If “Gender Ideology” Is a No, What Can the Church Say Positively to Transgender Catholics?

Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, Prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, holding up a copy of “Dignitas Infinita”

Since April, when the Vatican released Dignitas Infinita, a document which was highly critical of new understanding of gender identity, a steady stream of commentaries have been published by LGBTQ+ Catholics and allies critical of the document for its shortcomings.  Today’s post rounds up some of the commentaries not previously covered by Bondings 2.0.

In the National Catholic Reporter, writer Stephen McNulty noted that the Vatican “has offered a definitive ‘no’ to ‘gender ideology,’ whatever that means,” so there is now “a far more pivotal question,” namely, “What positive vision does the church have for trans and nonbinary Catholics?”

McNulty is concerned the church is “repeating the deadly approach it has inflicted for decades upon gay Catholics,” which can lead to that the “logical conclusion is conversion therapy.” As evidence, he cites a new children’s book by anti-transgender activist Abigail Favale against “gender ideology,” published by Bishop Robert Barron’s right-wing media organization “Word on Fire.” McNulty writes:

“Setting aside the palpable irony here — that those who complain the loudest about ‘pushing gender ideology onto children’ are now pushing their own gender ideology onto children — what are the use cases for such a book? . . .

“Consider another case: The parents, trying to be faithful to Catholic doctrine, enroll their child in a form of ‘gender exploratory therapy’ with a Catholic psychiatrist, a form of conversion therapy that tries to psychoanalyze ‘the origin’ of a child’s dysphoria — usually on the assumption that the child couldn’t possibly be transgender. In the course of that therapy, or maybe as a supplement to it, the child is provided this book, with the hopes that it will help them ‘understand [their] body as a good gift from God, not something to war against.’ . . .the goal is simple — convince a trans child to embrace a cisgender identity. To ‘convert’ them, we might say.”

McNulty argues that gender identity is much more basic than sexual orientation:

“Every day of our lives, we present, speak, live, take up space, and identify ourselves in gendered ways. If the church says that one must not do these things in a ‘transgender way’ — for that would be living out the dreaded ‘gender ideology’ — what is the alternative? The alternative is to live the way cisgender people do. The church’s moral metaphysics can at least countenance the existence of gay people; it cannot do the same for our trans and nonbinary siblings.”

Conversion therapy for any LGBTQ+ person is “a theology of death,” he says, and it has already and will lead to even more loss and suffering if continued. McNulty concludes more positively:

“There will be a day when the church finds a new, life-giving, and authentically Christian path in its ministry to transgender people. It will be a day of celebration. But it will also be a day of mourning, because there are transgender children alive today who, in all likelihood, will never get to see it [due to suicide] — in part because our church was more committed to a doctrine of exclusion than one of encounter.”

Also in the National Catholic Reporter, ethicist M. Therese Lysaught criticizes the declaration for failing “to treat women and transgender persons with the basic respect and consideration their dignity requires.”  Dignitas Infinita is disjointed between its sections on human dignity generally and on specific issues, likely due to the odd process of the document’s development. Lysaught writes:

“In other words, where the ontological equality of persons underlies Paragraphs 1-55, when it turns to ‘gender theory’ and medical interventions for transgender people, Dignitas Infinita quadruples down on the supposed ontological differences between men and women.

“This dissonance severely compromises the text. Paragraphs 56-60 read like remnants of a second document inelegantly grafted into the first. Here, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith simply reasserts the church’s long-standing gender ideology, now known as ‘gender complementarity.'”

Gender complementarity, favored by church leaders in the later 20th century and even today, is itself a “gender theory” or even “gender idolatry” Lysaught states, and it “leads to myriad problems both within and beyond the document.” She continues:

“Dignitas Infinita marks the first time the Holy See has issued an authoritative statement that takes up the novel, complex and politically fraught topic of medical interventions for transgender persons. What was needed — and widely hoped for — was a careful, informed and helpful analysis. Instead, the dicastery gave us one jumbled paragraph that demonstrates that it neither knows what it is talking about nor has even begun to conduct a decent theological analysis.”

Lysaught concludes by noting that Dignitas Infinita is problematic not only for the church, but that “the external ramifications of [the church’s] ideology are much greater” in the ways they can be used to justify violence against women and LGBTQ+ people. She adds:

“Rather, Dignitas Infinita fails to treat women and transgender persons with the basic respect and consideration their dignity requires (45). But in recognizing that ‘inequalities in these areas are also various forms of violence’ (45), it provides a starting point for crucial conversations going forward that might at last dismantle the church’s own gender ideology.”

Commenting on the specific moral issues–such as migration, abortion, gender ideology and sex change–the document identifies as problematic, Hunt asks: “Who decreed these the most egregious? In what universe do trans people belong with war; people who have abortions with human traffickers? Category errors abound.” She calls the gender section “intellectually embarrassing and harmful,” expounding on the harm:

“Theology like this is a danger and theologians have a duty to warn. More important, trans people deserve better research, to be listened to more thoughtfully, and full participation in conversations about them. None of that is reflected in this document. No pictures of Pope Francis eating with trans people will erase the damage done here by denying that human dignity involves choices as well as givens.”

In U.S. Catholic, scholar Emma Cieslik argues that the church has a lengthy tradition of gender diversity that is often unrecognized. Indeed, church leaders’ fears of “ideological colonization” by LGBTQ+ equalityis actually an inversion of the hi story that led to today. Cieslik writes:

“Western colonizers have historically forced patriarchal and queerphobic gender ideologies onto Indigenous communities around the world. The Catholic Church has been instrumental in these changes, so to argue that the church is somehow separate or fighting ‘ideological colonization’ flatly contradicts church history. . .

“[G]ender diversity has been part of the Catholic Church since the very beginning, as saints and key Catholic figures lived as what we would today call nonbinary or trans to mirror a God who supersedes all human constructs. The genderqueer identity of these saints is largely what distinguished them as divine and was highlighted in art as evidence of their closeness to God. It is through gender diversity that God has been present on Earth, as all humans are made in the image of God. . .

“The church’s crumbling foundations all tie back to this hypocrisy. The church cannot fight against the physical and emotional abuse of women and marginalized genders with one breath and deny gender-affirming health care with the second. To accept the division of these two issues surrounding gender would be to deny how every issue related to gender—abortion, women’s ordination, LGBTQ+ rights—is interconnected in the eyes of the church.”

—Robert Shine (he/him), New Ways Ministry, August 6, 2024

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