First of all, there’s been no official announcement or ruling, and there won’t be until November. What somebody said to an Australian newspaper is not the same as proof. That poor girl is getting no consideration whatsoever, and every time the story dies down, somebody else whips it up. You have to wonder what’s really going on with all the rumormongers, and whether they’re related to any of her competitors.
Why does God allow any other form of disability or oddity of genetics?
As we all know, most of the world’s problems were not God’s idea. They are consequences of the Fall. Death, illness, me stubbing my toe – all consequences of our first parents’ sin. We screwed up Creation, and brought all this crud upon ourselves. Genetics problems are mild, next to original sin and all the rest.
So we should rather ask, “Why didn’t God just totally destroy the human race right after the Fall, and not mess with any of this fixit process of being crucified and resurrected, not to mention individual work on every single human individual?”
God allows oddities of genetics; and as with all other problems given to humanity, He also encourages us to use our problems to build character, through becoming like Christ in His suffering.
What is the role of hermaphrodites in the Church?
Well, no man who doesn’t have man-parts can become a priest, and that’s in force whether one was disabled from birth or got eunuch-ized somewhere along the way. (There are a few other disabilities/injuries of other body parts that are also a bar to the priesthood, just as certain injuries/disabilities barred animals from getting sacrificed under the old Law.)
Religious orders have more discretion on who they accept as brothers or sisters, though there may be clauses I don’t know in canon law or in the various orders’ Rules. Certainly there would be nothing to stop anybody from becoming a hermit or anchorite; that’s a vocation that doesn’t require permission from anybody but God.
It is difficult to see how a hermaphrodite could be married in the Church, if parts were lacking. Being barren isn’t a bar, but being totally physically sterile and unequipped for procreation is not something canon law goes for. It’s a pretty definite sign that God doesn’t mean you to follow a vocation, if He doesn’t give you the basics to follow it. But I’m not a canon law expert.
However, there is no bar to a hermaphrodite being a full lay member of the Church. Indeed, you might argue that “in Christ there is no male or female” is a verse that hermaphrodites could take very much to heart. Seeing the vast number of people in the Church today who never marry or go into religious life of any kind, this would make hermaphrodites pretty much like everybody else. The lack of choice would be bitter; but then, lots of us never get a chance to choose marriage or the religious life despite having a full set of equipment; and others just wish their vocation was something clear-cut. So again, a very mainstream sort of vocation.
