Does what we know about transgender people throw a wrench at Catholic teaching on sex and marriage?

  • Thread starter Thread starter CaliLobo
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
JimG said:
No. An embryo which starts out with XY sex chromosomes is male.

In order for all embryos to start out female, they would all have to begin with XX sex chromosomes. They do not.
Click to expand...
Your wrong. Read your biology book. By the way not all xx are born female neither are all xys born male. Nature isn’t perfect. XX and XY are not all the chromesome possibilities either. I have a neice who is XO and a friend who is XXY. Biology is not a simplistic science anymore.
 
+JMJ+
DaddyGirl said:
I think as far as the Catholic church is concerned, this new information wouldn’t change anything to their doctrine…because physical, psychological, mental, and emotional feelings and senses are not to be followed at any cost if they go against doctrine, even if they are natural and organic. As far as I can see.
Click to expand...
As far as you can see, which I think is not that far. Case in point:
DaddyGirl said:
Even in the heterosexual world this is true.
For example, if you marry one person in the church when you are very young and you don’t make a wise choice…you don’t really “feel” love or physical attraction to them and maybe you don’t even know what those feelings are yet…and then a few years later you meet a person for whom you DO feel that for in spades and who is better suited to you in every way and you feel euphoric with this new person…it doesn’t matter.

You are not supposed to pay attention to those feelings and senses as being “valid” (right?).
You are supposed to believe that if God put you together with the first person, that is who you are meant to be with despite the fact that you don’t feel you want to be with them and you feel this way for the rest of your life.
Click to expand...
Sorry to put a wrench in your understanding of Church teachings, but there IS such a thing as annulment of marriage which does deal with this.
DaddyGirl said:
So I think the Catholic position is…even if all the above about trans-gender is true (and it sounds as tho it is), it doesn’t matter.
Click to expand...
“[A]nd it sounds as tho it is”…actually that is ALL that matters. As long as it just “sounds” like it is true, and not that it REALLY is true, we will not blindly follow anything that we hear in the news or the Internet.
 
Stephanie_Pauls said:
Your wrong. Read your biology book. By the way not all xx are born female neither are all xys born male. Nature isn’t perfect. XX and XY are not all the chromesome possibilities either. I have a neice who is XO and a friend who is XXY. Biology is not a simplistic science anymore.
Click to expand...
You are not quite right either. If you have a Y chromosome in any way you are male. Whether it is XY, XXY, or XYY the Y is always there in males. Females never have a Y.

anthro.palomar.edu/abnormal/abnormal_5.htm

Also, there is a reason the odd combinations are called “abnormalities.” Some have pretty bad consequences. Sure nature isn’t perfect but there is a reason the XX or XY is dominant. It is natures ideal and preferred arrangement. We accept the imperfections because their human beings but their behavior deviates from the overall plan.
 
aux1 said:
CAIS females have Y.
Click to expand...
They still lack male characteristics.
“Individuals with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (grades 6 and 7 on the Quigley scale) are born phenotypically female, without any signs of genital masculinization, despite having a 46,XY karyotype.[17]”
Click to expand...
Also
All forms of androgen insensitivity, including CAIS, are associated with infertility, though exceptions have been reported for both the mild and partial forms.
Click to expand...
When nature makes an error it is self-correcting by making reproduction difficult or impossible for you.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_androgen_insensitivity_syndrome
 
silentfactor80 said:
Souls are not male / female binaries. In fact souls are beyond gender because as spirits reproduction does not happen. We like to think of “male spirits” and “female spirits” but that is because of our own shortcoming in thinking.

“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Gallatians 3:28
Click to expand...
If there is no male or female in Christ, then why does the transsexuality issue matter to the Church at all? Also, if there is no male or female in Christ, then there is no problem with gay marriage or ordaining women… not so.

You can’t have it both ways.
 
aux1 said:
If there is no male or female in Christ, then why does the transsexuality issue matter to the Church at all?
Click to expand...
Because your implied citation from Paul has nothing to do with “transgenderism,” that’s why.
 
silentfactor80 said:
They still lack male characteristics.
Click to expand...
That’s the point. You wrote:
silentfactor80 said:
Females never have a Y.
Click to expand...
In case of CAIS, you have an unrelated mutation which produces a person which has a female phenotype, while having a male genotype. Are people with CAIS male or female in the eyes of Catholic Church?
silentfactor80 said:
When nature makes an error it is self-correcting by making reproduction difficult or impossible for you.
Click to expand...
Wow, eugenic argument from a Catholic again!

Anway, transsexuals will reproduce just fine as their genetic gender. So, by your own reasoning, sex reassignment surgery corrects nature by rendering them infertile.
 
Elizabeth502 said:
Because your implied citation from Paul has nothing to do with “transgenderism,” that’s why.
Click to expand...
Ah-ah. There is no male or female in Christ means that gender does not matter in Christ. Why are we obsessing over something which doesn’t matter, then?

As I said, you can’t have it both ways. Either souls has gender, or we can have gay marriage and women’s ordination.
 
This sums up the issue rather well in my opinion: saladbingo.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/transsexuals-in-the-catholic-church/
Transsexuals are even less compatible with Catholic teaching than homosexuals. Homosexuals are simply told to practice chastity. Transsexuals are told we don’t actually exist at all. Once again, I’m not exaggerating.
Click to expand...
Specifically, Catholic teaching does not acknowledge the possibility that someone could have an external body of one sex but a mind and gender identity of the other. They don’t say they’ve never considered it. They say it’s impossible.
Click to expand...
And this is not an issue open to revision based upon new evidence. There are fundamental issues of ontology involved here. The Church says human beings are either male or female. Period. End of story. This is essential because that fundamental duality is considered a central truth explaining God, the Church, the nature of Christ, the Priesthood… even Love itself. If they acknowledge that transsexuals – people born with a physical body opposite of their gender identity – actually exist, it would shake the foundations of Church teaching a heck of a lot more than that business with Galileo ever did.
Click to expand...
The only way Catholicism can explain the appearance of transsexuals in the real world is to consider them to be bizarrely depraved sinners with nonsensical motivations.
Click to expand...
 
aux1 said:
Ah-ah. There is no male or female in Christ means that gender does not matter in Christ. Why are we obsessing over something which doesn’t matter, then?

As I said, you can’t have it both ways. Either souls has gender, or we can have gay marriage and women’s ordination.
Click to expand...
The no male and female in Christ doesn’t mean there is no difference, it means God doesn’t play favorites basically…a Christian is a Christan.
Souls don’t have gender, they are immaterial. Marriage can’t happen between just plain spiritual beings for the very reason that there is no reproduction/gender…so the idea that the opposition to gay marriage has anything to do with the soul is absurd.

Women’s ordination isn’t a thing because Christ did not give the Church the authority to ordain women.
aux1 said:
This sums up the issue rather well in my opinion: saladbingo.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/transsexuals-in-the-catholic-church/
Click to expand...
The quote isn’t entirely accurate.
There are genetic males and genetic females. This is our gender. This is our real “gender identity.” The Church doesn’t say no one of one gender has physical or emotional characteristcs of another, no. The Church says that these are not what is essential to the gender itself, and therefore rejects these things as part of a “gender identity” Plus the whole idea of GI has been a big part of the LGBT movement that the Church rejects entirely.

On a final note on homosexuality- People need to realize the Church’s opposition to homosexuality is mainly rooted in the fact that sexual acts which by their nature are not ordered to new life are unnatural and thus sinful. Disagree all you want, but it needs to be clear where the opposition is. Sodomy is wrong because its a perversion of the natural purpose of the creative power.
 
aux1 said:
Ah-ah. There is no male or female in Christ means that gender does not matter in Christ. Why are we obsessing over something which doesn’t matter, then?

As I said, you can’t have it both ways. Either souls has gender, or we can have gay marriage and women’s ordination.
Click to expand...
No, because we are spirits in Christ. In Christ no one marries or is given in marriage. (Matthew 22:30)

In THIS world however gender DOES matter and we ARE given in marriage. The spiritual world and physical world have different “physics” if you will.

In regards to women’s ordination, it’s called nunhood or something. The only difference between priests and nuns is nuns can’t administer the sacraments. The Catholic mass is built heavily around symbols. The male body symbolizes spiritual energy where as the female body symbolizes earthly energy. Therefore metaphysically speaking it doesn’t make sense to have women administering sacraments that require spiritual energy.
 
CaliLobo said:
So at work we had a seminar on transgender people and etiquette when meeting a transgender person.

What I learned was honestly fascinating. We have long thought of gender as binary (male vs female), but it is scientifically very clear that gender is an analysis of four variables:
  1. Assigned gender upon birth
  2. Sexual orientation
  3. Gender identity
  4. Gender expression
What is also scientifically very clear is that these four variables can all be blurred, and have NO correlation with one another. And that is what explains the existence of gays (#1 not correlated with #2), transgender (#1 not correlated with #3 and #4), and intersex people (#1 is blurred and not correlated with #3 and #4). #2 can be blurred (bisexuality, transgender attraction), and #3 and #4 can be blurred (genderqueer, crossdressing, switching gender identity in one’s mind, etc.) And transgender people can also be gay or straight (all four variables not correlated).

My question then is,** if it’s scientifically very evident that our concept of gender, which we long thought of as binary, instead is expressed by a wide range of values for the four variables above, and humans do exhibit this wide range of values, then doesn’t that throw a wrench into Catholic teaching on sex, gender, and marriage?**

Doesn’t this also add ammunition to the idea that Catholic teaching is losing relevance in modern society, because the Catholic Church, with its insistence on upholding tradition, becomes hostage to its doctrines and cannot change according to what we now know scientifically?
Click to expand...
No…anytime you see “concepts” like this being overlaid onto biology challenge the concepts ruthlessly…drill into words like “expression” and “identity” with vigor. How, when, where, why? You’ll find defenders start to arm wave, just before they start dismissing or ridiculing you, because the new ideas they have don’t stand up to rigorous interrogation.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top