By Associated Press author Nicole WINFIELD
The Vatican declared gender-affirming operation and surrogacy to be grave risks to individual dignity, putting them on par with death and abortion as practices that go against God’s plan for human career on Monday.
The Vatican’s theory office issued” Eternal Dignity”, a 20- webpage declaration that has been in the functions for five decades. After considerable update in recent months, it was approved March 25 by Pope Francis, who ordered its release.
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In its most gladly anticipated area, the Vatican repeated its rejection of “gender idea” or the idea that person’s identity can be changed. It stated that God created man and girl as distinct biological entities and that they were not to be able to stick with or attempt to “make oneself God.”
” It follows that any sexual- change treatment, as a rule, risks threatening the special respect the person has received from the moment of conception”, the document said.
It distinguished between gender- affirming clinics, which it rejected, and “genital anomalies” that are present at birth or that grow afterward. Those defects may become “resolved” with the help of health care professionals, it said.
The article’s life, rumored since 2019, was confirmed in recent months by the new director of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Brazilian Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, a nearby Pope Francis friend.
After he wrote a more potent report granting gifts to same-sex lovers that sparked criticism from traditional priests all over the world, especially in Africa, he had cast it as a bit of a smile to republicans.
In a nation that previously sent gay people to labour camps, an LGBTQ-inclusive church in Cuba welcomes everyone.
The document takes sharp aim at nations that denounce sexuality, including many in Africa, while rejecting female idea. It echoed Francis ‘ claim in a 2023 meeting with The Associated Press that being homosexual is not a crime, which is now a part of the Vatican’s philosophical teaching.
The fresh document denounces” as opposed to individual dignity the fact that, in some places, hardly a few people are imprisoned, tortured, and also deprived of the good of life only because of their sexual orientation”.
The document somewhat refutes the Vatican’s earlier statements. It updates well-known Catholic doctrine that opposes abortion and euthanasia and includes some of Francis ‘ main concerns as pope: the dangers of human dignity caused by war, human trafficking, and forced migration.
It asserts that surrogacy violates both the child’s dignity and that of the surrogate mother in a recently articulated position. The Vatican document emphasizes the resulting child almost more than the potential exploitation of poor women as surrogates, despite the considerable attention paid to this issue.
The child is entitled to a fully human ( naturalized ) birth, a life that exhibits both the dignity of the giver and the recipient, according to the document. Given this, it is impossible to convert a legitimate desire for a child into a “right to a child” without regard for the child’s dignity as the recipient of the gift of life.
In 2019, the Congregation for Catholic Education ( CDE ) insisted on the complementarity of biologically male and female sex organs to bring about new life, rejecting the notion that people can choose or change their genders.
It called gender fluidity a symptom of the” confused concept of freedom” and “momentary desires” that characterize post- modern culture.
The more reputable Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s new document uses that year’s 2019 education document, but it modifies the tone. In notable ways, it does n’t reinterpret a previous doctrinal statement from 1986 that stated that homosexuals deserve to be treated with respect and dignity but that homosexual behavior is “intrinsically disordered.”
Francis has emphasized that the Catholic Church must welcome all of the LGBTQ+ children while ministering to trans Catholics under the auspices of his papacy.
But he has also denounced “gender theory” as the “worst danger” facing humanity today, an “ugly ideology” that threatens to cancel out God- given differences between man and woman. He has criticized specifically the “ideological colonization” of the West in developing nations, where development aid is occasionally preconditioned on Western conceptions of gender and reproductive health.
The new document states that “biological sex and the sociocultural role of sex ( gender ) can be distinguished but not separated.”
Transgender Christians immediately criticized the document for being “hurtful” and lacking in the voices and experiences of real trans people, especially when it distinguishes transgender people from intersex people.
The notion that gender-affirming health care, which has saved the lives of so many wonderful trans people and allowed them to live in harmony with their bodies, their communities, and ( God ) might risk or diminish trans peoples ‘ dignity is hurtful and dangerously ignorant, according to Mara Klein, a nonbinary transgender activist who has participated in Germany’s church reform project.
According to Klein, “watching that in contrast surgical interventions on intersex people, which are frequently performed without consent, especially on minors, frequently cause enormous physical and psychological harm for many intersex people dating,” are evaluated positively.
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. In addition, bills to govern youths ‘ pronouns, sports teams and bathrooms at school are also under consideration, as well as some books and school curriculums.
We are confronted with a church that ignores the beauty of creation that can be seen in our biographies, Klein wrote in an email.
