As long as efforts are made to prevent “scandal and restlessness among the faithful,” the Vatican has ruled that trans people may be baptized, serve as guardians, and be testimony at a relationship.
The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith stated in a statement released last week and approved by Pope Francis:” A transgender, who has also undergone hormone therapy and sex-reassignment surgery, you receive baptism under the same conditions as another believers… Children and adolescents with transgender issues, if properly prepared and willing.
But when it came to trans relatives, The Dicastery was less binary. An adult transgender may be permitted to serve as a godfather or aunt under certain circumstances. However, pastoral prudence dictates that it should n’t be permitted if there is a risk of scandal, unwarranted legitimization, or disorientation because such an activity does not qualify as right.
The Dicastery claimed that it was responding to inquiries about” transgender and homoaffective persons ‘” access to ceremonies, which were posed in July by the Italian-born Bishop Jose Negri of Santo Amaro, Brazil.
Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, the Brazilian commander of the Dicastery, signed the document and it was published in Italian and Portuguese.
It stated that receiving communion if one had never repented of “grave sins” did not confer” sanctifying joy.” People who live in marriage-style relationships that are” also known to the community” would also be given different factors.
Nothing in canon law forbade someone transgender or “homoaffective and married” from serving as a caregiver or relationship see if they lived “in compliance with the faith,” even though each case should become “wisely weighed” in order to” safeguard the sacrament of baptism.”
” One should never overlook this element of the fidelity of God’s unconditional love, which is capable of generating an irrevocable contract, even with the sin,” the statement went on.” Even when doubts remain about a persons objective social situation or personal dispositions toward grace.”
The regularity of a new fall frequently does not cast doubt on the sincerity of the purpose, which is true even when the penitent’s intention to amend is not completely present.
The statement is the most recent to be made in response to high-level criticism of the Roman Catholic Church’s existing social and sexual teachings, which was also discussed at the Synod of Bishops Assembly last month.
The Pope also responded to questions about synodality from five conventional cardinals last month by interpreting holy revelation, approving same-sex unions, ordaining women, and performing holy absolution.
The Pope responded to criticism from the Bohemian Cardinal Dominik Duka in September regarding the possibility of granting divorced Catholics living in new organisations divine fellowship.
The responsibilities of guardians, their role in the community, and” the attention they show towards Church teaching” were all given “real value” by the Church, according to the Vatican Dicastery’s statement. However, the affirmation stated that baptism should always be “understood and deployed within the whole journey of Christian initiation.” The windows of the ceremonies” should not be” closed for any reason, Pope Francis himself had emphasized.
According to Articles 2257–9 of the RC Church’s 1992 Catechism, which Pope Francis half amended, queer acts are “inherently disordered” and “against healthy law,” but those who have “homosexual tendencies” must also be “acknowledged with respect, compassion, and sensitivity.”
The Pope, who is now 86 years old, has expressed concerns about “gender ideology” in an effort to make his Church more accepting of LGBT+ groups. He has done this by including sympathetic formulations in his apostolic exhortations Evangelii Gaudium ( 2013 ) ( News, 20 December 2013 ) and Amoris Laetitia ( 2016 ).
He stated that queer tendencies were not a crime in an appointment with Spain’s La Sexta magazine in March 2019 and urged parents to support their queer children. He also endorsed the right to same-sex civil unions in discussions conducted in October 2020 and September 2021.
The Pope urged RC priests around the world to support the decriminalization of sexuality in January before assuring a young transgender people that God “loves us as we are” in an interview from July.
The Revd James Martin, a well-known American Jesuit admirer of LGBT privileges, responded to the most recent Vatican decision by saying that it was” an important stage forward” to” see trans people as Catholics” and that some parishes still forbade them from receiving christening.
But, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the original German prefect of the Vatican Dicastery, criticized the statement as “misleading and harmful” and warned the Spanish-language website InfoCátolica that it would “open the door to misunderstandings.”
The declaration, with its media interpretations, had “tear but another wound in the tortured body of the Church” by attempting to “normalize the behavior” of those “living in a routine and open state of mortal sin,” according to another well-known critic, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigan, past Vatican state governor and nuncio to the United States.
Agnieszka Zielinska, a philosophy expert from Poland’s Catholic University of Lublin, claimed that some traditionalist Catholics thought Pope Francis was “playing with fireplace” by signing off an “impruse ruling” that “looked certain to ignite” misunderstandings and misinterpretations.”
