objectively false. It is to participate in ideology rather than reality. This is why even those justices who are inclined to protect girls and women should refrain from using the false words and phrases rooted in pernicious ideology. When ideology trumps reality, we are on a short road to chaos.
This is illustrated by the Emory ob/gyn who refused to answer the simple question—repeated over and over—“Can a man get pregnant?” In her opening remarks, the physician smugly declared that she follows the science and evidence in her stand on abortion. This prompted Senator Josh Hawley to ask the simple, straightforward, scientific question of whether men can become pregnant. The Emory physician refused to answer the question, choosing instead to accuse Hawle of playing political games. In other words, she refused to state a simple, straightforward, categorical truth: only women can become pregnant.
Of course, we know why she refused. Like the plaintiffs’ attorneys in the SCOTUS case, the physician has embraced the false ideology that a woman becomes a man simply by declaring herself so. Thus, if a woman says she is a “trans man,” and the physician endorses the false ideology, she will conclude that men can, indeed, become pregnant. While she was clearly embarrassed by it, the physician participates in a falsehood that prevents her from answering the simplest of questions about basic human biology. She could not betray her ideological commitments, on the one hand, but she is rightly ashamed of those commitments on the other. So she refused to answer, calling the question politically motivated.
When words are divorced from reality, they become expressions of the false ideologies that produce them. Put another way, they become weapons of oppression, as they do not correspond to anything real. Thus, this physician at a prestigious medical school has literally rejected science and evidence, which calls into question her judgment about everything. Like the plaintiffs’ attorneys in the SCOTUS cases, this doctor lives by lies.
If the ideology does not arise, neither do the words, phrases, and grammar that communicate and advance it. We cannot participate in this ideology, even for the sake of argument. To use phrases like “cisgender” and “transgender” is to accept the “legitimacy” of illegitimate words. It is to assume the “truth” of false phrases and, thus, the ideology that produces them.
If meaning is “fluid,” ideology reigns
While Pope Leo’s address to the diplomatic corps occurred a few days before the SCOTUS argument and Senate hearing, it is a correction of both.
“Today, the meaning of words is ever more fluid and the concepts they represent are increasingly ambiguous,” the Pope observes. In the “contortions of semantic ambiguity, language is becoming more and more a weapon with which to deceive, or to strike and offend opponents.” This is not a mere academic problem. Rather, it has profound practical implications about the way we view the world, and how we live peaceably together. “When words lose their connection to reality,” Pope Leo continues, “reality itself becomes debatable and ultimately incommunicable.”
The result, of course, is precisely the Orwellian dystopia toward which we are rapidly descending in the U.S. By reducing language to the expression of false ideologies—rather than a participation in reality—we threaten the very freedom of thought and expression that the ideologically laden terms claim to be rooted.
“Freedom of speech and expression is guaranteed precisely by the certainty of language and the fact that every term is anchored in the truth,” explains Leo. But if words are expressions of ideology rather than truth, “a new Orwellian-style language, . . . in an attempt to be increasingly inclusive, ends up excluding those who do not conform to the ideologies that are fueling it.” Thus, declares Leo, “We need words once again to express distinct and clear realities unequivocally.”
The crisis in the U.S. over the meaning of words is not simply an arid debate. Rather, it goes to the heart of such things as private spaces for women, the practice of medicine, the formation of laws and regulations, and even freedom of expression. “It is painful to see how, especially in the West, the space for genuine freedom of expression is rapidly shrinking,” laments Pope Leo. The SCOTUS argument and Senate hearing reveal the truth about Leo’s observation. When ideology trumps truth, we are all the victims.
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Obamacare: Nancy Pelosi said, “We will know what’s in the bill when it’s passed.” We’re tired of officials in the Church and in government operating with duplicity and deceit. We’re tired of those with access to funds stealing from Church coffers and the assets accrued from taxation. We’re tired of Church officials lying to us.
“Obamacare: Nancy Pelosi said, “We will know what’s in the bill when it’s passed.”
I hate to point this out, but what she said is arguably true.
The typical Congressional enactment today is hundreds, if not thousands of pages long-but is largely incomplete, because it will have hundreds of mentions of a phrase such as “The Secretary shall prescribe regulations. This allows Congress and the President to take credit for a noble sounding legislation while alienating the heavy lifting of specifics to “expert” in the bureaucracy of the executive branch
For example, in 2008 There was a law passed called the “Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008”.
This was one section.
§ 20163. Certification of train conductors
‘‘(a) REGULATIONS.—Not later than 18 months after the date
of enactment of the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008, the
Secretary of Transportation shall prescribe regulations to establish
a program requiring the certification of train conductors. In prescribing such regulations, the Secretary shall require that train
conductors be trained, in accordance with the training standards
developed pursuant to section 20162
The result was a regulation (49 CFR Part 242) that was 80 pages long, and largely focused on a subset of proficiencies and abilities required of locomotive engineers and was issued only after a lengthy public comment period involving individual railroads, industry groups (American Association of Railroads), shippers and employee unions.
Of course, just excising the relevant portions of 49 CFR Part 240, which regulates the licensure of locomotive engineers would have been too easy.
It is routine that bills have to be passed to see not what is IN them, but what is PUT in them by the permanent bureaucracy.
And then there is the question of who we elect to alienate legislative responsibility.
If you search on Youtube for this video “Senator Almost Hit By Train While Giving Train Safety Speech”, you will see Stolen Valor Dick Blumenthal getting closer than he that to being killed on camera by a train passing a station platform because he ignored the yellow line. Although the RSIA was passed before little Richard was in the Senator, his predecessor Chris Dodd would have been just as capable of ignoring routine safety procedures while pontificating on safety.
Sadly I have to include Leo in the same category as the Senate and Supreme Court here. Our Church’s Code of Canon Law and GIRM both contain many many very clear statements of practices and beliefs for us to follow and no sane cleric ever says directly that they are “wrong” and need not be followed. Instead they leave the rules stand on a shelf somewhere collecting dust and proceed to do whatever they choose to in clear contradiction- according to the topic here, the “meaning of the words” – and Leo has done nothing to correct that.
The examples are endless – just look at the dictates of the Charlotte Bishop and it’s a list of it’s own. The rules on proper disposition to receive the Eucharist versus the “spirit” of VAT II practice of anyone and everyone receiving every Sunday. And on and on.
So Leo is in charge of the practice of Canon Law and the GIRM where the clear words with clear meaning therein are repeatedly not followed and he has done nothing about it. Thus,I can’t think of any clearer example of words without meaning.
Seems like the pot calling the kettle black here. I hope Leo reads his speech again to himself and puts it into practice.
The perversion of language has beset Western society for many years, but seems to have reached its peak since the COVID pandemic. Redefining language is nothing new: the abortion industry has been doing it since the sixties. The so-called sexual revolution and feminist ideology, rooted in Marxist, Freudian and Nietzschian philosophies, have incrementally been perfecting Orwellian language, to paraphrase Pope Leo XIV, to a fine art.
Back in 1996, executive director of the International Anti-Euthanasia Task Force and author of “Deadly Compassion” (Wim. Morrow & Co.), once said that “All social engineering is preceded by verbal engineering”. In 1996, she wrote a comprehensive article entitled “The Art of Verbal Engineering” with Wesley J. Smith, for the Duquesne Law Review (https://dsc.duq.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3087&context=dlr). While Ms. Marker was speaking about another evil ideology, euthanasia, her article still addressed the issue of subjective language. I highly recommend reading her article.
What was once regarded as unacceptable has gradually become palatable, in large part due to the softening of language, the redefinition of certain words and the use of euphemisms. Language has been engineered towards a new social construct which accepts the killing of our fellow human beings (euthanasia) in the name of compassion and rejects the notion of God deciding when our time on earth is over. It accepts the killing of the innocent human being at its earliest stages (abortion), in the womb of the mother, in the name of expedients deemed more important than the basic right to life. It accepts the nonsense of so-called transgenderism, in the name of “inclusivity”, which is ruining lives, especially those of minors, who are particularly vulnerable and easily influenced.
The perversion of language, via redefining words and changing accepted definitions, is a falsification of truth in order to indoctrinate society at large into accepting the unacceptable. What is especially egregious is that impressionable and vulnerable populations are being manipulated into believing agenda-driven ideologies, to their own detriment and to the detriment of their loved ones.
For all appearances, the proponents of abortion, euthanasia and transgender ideologies, have, for now, succeeded in advancing their cause. The situation seems hopeless at times, given all the narratives being circulated in favor of cultural ideologies. However, objective truth, based on science, and on God’s creation, will eventually triumph over the subjective and deceitful verbal and social constructs, instituted by men and women who deny God and science.
It would therefore be very helpful if atheists, who usually rely on science, were to participate in re-establishing the basic genetic, biological truth of binary sexual identity, despite their unbelief in God.
As for believers, we must also add our voices to the fray. The revealed truth of God’s creation for all of humanity is the way forward. It boils down to the basic tenet of God’s creation: life begins at conception and ends at natural death, and male and female He created them. It is time for the relativistic mindset of today’s culture to end.
Marie Brousseau, author of the article “Truth and Language”
https://mariebrousseau.com/2025/12/08/truth-and-language/
Great comment and compelling reading materials. Thank you.
When asked what he would do to save his nation, the Chinese emperor said “I would restore the meaning of words.”
Now, while having a vertebrate president rather than a the “fluid” alternative…when access and military presence in Greenland are already assured by long-standing agreement, what word best captures the reported comment “it’s psychological, I want to own it.” Some might say “kleptomaniac.”
Whatever else it is, the complex global chessboard is not a candy counter.
When words are divorced from reality, Craycraft weaves a seamless garment of language and its definitive correspondence to a truth. Although that truth may be what is true within the confines of the believer. It’s complex.
For example, When Pope Leo laments ideology that trumps truth. We’ve heard the use of the word ideology countless times during the previous pontificate, when ideology meant adherence to Apostolic tradition. Take Craycraft’s insightful play of the word oath in Saint Thomas More’s personal moment of truth. Follow Meg’s plea and save yourself. What are words? For the Saint the oath could not be divorced from the source of all truth.
In sacred scripture we find several places where it’s morally correct to remain true to an oath, a promise, a commitment. Even when circumstances change to the detriment of the oath giver? What struck this writer in the Thomas More case was the oath made by priests to God. How many of us have contemplated leaving when it appears, is it all worth it? When a man must withstand Hamlet’s fabled ‘slings and arrows’, when one believes, however with what measure of belief? Does one’s life and happiness rest on a commitment that hangs on a thread to what is widely refuted by society?
As with the lie underlying words conditioned by cis or co we know inwardly in accordance with a law within, that law of nature that reflects eternal law that our integrity, the very truth of our existence remains Yes.
As a second-generation feminist (undergrad 70-74, grad 74-76 in astrophysics, mathematical statistics, and physics), I am furious that these women are wasting the hard work we did to allow them to rise to the positions they now achieve with relative ease. And don’t even think of referring to me or my husband as cis-anything, Male and female created he them. I will admit that I do not understand grown men going through a “gender change”, e.g., Bruce Jenner, who decided he was a woman in a man’s body. You will note, however, that Jenner vociferously calls for keeping men and boys out of women and girls sports. What greater testimony does one need.
Underlying our nature as male or female is the spiritual determination ordained by God, that which can never be changed whether we amputate, surgically remove and add, infuse hormones, surgically plastify our features.
We remain in spirit as created in God’s image on earth and after death. When we appear before God we will appear as initially created whether consigned to eternal damnation for blaspheming God’s image, or forgiven our sins and transformed spiritually into his likeness.
“When ideology trumps reality, we are on a short road to chaos.”
This is because, one cannot, in essence, “trump” the essence of reality, nor is reality a means between two extremes. Any ideology that denies essence , is a lie from the start.