Catholic Church appears to soften — a bit — on opposition to gender-affirming care

Author: Trudy Ring

The Roman Catholic Church appears to have softened its opposition to gender-affirming care for transgender people — just a bit.

Keep up with the latest in LGBTQ+ news and politics. Sign up for The Advocate’s email newsletter.

The church still opposes gender transition, a Vatican official told a conference of Catholic theologians last month at Cologne University in Germany, but he allowed that there are “exceptional situations” that “must be evaluated with great care.” Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, who heads the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, addressed the conference via video, and a summary of his remarks was posted in German on the Vatican News website.

“Gender reassignment is not just an external change or comparable to normal cosmetic surgery or an operation to cure an illness,” he said, as translated by various sources. “It is the claim to a change of identity, to the desire to be a different person.” Most trans people would say, however, that gender-affirming procedures do not make them into a different person — they simply allow them to be the person they have always known they were.

Fernández’s comment is in keeping with the church’s long-standing opposition to what it calls “gender ideology,” even though Pope Francis has met with trans people and shown empathy for them. The church’s stated position is that gender is God-given, fixed at birth, and immutable.

But Fernández also said, “There are cases outside the norm, such as strong dysphorias that can lead to an unbearable existence or even suicide. These exceptional situations must be evaluated with great care.”

“We don’t want to be cruel and say that we don’t understand people’s conditioning and the deep suffering that exists in some cases of ‘dysphoria’ that manifests itself even from childhood,” he added.

Pope Francis has shown a more conciliatory attitude toward trans people and LGBTQ+ people in general than his predecessors. In 2015, he met privately with a Spanish trans man, Diego Neria Lejarraga, who said he found the pope to be “kindness personified.” Francis has also met with groups of trans people several times and has said Jesus Christ would not abandon trans people. Under his leadership, the church has allowed trans people to be baptized as Catholics and to be godparents.

Original Article on The Advocate
Author: Trudy Ring