This week on “Inside the Vatican,” Gerry and I unpack the most comprehensive Vatican document on gender identity yet. The document, which was released by the Congregation for Education, seeks to address what it calls “an educational crisis” surrounding sexuality and gender. Why is it so important? And what have transgender Catholics in the United States said about it?
Then, we’ll talk about what’s on the table at the U.S. bishops’ meeting, happening this week. Does Rome pay attention to these national meetings? And what are the bishops saying about sexual abuse?
And while you're at it, unpack the TIMING of the release of this document (June 10) while it was signed and promulgated on Feb. 2, 2019. Reasons why? "The church" having failed miserably in the war it waged on Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals, waited until PRIDE month to unleash its newest salvo against the only group left: Transexuals. Timing is everything.
Memo to Education wonks at the Vatican:
we've been called worse by better!
Holy Toledo! You right! I missed when the document was finalized.
"Male And Female He Created Them" could have told you something.
The Vatican is not very subtle.
Perfectly put, Mister Mckee! The Tablet's editorial "Gender and identity: The Vatican has gone astray" on the document gets to the heart of the issue ( https://www.thetablet.co.uk/editors-desk/1/16172/gender-and-identity-the-vatican-has-gone-astray ):
"A reminder of Pope Francis’ maxim that “reality is greater than theory” would have been a useful starting point for the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education’s study of sex and gender. Instead its document, Male and Female He Created Them, makes the classic mistake of arguing the other way round. The result, intended to be helpful to teachers and educationalists, is unlikely to be much use to them – except in one important respect. It asks for a respectful dialogue between those who disagree. The call has never been more necessary. ...
"Gender theory, as they describe it is, however, rebutted much more effectively by the experience of transgender young people themselves. Most do not want the self-determining gender fluidity that so-called gender theory purports to offer them. They have a clear idea of the sexual identity they believe is their natural one, and which their biology has somehow contradicted. This is not a mental illness or a delusion; its technical name is dysphoria. Educationalists need to be able to recognise it.
"The Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales has welcomed the document while implicitly distancing itself from it. “We recognise that there are people who do not accept their biological sex …” they said. “Through listening to them we seek to understand their experience more deeply and want to accompany them with compassion.” That is where the Vatican Education Congregation should have started from."