What about people who are both genders at the same time?

[Oumashta]

globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/weird-wide-web/steve-crecelius-man-goes-hospital-finds-out-is-woman

What would be the right thing to do in this situation? This person is both a man and a woman and has already fathered 6 children, but he is biologically a woman @_@… This person has now decided to ‘go woman’… I remember asking my former RCIA teacher, and she told me that this case would have to be examined from a more emotional point of view, since the Church has not made any pronouncements on this.

I wouldn’t assume that this counts as sinning because he/ she is not getting a ‘sex-change’, but just choosing one gender to go by I REALLY don’t know… Could someone help me on this? What about his/her marriage? Would it still be a valid marriage if someone in this situation were to be married in the Church?

I hope that someone can clear this up for me, since I do remember hearing of several cases like this. There was this man in China who had thought he was a male and married a woman, but then later found out that he had ovaries, even though he/ she had male organs.

If a Catholic were to find one’s self in this situation, would it be moral to marry? To enter religious life? To become a priest or a nun?..

Thanks and God bless !

 

[Oumashta]

articles.nydailynews.com/2012-05-24/news/31842379_1_kidney-stone-tv-station-gender-reassignment-surgery

same story, different news site.

 

[mharren]

Intersex conditions happen more often that a lot of people realize. It is an unfortunate position to find one’s self in and I don’t know what I would do if I ever found evidence I was actually male instead of female. I personally think with intersex individuals we should do what we DO do in medicine, and that is to advise them to take on the gender of the sex they feel they identify with. If this individual (in the first link) had not felt they were of the feminine gender most of their life and then found out they were intersex but identified with being male then I would advise them to continue on as a male. But if they had a history of feeling gender-confused and it turned out they had the anatomy to back it up, then I would advise them to make the change. There are three aspects to sex determination (I’ve already posted about it here somewhere in detail) and whatever adds up and the individual chooses I think should be accepted.

I know of a patient who came through the hospital I was doing clinical placement at in the past who was a male pseudohermaphrodite (immune to testosterone but had descended testis) and had lived his whole life as woman and even though his/her chromosomes were XY and his/her gonads were testis he/she wanted to continue on as a woman. Her testis were discovered when she had come in with her husband to figure out why she couldn’t get pregnant. I had contact with her in the ER because she had opted to have her testis removed and she had post-op complications. She was greatly troubled about the situation because some people - especially at her church - had told her she was sinning because she had chosen to remain a phenotypical woman despite actually being a man. She had even considered recanting her decision because of the guilt she felt. But really, there was little we could have done cosmetically to change her phenotype to one of a man and since she was completely testosterone immune we could not have treated her with hormones. Her husband was upset but he encouraged her to make whatever decision she felt was best and that he didn’t care if she wanted to be a man instead, he would still love her and be with her. The last I heard she had started to keep it a secret and she and her husband moved to another city to get away from all the people that knew about it.

I’m not sure how anyone could advise a person who finds out they intersex later in life, let alone someone who knows early in life that they are intersex about morality and sex and religion and marriage. Some religions and cultures recognize a 3rd sex, but we don’t, and unless we did I suspect these people will have to just proceed with what feels right to them and I doubt anyone is really in any place to tell them otherwise.

These individuals are not the same as transgender individuals and I don’t believe that the same attitudes about transgender individuals should be applied to intersex individuals.

 

[Durnford]

Intersex patients have a physical problem so called transgendered people have a psychological problem. That is my understanding of the whole situation.

 

[mharren]

That’s how they are currently classified, yes.

 

[PJH_74]

Intersex patients have a physical problem so called transgendered people have a psychological problem.

The thing is life is not that neat. There are conditions where genetically male people develop very normally as women simply because their bodies do not respond well to testosterone and they are usually sterile to my understanding. I find it hard not to call people like this not of God’s deliberate creation.

Transgender is a broad term that covers pretty much all cross gender flavors from people who simply like to wear the opposite sex’s clothes for one reason or another to people who can’t conceive going through life at the sex printed on their birth certificate, often to the point of suicide.

Here’s question the for you. If people don’t always physically develop in black and white genders and are God’s own creation; is God really that interested in rigid gender identities? …or is it really our need to have these rigid roles?

 

[Burdensome1]

What would be the right thing to do in this situation?

To enter religious life? To become a priest or a nun?..

The priesthood is not a last resort for males with sexual problems. Heavens no.

Like so many things in this post-sexual-revolution era, nothing is just medical anymore. Now, every sexual medical condition is political and has to be expressed publicly.

The right thing to do, like in every life situation, is to determine what is best for others and attempt to make those sacrifices that accomplish it. Often, sexual fulfillment and self-expression is not going to be entirely compatible with charity.

These types of issues call for deep consideration with the help of qualified spiritual direction. There is existing experience within the Church about this, a good moral theology manual deals with this type of issue and many, many others.

I’m not sure a qualified spiritual director would counsel a father of children to begin dressing as a female. On the surface, this appears to be self-expression at the expense of charity…but I’d leave that to a qualified moral theologian working on a case like this.

 

[Oumashta]

The priesthood is not a last resort for males with sexual problems. Heavens no.

Like so many things in this post-sexual-revolution era, nothing is just medical anymore. Now, every sexual medical condition is political and has to be expressed publicly.

The right thing to do, like in every life situation, is to determine what is best for others and attempt to make those sacrifices that accomplish it. Often, sexual fulfillment and self-expression is not going to be entirely compatible with charity.

These types of issues call for deep consideration with the help of qualified spiritual direction. There is existing experience within the Church about this, a good moral theology manual deals with this type of issue and many, many others.

I’m not sure a qualified spiritual director would counsel a father of children to begin dressing as a female. On the surface, this appears to be self-expression at the expense of charity…but I’d leave that to a qualified moral theologian working on a case like this.

Oh yes, sorry for not making myself clear, I meant that if the person with both genders desired to enter religious life, would they be allowed in or not to the priesthood, and the same with the convent…? Since they are both genders, I would assume that the Church would counsel such persons to chastity, or, as in the case with this father-woman, to continue living as the gender that seems to take on dominant characteristics, although this is only my speculation.

I only asked because I have had some people present this problem, and it has made me wonder about what the Church would have to say on the morality of marrying and or religious life while being inter-sex.