Anyone catch Father Thomas Loya this week on Relevant Radio? He was speaking about Theology of the Body…as he typically does…and a caller asked the question…‘if someone is transgendered, and science shows that these people are born thinking they belong as a another gender, then what does God think of this?’
So…he replied that ‘God doesn’t make mistakes. Just because you think you should be something else, doesn’t mean you should be. If you are born with male parts, then you are a male.’ (and he went on, but that’s the gist)
I was surprised that Father Loya didn’t make any exceptions? Maybe someone is chemically imbalanced and therefore they are born thinking he/she should be the of the opposite sex?
Curious as to your thoughts.
(Oops, this post refers to several different people as “you”. Please read charitably.
)
Don’t be hard on Fr. Loya, he probably isn’t even aware that intersex people exist. It used to be the case, and many times still is, that if a child is born who isn’t clearly male or female, the doctors will cut off whichever parts seem easiest to make the child look more male or female. When families discover that their child is the opposite gender from what they initially thought, they often move in order to spare the child taunting at school.
Theology of the Body is, frankly, an incoherent novelty in Church teaching. Perhaps over the coming decades theologians will improve and correct its many flaws and reconcile it with traditional Catholic teaching, or maybe it’ll just get discarded like so many other pet theories. TotB as it exists now would seem (by my interpretation) to say transgenderism is deeply sinful, because it operates under the assumption that human sex should be perfectly binary. That isn’t the case, of course. We all know what characteristics typify a male and what characteristics typify a female, but there are many people in between.
-There are people who have the physical characteristics of both sexes, either equally or in some proportion
-There are people who have the physical characteristics of neither sex.
-There are people who have genetics different from the standard XX and XY, such as X0, XXX, XXY, and XYY.
-There are people who are physically male but genetically female.
-There are people who are physically female but genetically male.
Once you include psychology and social roles and such, the boundary line gets even fuzzier. My father is flighty, emotional, a social butterfly, and loves to shop. My mother is stoic, practical, loves physical labor, and hates to enter a store. I haven’t done the research but I would assume that transgender people are extreme cases of that kind. None of this goes to deny that men and women are distinct. They are. It’s simply also true that many people are not precisely one or the other.
In conclusion, don’t worry about Theology of the Body at this stage in history. If it’s helpful to you, then fine. It’s far from a perfect explanation of its topic, though.
What you may be certain of is that God created us, and he did a good job. He created us “male and female”, not “either male or female”. Some people may tell you that intersexuality and transgenderism are defects introduced with Original Sin, however, since God
to our knowledge hasn’t ever miraculously cured someone of intersexuality or transgenderism, you are entitled to believe (and SHOULD believe, pending that miracle) that your body is an equally good part of God’s good creation.
Maybe human sexual identity is variable throughout life, on a sort of continuum