Gender Identity Should Be on Synod Agenda—And It Is Now, Writes Paul Elie

Criticism and commentary about Dignitas Infinita, the Vatican’s transgender-negative declaration on human dignity, has continued steadily in the week since the document’s release. Today’s post features insights from Paul Elie, an award-winning author and a senior fellow at Georgetown University, who published his criticisms in The New Yorker.

(For all of Bondings 2.0’s coverage of the declaration, including previous responses from trans and nonbinary Catholics, as well as theologians and pastoral ministers, see the posts listed below.)

Elie opens his essay with the following line, “The arc of Vatican rhetoric on sexual issues is long, and it doesn’t bend much at all.”

He then sketches the history of LGBTQ+ church teachings since the late 20th century, from Vatican documents in 1975 and 1986 to the teachings and acts of Pope Francis—and with that, the tenure of Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez as head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office. Fernandez has been tasked by the pope with a new way of leading the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, one that is dialogic and synodal, for instance.

It is in broad view of LGBTQ+ developments over a half century with which Elie asseses the present declaration on human dignity:

“While ‘Dignitas Infinita’ is the most important statement to be issued by the D.D.F. under the new prefect, it is best seen as a final expression of the old C.D.F.’s admonitory approach. For example, the fresh social emphasis Francis evidently sought to give it by grouping sex and gender with affronts to human dignity serves instead to point up the offhand, ad-hominem quality of its remarks on gender identity. Consider this passage: ‘Desiring a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes . . . amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God, entering into competition with the true love of God revealed to us in the Gospel.’ In the nearly twelve-thousand-word text, that passage stands out both for its extreme rhetoric and its denunciation of individual behavior. It comes amid a dense, footnoted passage about the interaction of gender theory and human rights; suddenly the reader is presented with a citation-free sketch of an abstract individual, as imagined by a curial official. This individual is not credited with any effort of reflection or discernment—not seen as striving to join the physical and social aspects of personhood to the inward person (which some trans people identify as the God-given person), or as seeking to reconcile body and soul, as Christian believers have always sought to do. This individual is simply said to be succumbing to the temptation ‘to make oneself God.’ Thus gender identity, whose complexities call for a complex response informed by emerging currents of thought, is fit into the Vatican’s textbook critique of post-Enlightenment social movements, and reduced to one more iteration of individual self-determination run amok—the way the Vatican characterized gay life a generation ago.

“At a press conference about the new document, when Winfield from the A.P. asked Cardinal Fernández whether the Church might consider withdrawing the term ‘intrinsically disordered,’ the prefect admitted that the phrase ‘needs to be explained a lot’ and added, “Perhaps we could find a clearer expression.” Indeed, the arc that the Vatican’s approach to homosexuality has taken in the past four decades—from a ‘condition’ to be dealt with to a way of being that can be blessed—might have prompted the D.D.F.’s theologians, as they give greater attention to gender-identity issues, to consider adopting some nuance and a stance of humility toward them.

“Fortunately, there is an opportunity for the Vatican to really change its approach. At last October’s Synod gathering, participants discussed sex and gender intermittently, but their comments were largely kept out of the summary document, which emphasized procedural matters. This October, the participants will return to Rome for another month of collective listening and discernment. This time, gender identity should be firmly on the agenda. With that singular passage in the new document, the Vatican has put it there.”

—Robert Shine (he/him), New Ways Ministry, April 15, 2024

Previous Posts about Dignitas Infinita and Its Reception

“What Transgender Catholics and Their Allies Are Saying About Dignitas Infinita” (Bondings 2.0)

““A Painful Lack of Understanding”: Theologians Respond to Vatican’s Latest Declaration” (Bondings 2.0)

“The Strawman of “Gender Theory” in the Vatican’s New Document” (Fr. Daniel P. Horan)

“Vatican Document on Human Dignity Fails LGBTQ+ People” (New Ways Ministry)

“New Vatican Document Condemns Gender Transitions and Undefined ‘Gender Theory’” (Bondings 2.0)

“Vatican’s Doctrine Chief on Criminalization Laws: ‘When I Read Them I Wanted to Die‘” (Bondings 2.0)