“Have the humility to seek the Word of God.” Sister Derouen's journey with transgender people

Reportage di David Van Biema* pubblicato sul sito di Outreach (USA) il 19 agosto 2024 e liberamente tradotto da Diego e Ilaria de La Tenda di Gionata,tenth part

Sister Derouen was unable to “retire”. She realized that many transgender people, both those she already knew and others she hadn't previously met, were happy to communicate with her by email, phone and Zoom. After the catharsis of operating in broad daylight and without the stress of hiding, she found that her jaw, although it continued to deteriorate, gave her fewer problems.

The rapid pace of diocesan documents demanded a response. He filled his schedule with lectures, interviews and essay writing.

Another reason for continuing was that, in fact, there was no one who could take his place. Two other nuns initially spent a week with her meeting her transgender friends, but Derouen later gave up this activity for fear of being discovered.

Next, he began a comprehensive online training program every Wednesday for four months – fifteen informational videos of ninety minutes each – for those interested in spiritually accompanying transgender people.

The presenters did a sort of This Is Your Life (programme of the American broadcaster NBC, later taken up by the English BBC, in which the story of a famous person is told through interviews and contributions from his friends; Ed.) of the last twenty-three years of Derouen's life. Rasmussen spoke about faith and spirituality; Maureen Osborne of Therapy; Bouchard addressed the moral and pastoral issues of accompanying transgender people; Battaglino spoke about inclusion in the workplace. The first streaming listeners were eight religious people.

Then, in 2021, a pro-LGBTQ Catholic organization, called Fortunate Families, created two programs starting from these videos: a free-choice course for the staff of Catholic institutions and a structured twenty-three-hour course with periodic evaluation through tests to train pastoral ministers for transgender people. Within a few months, seventy people had signed up for the second edition.
Sister Derouen commented smugly: “The baton has been passed.”

Father Martin had been in regular contact with her since 2012. After her pastoral ministry had become public, he invited her to participate in the conference of Outreach and to write for the website. And he did. Martin, who is aware of only three other nuns who carry out pastoral work for trans people - one in Argentina, one in India and one in Rome - considers her "a point of reference".

“There is no one ahead of her,” he says. “If someone has lived in the rainforest for thirty years and says, 'Don't eat this plant; eat this', you believe him blindly! You have been in what, in Catholic terms, we would call a 'completely new culture', for twenty-four years. I trust everything he says."

One of the essays that Derouen wrote for Outreach, Four things Catholics need to know about transgender people, recorded more than twenty-three thousand views.

A few months after the publication of the document Male and female he created them on the Vatican's part, Martin obtained an audience with Cardinal Versaldi. The American Jesuit says it was a cordial but atypical meeting. He spent most of his time reading – in full and aloud – letters from a Catholic transgender man, a Catholic parent of a transgender youth, and Derouen. The latter concluded thus: «I beg you… have the humility to seek the Word of God on this topic in the social and medical sciences, which are part of God's revelation, and from transgender people themselves, who are the Body of Christ as much as much as any of us."

Martin published Cardinal Versaldi's response, with his permission, the same day. The cardinal was displeased that "people thought that the Congregation was accusing people of being deviant from ideology." Furthermore, Father Martin wrote that the cardinal and an undersecretary wished to “share their concern for transgender people” and that they “want to continue the dialogue to reflect on their experiences.”

As significant as that interaction had been, last March Derouen and Bouchard discovered how little it had influenced the U.S. bishops' doctrinal commission. Through one Doctrinal Note on the Moral Limits to the Technological Manipulation of the Human Body, the commission prohibited any intervention, surgical or pharmacological, "that aims to transform the sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex or to contribute to the development of such procedures."

The bishops interpreted the current Catechism differently from Derouen, quoting the passage: «Man and woman were created, that is, wanted by God... in their respective being man and woman...".
The commission wrote that any medical protocol that "considers the order of things [desired by God] to be somehow unsatisfactory and proposes a more compliant order, a reworked order" is morally inadmissible.

The note cited five Popes and the Ratzinger-era Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in detail, but included a single reference to transgender people – in a footnote: “With regards to those who identify as transgender or non-binary , there are a number of pastoral issues that need to be addressed, but which cannot be addressed in this document." There was no mention of the Zoom conference.

Derouen was bitterly disappointed. “I kept saying all these years that, 'There's nothing official yet,' from the U.S. bishops,” he said. «Now there is and it is a doctrinal statement. The ripple effect has a huge impact on transgender people: they are kicked out of their homes, lose their jobs and families because of what these bishops say. It's a disaster." He sighs.

“All I can do is continue to sow, to have the energy to support what I believe in and to bear witness to what I have direct experience of, whether they accept it and believe me or not.”

*David Van Biema è stato il capo redattore della sezione religione per la rivista Time, dove ha lavorato dal 1993 al 2008. I suoi scritti sono apparsi su The Atlantic,America,Religion News Service e altri.

Testo originario: No Body Now But Yours