On Monday, transgender protesters and allies decried the Vatican’s new policy against gender-affirming surgery as “hurtful” and devoid of the voices and experiences of transgender, non-binary, and gender-diverse individuals, particularly in its differentiation between transgender and transgender people.
The notion that gender-affirming healthcare, which has saved the lives of so many wonderful transgender people and allowed them to live in harmony with their bodies, their communities, and (God), might risk or diminish transgender people’s dignity is hurtful and dangerously ignorant, according to Mara Klein, a non-binary transgender activist who has participated in Germany’s church reform project.
According to Klein, “contrary to this, medical interventions on transgender individuals, which are frequently performed without consent, especially on minors, often cause enormous physical and psychological harm for many transgender individuals.”
The Vatican equated gender-affirming procedures like surgery and infertility with grave “human dignity,” placing them on par with death and contraception as practices that, according to the Vatican, reject God’s plan for human life.
The Vatican’s doctrinal office issued “Eternal Dignity,” a 20-page declaration that has been in the works for five decades. After significant revisions in recent months, it was approved on March 25 by Pope Francis, who ordered its release.
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In its most eagerly anticipated section, the Vatican reiterated its rejection of what it terms “gender ideology,” or the notion that a person’s identity can be changed. Gender ideology, often referred to as gender theory by its detractors, suggests that sex is more complex and fluid than the binary categories of male and female, and depends on more than apparent sex characteristics.
The term “gender theory” is often used to imply that transgender and non-binary people have a political agenda.
“It follows that any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception,” the document said.
It distinguished between gender-affirming surgeries, which it rejected, and what it termed “genital anomalies” that are present at birth or develop later. Those anomalies can be “addressed” with the assistance of healthcare professionals, it said.
The Vatican’s use of “sex-change” is also considered a loaded term by transgender advocates. The Trans Journalists Association notes that “sex-change” and “sex reassignment” are outdated terms and “are now generally considered offensive, though some medical literature still uses them. These terms are also used instead of gender-affirming care by some organizations that have anti-trans political objectives.
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Advocates for LGBTQ+ Catholics immediately criticized the document as outdated, harmful, and contrary to the stated goal of recognizing the “infinite dignity” of all of God’s children. They warned it could have real-world effects on transgender people, fueling anti-trans violence and discrimination.
“While it lays out a wonderful rationale for why each human being, regardless of condition in life, must be respected, honored, and loved, it does not apply this principle to gender-diverse people,” said Francis DeBernardo of New Ways Ministry, which advocates for LGBTQ+ Catholics.
The document’s existence, rumored since 2019, was confirmed in recent weeks by the new prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Argentine Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, a close confidant of Pope Francis.
The publication of the document comes at a time when transgender people face some criticism, including in the United States, where Republican-led state legislatures are considering a new round of legislation that would restrict access to medical care for transgender youths and, in some cases, transgender adults.
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In addition, bills to govern youths’ pronouns, sports teams, and bathrooms at school are also under consideration, as well as some books and school curricula.
“We are faced with a church that ignores the beauty of creation that can be seen in our biographies,” Klein said, adding to the growing hostility toward our communities.
Francis has emphasized that the Catholic Church must welcome all LGBTQ+ people in his papacy while ministering to transgender Catholics.
But he has also denounced “gender theory” as the “worst danger” facing humanity today, an “ugly ideology” that threatens to erase what the church considers as God-given differences between man and woman.
He has specifically criticized the “ideological colonization” of the West in developing nations, where development aid is sometimes conditioned on adopting Western conceptions of gender and reproductive health.
