When will the Catholic Church stop wanting transgender people?

Text by Stephen McNulty*, published in the National Catholic Reporter (United States) on July 23, 2024. Freely translated by the volunteers of the Gionata project.

Following the document "Infinite dignitas", it is clear that the Vatican expressed a clear "no" to "gender ideology", anything means. Now he must answer an even more crucial question, in addition to that "no": he needs a "yes".

What positive vision does the church have for transgender and non -tracking Catholics? If they do not have to live according to "gender ideology", how could they experience a Christian experience embodied?

This question is more urgent than ever, because I fear that the Catholic Church is repeating the deadly approach that has inflicted for decades to homosexual Catholics: a mentality whose logical conclusion is conversion therapy.

(...) I don't think the Catholic Church can find a new vital and authentically Christian path in its pastoral ministry with transgender people, at least not with the doctrine illustrated by "infinite dignitas".

For people or homosexuals, the Catholic Church can say: “Don't be straight; be celibate ”. It can trace a distinction between specific activities and general feelings, even if this distinction collapses when it goes concrete.

But the genre goes much deeper. Every day of our life, we present ourselves, we speak, live, occupy space and identify in ways related to our kind. If the Church says that these things should not be done in a "transgender" way - why would it be to live the dreaded "gender ideology" - what is the alternative?

The alternative is to live as Cisgender people do. The moral metaphysics of the Church can contemplate the existence of homosSto people, but cannot do the same for our trans brothers and sisters and non -tracks.

We should not use the least terms - a conversion mentality is equally harmful to transgender people as it is for homosexual people.

Just like the conversion of gay and lesvian people, the conversion of trans people is also a theology of death. Literally.

I fear, however, that it will take another 20, perhaps 50 years for the Church to realize this fact. In the meantime, countless transgender people will suffer and even die due to our refusal to follow scientific and medical consensus.

I have full confidence in the ability of our Church to find vital paths in its Ministry towards transgender people in the end. This is what means to believe in a church led by the Spirit.

There will be a day when the Church will find a new vital and authentically Christian path in its ministry towards transgender people.

It will be a day of celebration. But it will also be a day of mourning, because there are today young transgender who, in all likelihood, will never see him that day - in part because our church was more engaged in an exclusion doctrine than in a meeting.

*Stephen McNulty is a fourth year student at the University of Yale, where he studied political science and religious studies.

Original text: When Will the Church Reject Transgender Conversion Therapy?