"Gender Ideology" and the Catholic Morality of Transgender-Enhancing Treatment and Sex Change (In Book: Ballano, Vivencio. 2025. Gender Ideology and The Contemporary Catholic Church: A Sociological-Synodal Exploration and Inculturation. Singapore: Springer Nature) (original) (raw)
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The Catholic Church is worried about transgender young people in its faith schools a concern set within the context of extreme media (social and traditional) interest . An informed understanding about what is happening is required by those involved in the pastoral care of children and contemporary families. This paper addresses the issues by discussing what is known about transgender people's sexual bodies and gender identities and shows the complexity of these indeterminate matters. Transgender people raise many ethical and foundational concerns for the church but these might beneficially be held in tension with discerning pastoral care of these people within the context of their families. Finally it is proposed that such an approach will allow God's compassionate intentions for the families affected to emerge.
2019
The church does not have a comprehensive, multidisciplinary public policy on the emerging spectrum of gender identities, yet there is extreme interest. Transitioning transgender people may become estranged from their families, yet, there is a paucity of research investigating this problem. This paper based on the literature review of my doctoral research explains how transsexual people's bodies, lives and identities cause controversy within families and raises many ethical and foundational concerns for the church. Discussion suggests how these issues might be held in tension with discerning pastoral care of all intimately involved.
LGBTQI Inclusivity, Homosexuality, and Same-Sex Marriage in the Catholic Church: Pope Francis’s Synodal Theology, Sociology, and Moral Issues, 2024
Applying Pope Francis's synodal theological approach and sociological arguments, this chapter aims is to analyze the Roman Catholic Church's understanding of gender and the complex concept of "gender ideology" as well as the role of gender, ideology, gender theory, and feminist gender theory in sociology and the social sciences. It argues that the adoption of a strictly metaphysical approach to morality based on natural law theory in the Church is a primary factor in marginalization of the LGBTQI community in the Church. It clarifies why the current church moral teachings sideline the positive aspects of gender theories in sociology and feminism. It recommends an interdisciplinary synodal dialogue between Catholic moral theologians and sociologists to reconcile conflicting views on gender and gender theory.
The Vatican Opinion on Gender Theory
The Linacre Quarterly, 2020
This article is a reasoned response to the article by Timothy F. Murphy, recently published in the prestigious journal Bioethics, on the supposed opposition between the views of the Catholic Church and what he calls “contemporary science” in relation to certain anthropological issues linked to the gender perspective. To point to “the Vatican” as anchored in an unscientific and anachronistic position, using the term contemporary science to which he attributes a unanimous representation of current scientific thinking on the subject is, in our view, unfounded and completely unacceptable. In his reflection, he does not adequately distinguish between intersex and transgenderism, two clearly different realities with different needs. The author defends the obsolescence of the binary sex/gender model that, in his view, “betrays human sexuality.” Furthermore, he does so without providing a plausible justification or a definition of human nature that is able to support the plurality and indet...
This essay explores the ways in which emerging religious understandings of sexual reassignment surgery (SRS) have potential for new work in comparative ethics. I focus on the startling diversity of teachings on transsexuality among the Vatican and leading Shia clerics in Iran. While the Vatican rejects SRS as a cure for transsexuality, Iranian clerics not only support decisions to transition to a new sex, they see it as necessary in some cases given the gendered nature of the moral life. In this essay, after describing the practical justification for sexual reassignment surgeries in Iranian fatwas and the emerging official Vatican position on transsexuality, I explain how these divergent positions are based on different semiotics of sex and gender that reflect specific ontological views of the human body.
In beginning this essay, it is worth remembering what Watts, a psychologist from Cambridge University’s Divinity Faculty, has to say about transsexualism: "Transsexualism is a minefield. There are many different perspectives, each apparently reflecting a different background ideology. Even how you frame the issues and begin to ask questions about it can already show you what perspective you are coming from. Though transsexualism is still fairly rare, at least in its full-blown form, it has become an ideological battleground." This essay investigates the origin and existence of transsexualism looking at the current scientific research and explains the position of the Catholic Church. I conclude with the suggestion of possible pastoral opportunities.
A common argument among Catholic theologians and ethicists against sex reassignment surgery (SRS) is that it either violates the principle of totality or constitutes a direct sterilization. These procedures generally fall into one of three categories: breast (augmentation mammoplasty, subcutaneous mastectomy), genital (vaginectomy, hysterectomy, scrotoplasty, phalloplasty, penectomy, castration, vaginoplasty, etc.), and nongenital/nonbreast (liposuction, lipofilling, lowering or raising the voice pitch, chondroplasty, hair reconstruction, etc.). 1 Some of these procedures are also done outside the context of SRS for cosmetic reasons and others for therapeutic purposes. 2 These can certainly considered morally licit in that context.
Gender Ideology and The Contemporary Catholic Church: A Sociological-Synodal Exploration and Inculturation. Singapore: Springer Nature, 2024
This chapter sociologically unpacks the Catholic Church's concept of "gender ideology" and its alleged imminent threat to humanity's survival in light of Pope Francis's latest ecclesial reform project called the Synod on Synodality and inductive synodal theology. It argues that the concept of gender, as espoused by sociologists, feminists, LGBTQI leaders, and gender activists, does not inflict actual and imminent harm to humanity, but only constitute a serious challenge to the Church's traditional, metaphysical, and philosophical view of sex, gender, and gender complementarity based on the Thomistic natural law theory. Gender ideology is a strong moral panic among members of the Catholic hierarchy against sociological and feminist gender perspectives and only a labeling of gender theory as an ideology.
Gender Ideology and The Contemporary Catholic Church A Sociological-Synodal Exploration and Inculturation , 2025
Applying the inductive synodal approach and sociological perspectives, this chapter aims to sociologically unpack the so-called "gender ideology" in the Catholic Church by distinguishing the fundamental differences between the Church's philosophical-theological understanding of gender, sexuality, and gender theory and those of sociology and the social sciences. It aims to find a common ground in understanding gender between the Church's moral magisterium and the social sciences and attempt to update the traditional moral approach in the spirit of Pope Francis's synodality and inductive theology. It argues that the synodal-sociological approach offers a new hope for the Church to achieve a more empirical, inculturated, and nuanced view of gender and sexuality in the contemporary world despite Francis's strong opposition to "gender ideology."
Gender Ideology and The Contemporary Catholic Church: A Sociological-Synodal Exploration and Inculturation, 2025
This chapter sociologically investigates the Roman Catholic Church's moral panic on the alleged threats of the so-called "gender ideology" to the welfare of children in same-sex families, using Pope Francis's synodal approach and drawing on secondary literature, media reports, and church documents. It argues that the alleged threats of same-sex couples in same-sex families to the children's welfare are exaggeration and moral panic in the sociological sense. It contends that negative perception of same-sex parenthood on the children's welfare is largely a structural influence of societal homophobia and social discrimination of same-sex parents under a rigid gender complementary and heterosexual standards of the Catholic Church's moral magisterium founded on the philosophical approach of natural law theory. It recommends a synodal openness to diverse family structures and definitions of children's welfare in world and a reappraisal of the empirical foundations of gender complementarity interpretation of Genesis.