A Roman Catholic apostolate to support the dignity and inclusion of transgender laity.

Fr. Shay

When I started my transition I desperately wanted to find stories in Scripture that resonated with my experience, but no one was really doing transgender theology back in 2008. So as I continued on my gender journey I also started doing theology from this unique perspective. When I shared the work I was doing I found that it resonated deeply; not just with other trans folks but with straight and cisgender folks as well! 

Better understanding the lives and journeys of trans and nonbinary folks can open up and expand your understanding of your own gender and your faith as well. This will help you to advocate more deeply for trans inclusion as well as enrich your own faith. 

Even though I’ve been doing this work for over a decade now, the field of trans theology is still pretty new and much of what is available is either geared toward explaining gender identity (and making a case for trans inclusion) to cisgender folks OR is academic in nature. 

At QueerTheology.com we think there is a middle way: theology anchored in the lives and experiences of transgender and nonbinary people that is also accessible to folks outside of academia. We believe that trans and nonbinary folks have unique insights into Scripture and faith and when they share them ALL people can benefit (not just trans folks). 

In Transfigured, a course on transgender theology, we dive in to the differences between queer and trans theology, provide a Scriptural basis for doing trans theology, and then dive into ways that texts can be interpreted through a trans lens. 

There is a track for cisgender folks and a track for trans folks. Each track has overlap but is also designed to take you deeper in your journey. There are lots of reflections and prompts to guide you through your own work.

We believe this work is vital to the faith of trans and nonbinary folks and our straight/cisgender supporters. We hope you’ll join us. 

Registration will open on October 13th through October 22nd and the optional kick-off call will be Sunday, October 24th at 4:00pm EST/8:00pm GMT/ 5:00am Oct 25 AUS 
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Original article in U.S Catholic by FATHER BRYAN MASSINGALE Originally Published August 11, 2016

“In February I participated in a panel on transgender Catholics at the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress called “Transgender in the Church: One Bread, One Body.” Almost 800 people attended this session, which testifies to the intense interest that this issue raises in both our society and the church.

The main presenters were a young man and young woman, Mateo and Anna. Their powerful stories of their struggles over realizing the deep disjunction between their birth bodies and their inner sense of being a man or a woman were heartbreaking and inspiring. Both also movingly related how their “transition” into their transgender bodies was a faith journey as well. I was struck by their heartfelt conviction that accepting their true gender identities led them to a deeper and more authentic relationship with God. Hearing their stories of pain and triumph was one of the most privileged moments I have had in 33 years of being a priest.

My brief contribution to the discussion centered on answering the question, “Why am I here?” That question was posed by relatives and friends who wondered about why I would “put my reputation on the line” by being associated with such a stigmatized group. As one put it, “Don’t you get into enough trouble talking about race? Why take this on, too?”

Space does not allow me to give my full response. But one reason why I chose to be present is because I have a lot to learn. To be blunt, I was at the panel precisely because of my ignorance and discomfort. Transgender issues were never addressed in either my moral theology courses in the seminary or in my graduate studies in Christian ethics. I—and most priests—have not been trained to specifically minister to transgender members of our parishes or to the concerns of their families.

My personal ignorance is also shared by the church as a whole. There is much that we do not understand about what is technically called “gender dysphoria,” or the lack of congruence between one’s physical body and gender identity. This ignorance leads to fear, and fear is at the root of the controversies in today’s so-called “bathroom wars.” And there lies a major challenge that transgender people endure and that the faith community has to own: the human tendency to be uncomfortable and fearful in the face of what we don’t understand. It’s easier to ridicule and attack individuals we don’t understand than to summon the patience and humility to listen and to learn.

But despite all that we do not know, this much I do believe: Jesus would be present to, among, and with transgender persons. Jesus spent his life eating with the “wrong” people of his society, that is, with questionable women, lepers, tax collectors, and outcasts. Jesus protected a sexually shamed woman from stones hurled by religious people. Jesus taught that we would be judged by the measure of our compassion for the despised and disdained.

It is our Christian conviction that all lives are sacred; thus, no life is less valuable than any other. It is a very simple conviction, yet one that carries radical implications. It confronts our human tendency to devalue and exclude those whose way of life seems foreign, strange, unfamiliar, or even wrong.

During Pope Francis’ visit last fall, he repeated on at least five occasions: “Jesus never abandons us.” This is the deepest reason why I chose to be with Anna and Mateo, who spoke so eloquently for so many of our transgender fellow Catholics. Jesus does not abandon us. If we claim to be his followers, we cannot abandon them.

Our faith teaches that we can act with compassion even when we do not fully understand. Our faith also gives us a challenge—namely, that compassion is not worthy of the name if we offer it only to those with whom we are comfortable.” 

This article also appears in the August 2016 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 81, No. 8, page 8).

High Court’s 1975 Decision Points to Alternative Vatican Path on Gender Identity Issues

by Guest Contributor: Tina Beattie

The Vatican has offered us its latest reflections on gender.

MALE AND FEMALE HE CREATED THEM” TOWARDS A PATH OF DIALOGUE
ON THE QUESTION OF GENDER THEORY IN EDUCATION

I’ve read it and have much to say. There are a few moments of insight, and I think a vital point needs to be made that issues of gender, including transgender, must be open to informed, intelligent and mutually respectful dialogue. There is tyranny on both sides, and I get deeply concerned when transgenderism becomes a matter of censorship and exclusion in academic debate either by conservatives or by transgender activists. So I would welcome a nuanced, informed and pastorally responsive document from the Vatican which would provide a resource for theologians and educators seeking dialogue around these issues. This document claims that is its aim, and for the first time it ostensibly distinguishes between ‘gender ideology’ and ‘gender theory’:

__________

QUOTE:
If we wish to take an approach to the question of gender theory that is based on the path of dialogue, it is vital to bear in mind the distinction between the ideology of gender on the one hand, and the whole field of research on gender that the human sciences have undertaken, on the other. … The primary outlook needed for anyone who wishes to take part in dialogue is listening. It is necessary, above all, to listen carefully to and understand cultural events of recent decades.
__________

Nothing in this document shows any attempt to listen to and engage in dialogue with transgender persons or with scientific and theological and philosophical debates. Instead, it presents all sexual ambiguity outside an essentialised male/female complementarity as the product of individual choice, disregard for the body, and a culture of relativism. And its expressed desire for dialogue comes only after it has set out its terms in unambiguously clear terms. Paragraph 1 refers to a crisis in education:
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QUOTE:
The disorientation regarding anthropology which is a widespread feature of our cultural landscape has undoubtedly helped to destabilise the family as an institution, bringing with it a tendency to cancel out the differences between men and women, presenting them instead as merely the product of historical and cultural conditioning.
__________

And despite its later attempt to distinguish between ‘gender ideology’ and ‘gender theory’, it has already conflated the two in its opening section:
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QUOTE:
“The context in which the mission of education is carried out is characterized by challenges emerging from varying forms of an ideology that is given the general name ‘gender theory’, which “denies the difference and reciprocity in nature of a man and a woman and envisages a society without sexual differences, thereby eliminating the anthropological basis of the family. This ideology leads to educational programmes and legislative enactments that promote a personal identity and emotional intimacy radically separated from the biological difference between male and female. Consequently, human identity becomes the choice of the individual, one which can also change over time.”
__________

All that is claimed before the word “dialogue” is mentioned.

This document is a mish mash of pastoral rhetoric glossed over a doctrinal rigidity about essentialised sexual difference (it even appeals to the ancient Greeks to justify this!), in which glimmers of understanding are immediately obscured by caricaturised and vacuous claims about sexuality, gender and human relationships. There is also a failure to distinguish between intersex and transgenderism:
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QUOTE:
Efforts to go beyond the constitutive male-female sexual difference, such as the ideas of “intersex” or “transgender”, lead to a masculinity or feminity that is ambiguous, even though (in a self-contradictory way), these concepts themselves actually presuppose the very sexual difference that they propose to negate or supersede.
___________

Intersex is a biologically established fact, not simply an ‘idea’, and not to be confused with transgender. The biology of transgenderism is contested and not yet established, but the psychological and existential reality surely demands a more thoughtful and open dialogical approach than that offered in this document.

Dialogue means listening. There is no listening whatsoever in this document – no reference to theological or scientific studies on gender, no reference to the experiences of transgender persons, no attempt whatsoever to reach out in dialogue to persons and ideas which challenge the dogmatism on offer here. In fact, there is not a single source cited outside the self-referential circle of papal and official teaching documents. They are in dialogue with nobody but themselves.

For me, perhaps the most worrying concern is the reduction of all human difference to sexual difference. This just isn’t real. Every human is unique and different from every other, and sexual difference is not the defining mark of diversity in all our relationships and interactions. It is such an impoverished and reductive way of viewing what it means to be human, to be able to understand one’s difference from others only in terms of sexual dualism.

This document is one more nail in the coffin of the Catholic hierarchy’s ability to teach about morality with authority and credibility. Out of the moral meltdown of their own institutional failure they have produced yet another garbled attempt to impose their rigid ideologies on the rest of us in a manner in which the very idea of dialogue is debased, and vastly complex human realities are swept away as just so much individualistic, relativistic choice.

And by the way, the Hebrew in Genesis is complex and multi-facetted in the terms it uses for sex and gender in the accounts of creation. In our modern Christian usage, we could at the very least recognise that “male and female” doesn’t mean “male or female”. If in Christian terms the imago dei is trinitarian, then our identities must also be complex interweavings of difference.

Note:

Please read the document for yourself and start a dialog with a catholic school near you.

See the first in our series of faith stories of transgender Catholics in there own word in a new tab for our site named Witness

In this Crux article on the eminent UK theologian David Albert Jones is the strongest statement about Catholic Church theological support for transgender people.

written by Charles C. Camosy Jul 26, 2018 follow the link for the original interview.

Ethicist says Church teaching on gender ‘not incompatible’ with accepting trans identity

To say that David Albert Jones enjoys a “certain standing” within the field of Catholic bioethics would almost certainly be putting things mildly. Since 2010 he’s directed the Anscombe Bioethics Centre at Oxford in the UK, one of most influential think tanks on such matters in the world.

Jones is also a key adviser to both the English and the European bishops. He’s a member of the Health and Social Care Advisory Group and the Department of Christian Responsibility and Citizenship of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, and is also a member of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the EU (COMECE) Working Group on Ethics in Research and Medicine.

Of late Jones’s interests have taken a turn into matters of gender identity, reflecting a new surge of attention fueled, to a great extent, by larger social and cultural developments. The following is a transcript of his exchange with Crux.

Camosy: Until now your work has mainly been in Catholic bioethics, on issues such as abortion and euthanasia.  Why did you decide to engage with the issue of gender identity?

Jones: I came across the concept of gender identity first as a bioethical issue.  People asked me how Catholics should regard the ethics of gender reassignment surgery and the ethics of prescribing hormones or hormone blockers.  In response, I wrote a brief statement on bioethical principles and some clinical aspects.

In writing this I was struck by the weakness of the evidence base for current clinical practice on “gender dysphoria” (a medical term referring to the distress caused by a mismatch between natal biological sex and experienced gender identity).  At the same time, I was very wary of the reliance of some Catholic commentators on that minority of clinicians who are equally certain of the opposite opinion – that current clinical practice is harmful, especially to children.  This led me to write a short article criticizing a statement on “gender ideology” produced by a group called the American College of Pediatricians.

I concluded that “there is an urgent need for the Church to develop… theological resources, in dialogue with clinicians and with people experiencing gender incongruence.”  However, my own understanding was still theoretical, indirect, and mainly focused on clinical aspects rather than on the experience of persons with a divergent sense of gender identity.

On the basis of what I had written, I was asked to help develop pastoral and theological resources in this area.  This gave me the opportunity to seek out transgender people who were practicing Catholics to ask them about their experiences and what they felt would be helpful.  I also spoke to canon lawyers, educationalists, and priests with experience accompanying transgender people but the most important thing for me was to listen to people who were seeking to live their faith while accepting their deep-rooted sense of gender identity.

Despite the very personal nature of the journey that each had made, I found a great willingness to talk and an appreciation of my attempts to listen, as one person said to me, “thank you for speaking to us and not just about us.”

What have you found from your research? What does the Church teach about gender identity and about gender reassignment surgery? Why have Catholic hospitals sometimes refused to perform such surgery?

My investigation of the issue of gender identity has revealed to me how little I understood this aspect of human existence.  It is not simple and if you think it is simple you are probably misunderstanding it.  It also reminded me how we all carry with us unexamined cultural assumptions through which we express Christian doctrine or frame scientific and philosophical enquiry.

I began the task of teasing apart what is true and authoritative in the Catholic tradition regarding sex and gender and what is unwarranted cultural assumption.  At the same time, I sought to attend carefully to the voices of those whose experience of gender identity challenges these assumptions.  Recently these strands of work have been brought together as a project to support transgender people in the Church, hosted by St Mary’s University in Twickenham, London.

One practical issue for Catholic hospitals is whether they should offer gender reassignment surgery.  I examined this question in an article recently published in Theological Studies.  Though gender reassignment surgery has been practiced in Europe since the 1950s and in the United States since the 1960s it has never been mentioned in any official teaching document of the Church.  It has not been mentioned explicitly in any papal address or encyclical.  It is not mentioned in the Catechism of the Catholic Church nor in any statement by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

In the absence of any official teaching most Catholic moral theologians, where they have considered the question, have taken one of two views.  Some have characterised such surgery as mutilation, direct harm to the body, and therefore as incompatible with Catholic medical ethics.  Others have argued that such surgery could be considered justifiable, if it helps alleviate the extreme distress of gender dysphoria.  However, typically, this second group of theologians have cast doubt on whether such surgery is effective in providing long-term relief.

My own view is that surgery may alleviate the suffering of some patients.  However, I cannot see how gender reassignment surgery, where this causes sterility, is compatible with the ethical principles of the Catholic tradition.  Nevertheless, it is important to stress that, as yet, there is no explicit and authoritative Catholic teaching precisely on this question.

Furthermore, if Catholic hospitals do not offer gender reassignment surgery this must not be because of a reluctance to care for transgender patients.  Any such refusal, to be ethical, must refer not to the person to be treated but only to the nature of the procedure.

Pope Francis and Catholic bishops in many countries have taught that a gender ideology has emerged that is harmful to society in general and to children in particular. Do you agree?

The movement for greater acceptance of transgender people is part of a much larger debate about sex and gender in society.  On these questions there is more than one secular view, more than one religious view, and the Catholic view, while constant in its essentials, has developed over time.

For example, in the twentieth century, the teaching of the Church has shown a greater appreciation of the equal dignity of husband and wife within marriage.

In their reflections on the equal but in some ways distinct roles of men and women in the family and in society, Pope Francis, and several bishops’ conferences have called attention to some contemporary ideas that are potentially harmful.  Chief among these are a denial of the complementarity of male and female, a failure to recognise the goodness of the body and the unity of body and soul, a radical separation of the concepts of sex and gender, finally, the idea that gender identity is or ought to be a matter of personal choice.

These errors, grouped together under the term “gender theory” (teoria del gender) or “gender ideology” (ideologia del genere), can be traced back to certain strands of feminism.  Nevertheless, to recognise these as errors is not to reject feminism as such, “If certain forms of feminism have arisen which we must consider inadequate, we must nonetheless see in the women’s movement the working of the Spirit for a clearer recognition of the dignity and rights of women” (Pope Francis Amoris Laetitia).

It is also important to note that the focus of this papal teaching is on various errors of a theoretical kind and the way these errors have been promoted by governments and educational bodies.  It is not directed at the situation of people who experience a consistent, persistent and insistent sense of identity incongruent with their natal sex.

In this regard, it is worth quoting a recent statement by the LGBT+ Catholics Westminster Pastoral Council:

“Being transgender does not mean that someone wishes to abolish gender or sexual difference; in fact many transgender people report feeling great joy and peace once their bodies and gender identities are aligned.  The argument that gender is purely a social construct is often used to delegitimize, rather than support, transgender identities.  Gender is not a matter of individual choice for transgender people any more than it is for cisgender (i.e. not transgender) people.  Although it is currently not known why some people are transgender, current research suggests that genetics, hormones and environment all play a role.”

The very idea of transitioning from male to female (or vice versa) does not contradict but rather presupposes the existence of a gender binary.  Hence, while it is important to accept the positive teaching of the pope and bishops on gender complementarity, it should not be assumed that this teaching is necessarily incompatible with affirming the gender identity of trans people.

You’ve written that gender transition could be compatible with a Catholic anthropology, but one might ask how denying your own God-given sexual identity can be compatible with a Catholic understanding of the body, marriage, and the Divinely created complementarity of male and female?

When we try to make sense of diverse expressions of gender identity it is natural to reach for analogies with other issues.  Transgender identity is seen as being like feminist ideas of social gender roles, or as like sexual orientation (hence the initialism LGBT), or like physiological divergences of sexual development (popularly known as “intersex” conditions), or as a type of body dysmorphia (like anorexia).  I have argued that incongruent gender identity is like (but also unlike) each of these phenomena.

Legal or social changes of gender identity are also like (and unlike) the legal and social practice of adoption.  An adopted son or daughter is a true son or daughter, by adoption (and this true relationship is invoked in Scripture as a model for our relationship with God by grace – Galatians 4.5).  An adopted child does not deny the reality of his or her natal biological identity, but he or she is assigned a new identity that has a social and legal reality in order to address his or her needs. Sophie-Grace Chappell, an academic philosopher sympathetic to the Catholic intellectual tradition, who is herself trans, has also made use of this analogy (while acknowledging its limits).

If you’re an adoptive parent, you’re a parent for most purposes and no one sensible scratches their head over it – they don’t decree that you can’t sit on school parents’ councils, or see it as somehow dangerous or threatening or undermining of “real parents” or dishonest or deceptive or delusional or a symptom of mental illness or a piece of embarrassing and pathetic public make-believe…”transwomen are to women as adoptive parents are to parents.”

How, in your view, can faithful Catholics show respect and pastoral concern for trans people while also honoring what they believe to be true about sex and gender?

No pastoral approach is sustainable if it is not honest and informed by a commitment to seek what is true and good.  This commitment will include the acknowledgement of sin in ourselves and in the social structures that shape our world.

Discernment is needed, however, to distinguish what is sin and needs to be renounced (though perhaps this will only be accomplished by steps) and what is not sin but is an element of diverse and complex human experience.  In the case of divergent gender identity, we should not assume, as perhaps the question seems to assume, that someone expressing a deep-seated sense of gender identity is doing something sinful or objectively disordered.  On the contrary, the person may be accepting his or her gender identity as something given by God.

There are difficult moral issues related to incongruent gender identity, issues concerning marriage, sexual ethics and surgery.  Moral discernment is needed to know what can be endorsed, what cannot be endorsed but might, in certain circumstances, be tolerated, and what should be challenged.

However, prior to discernment comes accompaniment.  Pope Francis, talking about the pastoral support of trans people said, “for every case welcome it, accompany it, look into it, discern and integrate it.  This is what Jesus would do today.”  Pastoral guidance in this area, if it is to be wise and helpful, will be the fruit of accompaniment and informed by the experience of the people the guidance exists to support.  It should arise from “speaking with” and not just be “speaking about” Catholics with a divergent sense of gender identity.

A final pastoral reflection: Pope Francis, who more than any other pope has called attention to the dangers of “gender theory,” consistently uses gender pronouns that reflect the person’s sense of identity.  He refers to a person who was born a girl as a “man,” as “he,” and as “he, who had been she, but is he.”

Catholic pastoral practice must begin with welcome and the first sign of welcome is how we address someone.  There is nothing un-Catholic about the use of names and pronouns that reflect a person’s sense of identity.

Professor David Albert Jones is Research Fellow at St Mary’s University, Twickenham and director of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre in Oxford, though the views expressed here are his own and should not be attributed to either institution.

In a facebook post Fr. James Martin said

“Dear friends: In my opinion (and I’m no expert here), what the church may need to do most with transgender people is this: Love them and listen to them. The church and the world are, in large part, still coming to know transgender people, and there is still much we don’t know about their experiences. For example, a few months ago, I posed a question to two separate psychologists, who have had experience working with transgender individuals. I said, “What do you think lies behind the increased incidence of transgenderism these days? Is it that it’s more publicly acceptable, or is the increased media attention, in a sense, pushing youth to identify as such?” They both said “I have no idea.” (And of course neither do I.) In other words, if even some psychologists aren’t sure about this highly complex phenomenon, then the church should be cautious about making statements without first listening to the experience of transgender people. So what can we do? First, have humility and admit that we still need to learn more about this phenomenon. Second, ask questions of transgender people: What is your experience? How have you suffered? Who is God for you? Finally, remember that the Holy Spirit is at work in these people who trying to find their way in the world. So love them. And listen to them.”

And provided a link to this New Ways Ministry Post

http://ow.ly/2Ith30hzX3n

We at TransCatholic are greatly heartened to see this bridge building by Fr. James Martin to the transgender community. His statement opposing the Bishops’ letter shows humility and love that befits true Christians. This is one of the few times that you might actually want to read the comments. While there are some haters, there are many supportive comments from religious people and that feels really good.

We approve of this response by the National Religious Leadership Roundtable to “Created Male and Female,” a letter from conservative religious leaders denying the reality of transgender lives.

And Yet…a testament to transgender persistence

Many of you may be hurting from the terribly misinformed and reckless ‘letter’ signed by four of our Catholic Bishops. Please read this much more Christian response from NWM.

The following is a statement from Francis DeBernardo, Executive Director, New Ways Ministry: A negative statement on gender identity from 20 U.S. religious leaders shows the continued ignorance of gender awareness that exists among people who shape church teaching and policy. Four Catholic bishops who head committees for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops…

via New Ways Ministry Responds to Interfaith Statement Denying Transgender Experience — New Ways Ministry

2018 DATES: March 15, 2018 (Youth Day) & March 16-18, 2018
Theme: “Rise Up!
Held at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California

Transgender in Our Schools: One Bread, One Body
Friday March 16th 1-2:30pm

Gender identity and transgender issues have become hot topics in politics and media, evoking challenging conversations for the Church and Catholic schools. How does the Gospel teach us to serve young Catholics on their journeys? How are we called to be loving in the midst of challenging theological questions? In this session, Dr. Arthur Fitzmaurice, with Fr. Bryan Massingale and panelists, will share experiences and offer theological reflections to inform a pastoral approach for students who question their gender identity.

Arthur Fitzmaurice, PhD Freelance speaker and minister Dr. Arthur Fitzmaurice has served a decade in ministry with LGBT Catholics. In addition to professional conferences, his appearances have included many regional and national conferences. Dr. Fitzmaurice also appears on several YouTube episodes produced by the Ignatian News Network. He is recipient of the Los Angeles Archdiocese’s Lumen Christi and the Cardinal’s Young Adult in Ministry awards.

Rev. Bryan Massingale, STD Fr. Bryan Massingale, a priest of the Milwaukee Archdiocese, is Professor of Theology at Fordham University in New York. He has lectured extensively on ethical and racial justice issues throughout the United States and internationally. A previous Religious Education Congress Keynoter, Fr. Massingale is a former President of the Catholic Theological Society of America and has been a leader of the Black Catholic Theological Symposium.

TransCatholic members will be included in the panel for the 3rd year in a row.

Let us know if you are going to be there.

THE LOS ANGELES RELIGIOUS EDUCATION CONGRESS

RECongress is the largest annual gathering of its kind in the world. The four-day event is held at the Anaheim (Calif.) Convention Center and is sponsored by the Los Angeles Office of Religious Education. Begun in 1968 as an “institute” for religious education (CCD) teachers, RECongress has grown to include people of all vocations and different faiths.

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