During LGBTQ Pride Month, Vatican issues document rejecting gender change
The Vatican issued an official document Monday rejecting the idea that people can choose or change their genders and insisting on the sexual "complementarity" of men and women to make babies. The text, "Male and Female He Created Them," was intended to help Catholics address what the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education called an "educational crisis" in the field of sex education.
It called for a "path of dialogue" and listening on the issue of "gender theory" in education. The document, published during LGBTQ Pride Month, was immediately denounced as contributing to bigotry and violence against gay and transgender people. Advocacy group New Ways Ministry said it would further confuse individuals questioning their gender identity or sexual orientation and at risk of self-harm.
Even priestly advocates for LGBTQ Catholics noted that the text appeared to have relied entirely on previous papal pronouncements, Vatican documents and philosophers and theologians.
"The real-life experiences of LGBTQ people seem entirely absent from this document," said the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest who wrote a book on improving Catholic Church outreach to the LGBTQ community, titled "Building a Bridge." ''We should welcome the congregation's call to dialogue and listening on gender, and I hope that conversation will now begin."
Pope Francis has repeatedly argued the position that people cannot choose their genders. But the document represents the first attempt to put the Vatican's position, first articulated fully by Pope Benedict XVI in a 2012 speech, into a comprehensive, official text.
The document called for a new alliance among families, schools and society to offer a "positive and prudent sexual education" in Catholic schools so children learn the "full original truth of masculinity and femininity."
It called gender fluidity a symptom of the "confused concept of freedom" and "momentary desires" that characterize post-modern culture. It rejected terms such as "intersex" and "transgender" and said the purpose of the biological "complementarity" of the male and female sex organs was to ensure procreation.
Francis DeBernardo, head of New Ways Ministry, said such concepts are outdated, misinformed and ignore contemporary science on factors beyond visible genitalia that determine gender.
"Gender is also biologically determined by genetics, hormones and brain chemistry - things not visible at birth," DeBernardo said in a statement. "People do not choose their gender, as the Vatican claims, they discover it through their lived experiences."
He said the Catholic Church should encourage this process of discovery, saying it's "a process by which individuals discover the wonderful way that God has created them."