Vatican says transgender surgeries defy God, surrogacy defies human dignity
The Vatican has declared that transgender sex-change surgeries are an affront to God, describing the procedures as being on par with abortion and euthanasia in a newly-released doctrine.
The 20-page “Declaration Dignitas Infinita, on human dignity” also claims that surrogacy violates the human dignity of both the surrogate mother and the child.
It asserts that the sex a person was born with is an “irrevocable gift” from God, and that anyone who desires “a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes” risks conceding to “the age-old temptation to make oneself God,” according to the New York Times.
The doctrine goes on to state that there is a “sexual difference” between men and women, and argues that “any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.”
However, the doctrine makes an exception for surgeries to correct “genital abnormalities” that can be “resolved” with the help of medical professionals.
It also asserts that even though the Catholic Church does not agree with homosexuality, it “should be denounced as contradictory to human dignity the fact that in some places, not a few people are imprisoned, tortured or even deprived of the good of life solely because of their sexual orientation.
“At the same time, the Church highlights the definite critical issues present in gender theory,” it says, according to the Times.
Elsewhere, the human dignity doctrine released Monday discusses issues of poverty, abortion, the death penalty and surrogacy — which Pope Francis has previously said should be banned.
It claims that babies have the right to have a “fully human (and not artificially induced) origin, and to receive the gift of a life that manifests both the dignity of the giver and that of the receiver,” The Independent reports.
“Considering this, the legitimate desire to have a child cannot be transformed into a ‘right to a child’ that fails to respect the dignity of that child as the recipient of the gift of life.”
The doctrine, which has been highly-anticipated since March 2019, was intended to delineate the Church’s stance on a variety of issues facing modern society.
“Some topics may resonate more with some sectors of society than others,” Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, who leads the Vatican’s doctrine office, wrote in an introduction, according to the Times.
“Nevertheless, all of them strike us as being necessary so that we may not lose our way and open ourselves up to more wounds and profound suffering amid the numerous concerns and anxieties of our time.”
But its release on Monday came just five months after Pope Francis announced that transgender Catholics can be baptized and serve as godparents.
The following month, the pope also approved blessings for same-sex couples.
Now, some LGBTQ+ activists fear the Church is taking a step back on transgender and same-sex rights.
“The Vatican is again supporting and propagating ideas that lead to real physical harm to transgender, nonbinary and other LGBTQ+ people,” Francis DeBernardo, the executive director of New Ways Ministry — a Maryland-based group that advocates for gay Catholics, told the Times.
He argued that the Vatican’s defense of human dignity excluded “the segment of the human population who are transgender, nonbinary or gender-nonconforming” and said it presented an outdated view on sex based on physical appearance but was blind to “the growing reality that a person’s gender includes the psychological, social and spiritual aspects.”
Mara Klein, a nonbinary transgender activist, also hit out at the notion that gender affirming surgeries are an affront to God.
“The suggestion that gender-affirming health care — which has saved the lives of so many wonderful trans people and enabled them to live in harmony with their bodies, their communities and [God] — might risk or diminish trans people’s dignity is not only hurtful, but dangerously ignorant,” Klein said.
“Seeing that, in contrast, surgical interventions on intersex people — which, if performed without consent, … cause immense physical and psychological harm for many intersex people to date — are assessed positively just seems to expose the underlying hypocrisy further.”
With Post wires
