«La Chiesa siamo noi!». Il cammino di suor Derouen con le persone transgender

Reportage di David Van Biema* pubblicato sul sito di Outreach(USA) on August 19, 2024 and freely translated by Diego and Ilaria deLa Tenda di Gionata,eleventh and final part

It's a gray and drizzly early summer day in New York. Sister Derouen, bucking the trend, wears a bright turquoise tunic with black trousers, ballet flats and the Sisters of Peace pendant. A transparent support protects her jaw.

The conference room at Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus fills with conference attendees Outreach 2023 (a conference on LGBTQ+ pastoral care that takes place every year in the United States, Ed.).

The previous year, at the same conference, Derouen had been one of the speakers at a seminar on transgender pastoral care with forty participants. This year she hosts it and the audience is almost double.

Also in 2022 he declared that it would be the "last ride". Today she is more philosophical: “I really gave God a blank check from the beginning,” she says. “I knew my faith would develop in unpredictable ways. Ways we cannot know and must not know! Thank God we don't know them! We can only live our faith moment by moment, as we feel ready."

According to his estimates in America there were perhaps twenty bishops out of two hundred and ninety open towards transgender people and their Rights. “It's sad, in a way,” is his comment. “But Others say, 'Oh Wow! winds!'". And He believes that others "will be Added". he no longer worries about the possible repercussions of his Pastoral work. «Before deciding to take my business public, i was very Afraid. i don't know if i'm safe now or not, but i'm no longer afraid."

Many in the room today would like to feel equally free. The speakers are Ray Dever, the deacon who participated in the online meeting with the bishops; Christine Zuba, a transgender woman minister of communion in her parish in New Jersey and president of the group for the pastoral care of transgender people for Fortunate Families (a Catholic support association for family members of LGBTQ+ people, Ed.); Hilary Howes, founder of the website TransCatholic and his wife Celestine, to whom he has been married for decades, long before his gender affirmation journey.

«Welcome, welcome!» exclaims Derouen. She introduces herself: «I am a Dominican Sister of Peace, I have had the privilege of exercising my ministry in the transgender community for twenty-four years… and I still do so!». Someone shouts “Amen!” and the room bursts into applause. “And I'm almost eighty!” says Derouen. Louder applause and some shouts of joy.

The speakers speak. The room seems like a small island in a hostile and agitated sea. Somewhere, probably, there are campuses full of students from Generation Z, some of whom are transgender and non-binary owe much to the historic struggle for youth independence. This age group is missing from the conference stage.

Instead there are Hilary and Celestine Howes who talk about marriage. “Basically, I loved the person, not their genitals,” Celestine says. Zuba talks about coming out to his eighty-eight-year-old mother ("Have you talked to a priest?" "Yes, mom, I did") and urges his listeners to "open the doors" and show the world what it means to suddenly find yourself «living on the front line of a war, while you are preparing dinner».

Dever explains that her family will spend Christmas in Washington this year because her transgender daughter no longer feels safe in Florida. It must be recognized that "our Church", even if unintentionally, has left room for "this hatred aimed at a very small group of people who represent no real threat and who want to live with the same rights guaranteed by God to everyone else... it is It's time for this war against transgender people to end. And it is time, once and for all, for the Church to step forward and intervene to allow this to happen."

Amen. Derouen stands up. «And here we are! It is not true? We are the Church! Thank you deacon!». It's time for questions. It's stopped raining outside, even though the sky hasn't really cleared up. Someone from the back of the room speaks, but his voice cannot be heard. Looking for a microphone. “I'll go,” Derouen offers.

He hurries from behind the speakers' table towards the audience. His step is brisk and his eyes shine. He doesn't seem like an exhausted person after twenty-five years of stressful sharing and five years of strenuous activity promoting LGBTQ+ pastoral care. No, it's as if it were 1961, in Welsh, Louisiana, and seventeen-year-old Luisa Derouen was casting aside her beauty queen crown and joyfully moving forward into her full, rich life.

Postscript

Dopo la chiusura della fase di editing di questo articolo, il Dicastero per la Dottrina della Fede della Santa Sede ha pubblicato la sua dichiarazione più autorevole finora sulla questione del genere. Dignitas Infinita, scritta dal Cardinale Víctor Manuel Fernández, capo del dicastero, con l’approvazione di papa Francesco, affronta la tematica della necessità di proteggere la dignità umana. La sua sezione finale elenca tredici «violazioni specifiche e gravi» di tale ideale, tra cui la guerra, la tratta di esseri umani e gli abusi sessuali. Poco più sotto si fa riferimento alla «teoria del genere» e al «cambio di sesso».

Il documento ha sancito come dottrina ufficiale della Chiesa delle dichiarazioni che erano già state espresse in documenti meno autorevoli o limitati a specifiche aree del mondo, secondo cui gli studi sul genere promuovono «nuovi diritti» che sono in contrasto con la categoria maschio/femmina definita una volta per tutte da Dio nella Bibbia (Dignitas Infinita non ha tuttavia tenuto conto delle acquisizioni più recenti della scienza, che potrebbero mettere in dubbio questo convincimento). Ha sostenuto – con profonde conseguenze per l’attività degli ospedali cattolici – che «qualsiasi intervento di cambio di sesso… rischia di minacciare l’unica dignità che ogni persona ha ricevuto dal momento del concepimento».

As has already happened in previous statements, he avoided mentioning transgender people, who are those most affected by the consequences of these statements, alluding instead to a generic, nameless category of spiritual sinners.

In one paragraph it is stated that the theory on gender would make "any individual preference or subjective desire" permissible, as if being a transgender person were a philosophical choice or a transitory enthusiasm. In another passage it is argued that this "personal self-definition" is equivalent to a surrender to the "primordial temptation to make oneself God, entering into competition with the true God".

Thus, without using the word "transgender" (and, for that matter, not even "sin"), the most authoritative dicastery of the Church in terms of doctrine has allowed restless priests and bishops, opportunist politicians and opponents of people's rights transgender people to have free reign to deny and condemn transgender Catholics for years, if not decades, to come.

In March 2024, knowing that the declaration was about to be finalized and made public, Derouen sent a letter to Cardinal Fernández imploring him to consider transgender people for who they really are and testifying that «no other pastoral activity has shown me the face of God how did transgender people do it."

Examining the cardinal's final document, the nun sighs. “Years ago I said: 'The church hierarchy simply doesn't know who transgender people are.' But now things have changed. We explained it to him. They heard the stories of transgender people. And while some bishops have made themselves available to listen and learn, for many it is now a matter of guilty ignorance."

He decided not to write anything about the Vatican declaration: «I have been doing this for twenty-five years and I have wasted a lot of energy on what the bishops declare or could declare, on what they don't say or wait for them to say. I've reached the point where I feel like I can't continue like this anymore."

After years of prayer, she followed the alarmed suggestions of her transgender friends and now appears close to ending her ministry. Fewer and fewer write to them to discuss and analyze the latest news. But there are exceptions. The day of the promulgation of Dignitas, Maureen Rasmussen sent her an email. Unlike her first message six years earlier in which she sought guidance, this one contained no happy emojis. But she reassured Derouen that although she was "discouraged", she had not "changed her goals".

What offers some consolation to Sister Derouen is the fact that, with the exception of a portion of the hierarchy, the Catholic world is much more aware of the existence of transgender people than when she began this ministry. «The theologians know. Parents of transgender children know. The people are making themselves heard and rebelling."

Several transgender Catholics he has spiritually accompanied, who hold pastoral roles in their parishes, are beginning to publicly promote the rights of transgender believers in the Church.

In July 2024, Fra' Christian Matson, a longtime Franciscan Oblate friend and diocesan hermit under the authority of Bishop Stowe, publicly came out as transgender. Addressing those who might call for his removal or even imply that he is not a member of the Church, Matson said in an interview with the Religion News Service (American news agency specializing in faith and religion issues, Ed.): "You have to deal with us because God called us into this Church," he said. "The church you want to expel us from is not yours."

Derouen thinks back to a letter written in the first half of the twentieth century by the Jesuit and scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin to his cousin (in his time Chardin's ideas were largely rejected by the Church). “He meant it personally,” she says, “but I applied it more broadly.” “Above all, have faith: God works slowly and gradually” Derouen reads. «We tend quite naturally to want to reach the end in everything without delay. We would like to skip the intermediate steps. We kick as long as we are on our way towards something unknown, something new. Yet, the law of all progress is that the process occurs through some phases of instability and this can take a long time."

*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