Specific Church Teaching on Gender Transitioning?

[Spyridon]

also have no beef with Michael. He’s usually spot on. But what you and he are coming across as trying to generalize in this area, and you simply cant. It’s way too complex. Some people just have no external idea there’s an internal problem. They know there is one, but can’t quite figure it out.

The scenario you gave is not what I oppose.

I oppose someone who has totally healthy male parts destroying them to try to become female.

So I have no issue with gender corrective surgery.

 

[OraLabora]

Folks we need to understand that our most important sex organ is not between the legs but between the ears.

Obviously we cannot amputate a brain, even if diseased. Nor do we yet have the werewithal to rearrange its wiring without unintended consequences.

Can a brain be of a different « gender » than the rest of the body? Some research indicates that this is a possibility, just as someone with AIS may be genetically male but born with deformed male genitalia or even with female genitalia.

Confining sufferers to a lifetime of unhappiness which often leads to suicide does not strike me as an effective therapeutic approach. Perhaps some day a better approach will be available. Until then each case needs to be evaluated on its merits with as conservative a therapeutic approach as possible, but not being completely closed to surgery in the most difficult cases. Which is why there are standards of care.

 

[Spyridon]

Until then each case needs to be evaluated on its merits with as conservative a therapeutic approach as possible, but not being completely closed to surgery in the most difficult cases. Which is why there are standards of care.

Are there any cases of this prior to the 20th century? I mean transgenderism leading to severe problems?

It seems to me to be rooted much more in culture than biology.

If it was biology, shouldn’t this be recorded down through the ages as a widespread malady?

 

[Augustinian]

If it was biology, shouldn’t this be recorded down through the ages as a widespread malady?

Maybe , maybe not.

I remember back in the 1980’s when AIDS was first becoming popular. I spoke with an elderly doctor, who explained there were always a few patients who would get mysteriously very ill, and die off within a short period of time with symptoms like those of AIDS, even though they had seemed young and healthy until they took ill.

AIDS may have been around for a long time, just took the current age to isolate and define it.

 

[OraLabora]

Are there any cases of this prior to the 20th century? I mean transgenderism leading to severe problems?

It seems to me to be rooted much more in culture than biology.

If it was biology, shouldn’t this be recorded down through the ages as a widespread malady?

Yes. St. Paul even alludes to it in Romans calling them the « effeminate ». Aboriginals also have recognized this, many cultures defining some kind of « third sex ». Then there are the Hijra in India. The latter simply have their genitals crudely amputated and take on a female gender role and clothing.

The difference in the 20th century is a greater understanding of the subject, better surgical techniques, and the gradual reduction of the cultural taboos about the issue. This has allowed more of the truly transgendered to open up, but alas, has also allowed the « flakes » to manifest themselves as well, no doubt complicating the work of health care professionals.

 

[Augustinian]

Yes. St. Paul even alludes to it in Romans calling them the « effeminate ».

Not everyone labeled “effeminate” is “transgender”. The late Liberace was accused of being “effeminate” in the 1950’s in England, and it was understood to mean someone more conventionally homosexual.

 

[StephieNorthCo]

Sexual attraction and gender issues are orthogonal attributes. I know both transgender and intersex people who are totally heterosexual and some who are SSA. In the cases I am most familiar with, the individuals were and are heterosexual.

In the transgender people I know, there is a higher proportion of SSA. Most of those people in that category are what was described above as flakes.

As Ora mentioned above, our current society has allowed truly transgender to open up.

My sis, who is Jewish as well as intersex makes a strong point that (old) Jewish tradition states that this condition was known and the people involved are instructed to “Correct themselves, and then live accordingly”, which would presumably apply to gender identity as well as sexual attraction.

 

[PetraG]

You are right. That’s why is corrective surgery. I have said several times in this thread that you can’t change gender. Ain’t gonna happen. But there are some transgender that fit this scenario as well. That is why the LGBTletters contingent is such a bad influence, as I also stated above.

Those people thinking they are changing gender are being fooled, and fooling themselves. That’s the group who later regret it.

I also have no beef with Michael. He’s usually spot on. But what you and he are coming across as trying to generalize in this area, and you simply cant. It’s way too complex. Some people just have no external idea there’s an internal problem. They know there is one, but can’t quite figure it out.

Still, there are some who require full surgery to be healthy and to give them relief from mental snguish.

Absolutely. It would be a huge mistake to go from saying that sex cannot be changed by surgery on the genitalia to getting some idea that genital surgery is inherently wrong. That is not what the Church teaches and that idea could cause a lot of harm and unnecessary distress. Absolutely.

 

[OraLabora]

Not everyone labeled “effeminate” is “transgender”. The late Liberace was accused of being “effeminate” in the 1950’s in England, and it was understood to mean someone more conventionally homosexual.

We are talking about Saint Paul’s definition. Of course part of it is speculation but he described homosexuals differently, clearly as people lusting for and having relations with the same sex. Effeminate seems to be a category apart; clearly at least men who had feminine mannerisms (and perhaps dress?)

 

[PetraG]

Yes. St. Paul even alludes to it in Romans calling them the « effeminate ». Aboriginals also have recognized this, many cultures defining some kind of « third sex ». Then there are the Hijra in India. The latter simply have their genitals crudely amputated and take on a female gender role and clothing.

The difference in the 20th century is a greater understanding of the subject, better surgical techniques, and the gradual reduction of the cultural taboos about the issue. This has allowed more of the truly transgendered to open up, but alas, has also allowed the « flakes » to manifest themselves as well, no doubt complicating the work of health care professionals.

Considering how often the 20th and 21st century has rushed to the conclusion that it has reached the pinnacle of human self-understanding in other areas and been utterly off the mark, I’m not rushing to the conclusion that it has the myriad varieties of sexual ambiguity and sexual confusion (of all things!) figured out. Certainly there is a big difference between one’s sex and the contemporary roles that a person of that sex is expected to conform with.

The world is so full of people who are misled and enslaved by the cult of the individual that it stands to reason that we are in a time that is uniquely tormented by bizarre thinking about ourselves as individuals. There was a time when we didn’t take it for granted that we ought to be at the center of our universe and when the “existential pain” of that habit was not so widespread. Frustration, anger, disaffection and anxiety have everything to do with expectation. When ego is given so much latitude, it is of course going to be very difficult to sort out what psychological suffering has a treatable external source and how much is internally-generated or internally-exacerbated. This is with and without culpability on the part of the patients. Most of us have been misled concerning our interior lives: how unruffled they ought to be, what sort of warfare is normal and what is abnormal, what kind of damage external harm does and what the goal of molding self-concept ought to be. I have to think people are doing more psychic harm and coping with more psychic harm in less effective ways than at many other times in history.

 

[PetraG]

Yes. St. Paul even alludes to it in Romans calling them the « effeminate ». Aboriginals also have recognized this, many cultures defining some kind of « third sex ». Then there are the Hijra in India. The latter simply have their genitals crudely amputated and take on a female gender role and clothing.

We are talking about Saint Paul’s definition. Of course part of it is speculation but he described homosexuals differently, clearly as people lusting for and having relations with the same sex. Effeminate seems to be a category apart; clearly at least men who had feminine mannerisms (and perhaps dress?)

From what I understand, there wasn’t even a word for homosexual at the time. It seemed to have been the attitude of the Romans and Greeks that a man would have sex with whomever he could dominate sufficiently to have sex with. The disdain was for men who let themselves be dominated when their social status did not require them to submit…that was “effeminate,” and it was not just an alternative lifestyle. It was considered a demeaned condition to rank and file Romans. The other moral code was that sex was reserved for married couples, with procreation as a possibility.

This shows the problem in looking at non-Christian societies with regards to what is and what is not “normal” sexuality. There is no reason to believe that there was some society out there somewhere that had, in their aboriginal innocence, figured out human sexuality. How anyone can think this in light of other societal norms in this isolated community or that which were obviously beyond the pale might well be asked. They were just humans. They weren’t some special authorities on human morality or normalcy. Just as it is arrogant to think they have nothing to teach, it is also naive to think they’re authorities of some kind simply by not having contact with city-state humans.

 

[anon65111186]

God doesn’t create transgender persons. He creates them either male or female. Creation is not a choice, just as who your parents or brothers or sisters are is not a choice. You only have to discover what that nature is and live in accord with it. You can’t change your gender nomatter what you do to your organs or however much you change your thoughts, words and actions.

Trying to be someone who God didn’t create you to be is frustrating God’s will.

 

[OraLabora]

Just as it is arrogant to think they have nothing to teach, it is also naive to think they’re authorities of some kind simply by not having contact with city-state humans.

I don’t think I suggested that they were somehow authorities. Just that the condition existed, and some societies made allowances for that, rightly or wrongly.

God doesn’t create transgender persons. He creates them either male or female.

The existence of intersex conditions quashes your statement. These are very well documented biological and genetic conditions with mixes of X and Y chromosomes beyond the normal XX or XY, and conditions like androgen insensitivity syndrome where genetic XY males who cannot properly process testosterone are born with malformed, ambiguous, or simply absent male genitalia. Most of those with absent male genitals are raised as girls until the age of puberty when they discover something is wrong. Most go on to live happily as girls (albeit sterile) in spite of being, genetically, male, which really does suggest that a black-and-white approach is misguided.

God’s permissive will allows these conditions to exist, just as He allows cancer, heart disease, ALS and many more debilitating diseases, exist. This all flows from our corruption at the Fall. Transgenderism, whether it is a psychiatric condition, or whether it is later discovered to be a biological condition, is part of the panoply of debilitating illnesses and syndromes that are part of our (fallen) human condition. Each and every person affected is entitled to the best medical care available.

And if one takes the time to study the Standards of Care linked to above, one can see that doctors are not proposing to chop off the genitalia or breasts of anyone who calls him/herself transsexual. They are proposing an array of treatments from none at all or simply psychological support, to surgical reconstruction, and everything else in between. It is a non-sequitur to suggest that transgenderism always = surgery. But it should always = therapy and if indicated, medical treatment.

 

[anon65111186]

The existence of intersex conditions quashes your statement. These are very well documented biological and genetic conditions with mixes of X and Y chromosomes beyond the normal XX or XY, and conditions like androgen insensitivity syndrome where genetic XY males who cannot properly process testosterone are born with malformed, ambiguous, or simply absent male genitalia

I was going on the fact that God created humans “in the image of God … male and female” (Genesis 1:26-27)

I am not that knowledgeable about transex or transgender, but from what I know it sounds like there is more human will involved rather than God’s will.

Okay I may be wrong but even those not normal XX or XY, transex or hermaphrodites, they are either male or female, aren’t they?

I admit it is sometimes hard or nearly impossible to know in such abnormal cases whether a person is male or female, but our lack of knowledge doesn’t mean God didn’t create them male or female.

If we take the definition “Transgender people are those who have a gender identity or gender expression that differs from their assigned sex”. Then it means that transgender persons have a biological gender, but disagree with their gender, they make an act of the will or they have a habit or character of identifying themselves against their biology.

I agree that they may need therapy. But they should also pray and try to find their true nature as God has intended, and not rush to assign themselves a gender.

 

[PetraG]

I was going on the fact that God created humans “in the image of God … male and female” (Genesis 1:26-27)

I am not that knowledgeable about transex or transgender, but from what I know it sounds like there is more human will involved rather than God’s will.

Okay I may be wrong but even those not normal XX or XY, transex or hermaphrodites, they are either male or female, aren’t they?..

Assigned gender can mean different things to different people. Strictly speaking, it means that in some point in your infancy someone decided “It is a boy” or “it is a girl.” It is possible (though rare) to make a mistake because there are ways in which external genitalia can develop in an atypical fashion. Sometimes, however, it is the term used to differentiate the sex someone believes they ought to belong to from the one that would be correctly deduced from their external body shape and what collection of X and Y chromosomes they have.
Yes, sometimes the situation is ambiguous. Sometimes, though, the patient says, “I’m not comfortable being my sex, I am more comfortable in a persona of the other sex” and they take that to be the arbiter of their identity.
That reasoning doesn’t work anywhere else, though. I cannot say, “I am not comfortable with this aspect of myself, therefore it is not true in spite of physical evidence to the contrary. I must truly be what I believe myself to be, instead.” No, if your DNA says, “these are your parents,” then those are your biological parents. If you think you belong to the Russian royal family, well, that isn’t evidence no matter how much less anxiety you feel when you take on a persona of a member of that family or how much you learn about that family or how much more your singing voice sounds like that other family instead of your own musical family or anything else.
To that degree, yes, we have to accomodate ourselves to the facts and not the other way around, even if we never really feel comfortable with the facts.
There are people who have medical conditions that put them in an ambiguous position, however, and it is also true that we are not likely to have learned everything we are going to learn about the sexual characteristics of the brain, for instance. Having said that, in the absence of compelling physical evidence that someone’s sex is physically ambiguous or was originally assigned incorrectly, based on physical evidence, I do not foresee the Church allowing someone to claim that their sex was misassigned early in life.
That is the only thing I could see the Church changing: that is, the Church could concievably accept phyiscal evidence that a sex was misassigned at birth, evidence that at present is not available, but that becomes available in the future. (If parents were to have lied about the sex of their child at baptism, for instance, even now the Church would allow the baptismal certificate to be amended to reflect the truth.)
In other words, the Church will always hold that you cannot change a person’s sex. The Church may in the future allow physical proof of a person’s true sex (independent of their testimony) that is not currently available.

 

[anon65111186]

That is exactly the point I was trying to draw, in cases where it falls under the realm of choice and morality, you can’t change what you already are if you are given a gender by God. For those with what can be called abnormalities, it is still clear that they must seek God’s will and not their own if they are to be holy.

“People with abnormal chromosomes or additional organs etc exist” isn’t proof God doesn’t make humans male and female, it just shows that it can be difficult to know. The Church teaching is that medical professionals can determine the sex even in the abnormal cases.

The science and medicine backs up the Church and God’s revelation that all people are patterned on either a male or female pattern, and whatever God has given you, you have it, whether you like it or feel it or identify with it or not.

It is certainly a cross and a temptation, but who in this world is free of crosses and temptations?

 

[OraLabora]

That is exactly the point I was trying to draw, in cases where it falls under the realm of choice and morality, you can’t change what you already are if you are given a gender by God. For those with what can be called abnormalities, it is still clear that they must seek God’s will and not their own if they are to be holy.

The problem is that for the truly transgendered, their condition is not a moral choice. Morality and ethics certainly enter into the choice of a treatment, but unfortunately we tend to conflate the two and treat the transgendered with undeserved contempt.

AFAIK the Church hasn’t really taught infallibly on this, so seeking God’s will is tainted with human fallibility. Which is why we need a Redeemer. Yes the Church has said “male and female He made them”, which is true, but corruption entered into the equation with the bite of the forbidden fruit, and sometimes not all of the body parts align (including the brain), and in fact sometimes the genes themselves don’t cooperate with various intersex genetic mosaics.

The science and medicine backs up the Church and God’s revelation that all people are patterned on either a male or female pattern,

This not all entirely true as intersex conditions show. In some cases, parents were compelled to choose a pattern where none was obvious only to later find out that they made the wrong choice. Which is why doctors more and more recommend waiting before committing the child to a pattern it may later reject. In total AIS, a male develops entirely with a female morphology, in spite of being XY males with functioning testes. They apparently go on to live happily as females after removing the testes and giving female hormones.

 

[OraLabora]

It is certainly a cross and a temptation, but who in this world is free of crosses and temptations?

Some are much harder to carry than others, and crosses that are treatable medical conditions demand that we apply the best of science to treat them, and intersex and true transgendered conditions are among them. Again, read the standards of care. They don’t propose surgical reassignment for all cases. Treatments can vary from psychological support all the way to surgery, depending on the individual. The condition itself is not as black-and-white as you make it out to be, and the treatments neither are not as black-and-white as you seem to think they are.

And this is obvious to me as the parent of a transgender (adult) child. As my spiritual director says, all I can do is love, pray and accept. He also adds that acceptance does not equal approval, but acceptance is essential when we have no control over a situation, if we are to be at peace with ourselves and the circumstances. I can “disapprove” overtly all I want but then I risk losing her. I will however counsel caution.

I have told my child in no uncertain terms of my unconditional love for her and that I will always be by her side through her struggles. I have known my child to be profoundly unhappy and since coming out she has become like a beam of sunshine. I take that as a gift from God. It’s a relief to me to know what troubles her now. I was so terrified of losing her before, I just couldn’t figure out what was wrong and I couldn’t reach out to her. She is also a brilliant university student. I have to not only accept the cross we now share, but be grateful to God for the many positive things about her.

 

[anon65111186]

Fair enough, it seems I am wrong about it being black and white and simple, and with your daughter ? suffering from the condition I’m sure you know much more than me. I am just talking from my ignorance of the subject. I never knew any such person in my life, which I guess speaks to the fact how rare it must be, or that my experience is just not that great.

I will pray for your child, and ask for God’s mercy. Now you use the pronoun she, which indicates female, but I’m guessing she identifies as a he? I really don’t know it works since most of what I think of first is what I’ve seen or heard from the news and media.

I thought it was pretty black and white because I’ve never encountered the issue really before, and to me it was pretty simple, if you are confused or even have organs or characteristics that mismatch, then under all that is either a male or female, and it’s up to you to find out what that is. I guess it’s not so easy after all.

You live and you learn.

 

[TheCatholicGryphon]

Thanks a lot for the replies and prayers, everyone. This thread has given me an enlightening, though, admittedly, a bit of a scary read - I guess I really wish this all wasn’t so complicated, and that my brother could go back and be happy being my brother, but I guess it’s not all that simple.

In any case, again, thanks for all the information and everything - if anyone has anything else to share, by all means, please do. I check back regularly and look forward to any other Church documents or other such documents that are posted regarding this topic.