The Vatican’s new instructions for Catholic schoolteachers and parents question gender theory and the intentions of those who identify as intersex or transgender. The guidelines, released Monday as LGBT people around the world celebrate pride month, call the idea that gender exists on a spectrum “nothing more than a confused concept of freedom in the realm of feelings and wants.” “Efforts to go beyond the constitutive male-female sexual difference, such as the ideas of ‘intersex’ or ‘transgender,’ lead to a masculinity or femininity that is ambiguous,” the document reads, adding that “this oscillation between male and female becomes, at the end of the day, only a ‘provocative’ display against so-called ‘traditional frameworks.’”

The document, titled “Male and Female He Created Them,” does not carry Pope Francis’ signature, and does not indicate that the pontiff reviewed the new guidelines. Francis has made contradictory remarks about gender theory and transgender people throughout his six-year papacy. LGBT Catholic groups immediately criticized the document. New Ways Ministry called it a “harmful tool that will be used to oppress and harm not only transgender people, but lesbian, gay, (and) bisexual people, too.”