Trans Inclusion Is Not Enough for True Synodality

Today’s post is part of Bondings 2.0’s series of theological reflections on LGBTQ+ issues and the Synod on Synodality, which will be published as the General Assembly of the Synod meets at the Vatican this month. For all of Bondings 2.0’s Synod coverage, including reports from Rome, click here.

Today’s post is from Dr. Nicolete Burbach, who is the social and environmental justice lead at the London Jesuit Centre. Her research focuses on using Pope Francis’ teachings to navigate difficulties in the Church’s encounter with transness.

The synodal process has galvanised a movement for marginalized groups to be actively included in the deliberative life of Church. The aim is for everyone to be able to contribute the diverse riches of their faith and insights. And this extends to us trans people, too.

Against this idea, some Catholics claim that those of us who are trans should find our identity in Christ over and against our other identities. Under this view, we should participate in synodality not on the basis of diversity as ‘trans people,’ but simply as ‘Catholics’.

However, neither of these approaches properly contextualise transness. As a result, they fail to address the real complexities of trans inclusion. These shortcomings are highlighted by a third perspective: trans liberation.

There are many different ways of being trans, yet what unites all trans people is that our lives fall foul of certain norms around sex and gender. These norms underpin cultures and institutions that directly or indirectly penalise us for living our lives; something known as ‘social punishment’. This can mean direct discrimination, such as when employers are less likely to hire trans people. It can also mean indirect discrimination, such as when the resulting trans poverty makes it harder to rent accommodation. And it can mean systemic disadvantage, for example when homelessness then makes it harder to register with a healthcare provider. Finally, it can also mean exclusions, including active ones such as being denied Communion, or more passive ones like the effect of people in your community seeing you as deluded (even if they are nice about it).

These dynamics are a point of distinction within society, singling us out as a group with a shared identity; one defined by our being subject to these punishments. This is, at least in part, what it means to be trans; it is how transness is ‘produced’ as a distinctive ‘thing’ in society. Trans liberationism builds on this insight to argue that inclusion into society or institutions such as the Church is not enough for trans people. While society and the institutions that govern and reflect it punish trans life, we can never truly flourish within them. Instead of simple inclusion, we should instead seek to transform society and its institutions to liberate people from the social punishment that singles them out as trans.

A trans liberation approach also challenges the idea that trans people should take our place in the life of the Church simply as Catholics, without reference to our transness. ‘Trans’ is the name we give to the group that is singled out by these social punishments. This is something objective, not a label we simply can discard based on an aspiration to a particular model of belonging to the Church. For us to participate in the Church simply as ‘Catholics’, our communities would need to repent of the social punishments that define us as ‘trans’ people. It would need to become the kind of society trans liberation seeks–one that is free of the social punishments that produce transness as such.

I also think this liberationist perspective is the best one for synodality. The synodal life of the Church is enriched by differences in the Church. But to enrich, these differences must be lifegiving ones, rather than revolving around punishment. Hence the Instrumentum Laboris for the Synod now underway states that synodality:

“…reconstitutes the Church in unity: it heals her wounds and reconciles her memory, welcomes the differences she bears and redeems her from festering divisions, thus enabling her to embody more fully her vocation to be ‘in Christ like a sacrament or as a sign and instrument both of a very closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race’ (LG 1).” (IL 28)

The dynamics of punishment that produce transness produce such a “festering division”. It is the division between the group that punishes, and the group that is punished. We should be free of these divisions, and thereby be able to just be Catholics.

Indeed, trans liberation in the Church may also be the only way for trans people to truly be a part of the synodal life of the Church. The Instrumentum Laboris identifies synodality with communion, stating that:

“Communion is not a sociological coming together as members of an identity group but is above all a gift of the Triune God, and at the same time a task… of building the ’we’ of the People of God” (46).

In other words, communion, and therefore synodality, is not simply a matter of social processes like identification. Instead, it is rooted in a spiritual reality. The document identifies this with the unity of humanity in God–something we have yet to achieve, but of which “we receive an anticipation” in the Eucharist (47).

The document also teaches that we take our place within this communion through “participation”. This, among other things, is “a way of nurturing the relationships of hospitality, welcome, and human well-being that lie at the heart of… communion” (56). True ‘inclusion’ in the synodal process means this participation, whereby we enter into the synodal communion.

It is hard to see how the relationships of “hospitality, welcome, and human well-being” that characterise it are compatible with the social punishment that defines trans people as a group. Nor does it belong to the peace we glimpse in the Eucharist.

In this context, we need to go beyond our inclusion in the synodal life of the Church, whether specifically as trans people, or without regard to our transness. We need to achieve trans participation. And this cannot come while we are turned away at the altar, while we are rejected and condemned (or even just pitied as deluded), or while members of our communities continue to support policies that seek to eliminate transness from the public sphere. Unless we overcome these things, our communion will always be marred by the festering division of social punishment. Mere inclusion is not enough. To truly live up to our Eucharistic vocation to synodality, what we need is trans liberation.

—Nicolete Burbach, October 15, 2023