By Ben McCullough | For On Mission
As we enter into the topic of transgender realities and the moral, medical and scientific inquiries surrounding it, I would be remiss if I did not preface my own words with those of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in the declaration, “Dignitas Infinita”, on human dignity when it first discusses what it calls gender theory:
“The Church wishes, first of all, ‘to reaffirm that every person, regardless of sexual orientation, ought to be respected in his or her dignity and treated with consideration, while “every sign of unjust discrimination” is to be carefully avoided, particularly any form of aggression and violence’” (par. 55).
In addressing gender theory, the Church begins with a reaffirmation that all persons should be treated with the dignity and respect due to them as individuals. We often forget or mentally skim over this point. Yet as Catholics, we must strive to think with the mind of Jesus Christ through the Church. The Church consistently starts with this basic premise: All persons, regardless of how they view themselves, must be treated as sons and daughters of the Father. Thus, mistreating individuals who identify themselves within the gender theory paradigm is wrong.
Only in this light does the Church continue its inquiry into gender theory in the same document, getting to the heart of the issue:
“Regarding gender theory, whose scientific coherence is the subject of considerable debate among experts, the Church recalls that human life, in all its dimensions — both physical and spiritual — is a gift from God. This gift is to be accepted with gratitude and placed at the service of the good. Desiring personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes, apart from this fundamental truth that human life is a gift, amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God, entering into competition with the true God of love revealed to us in the Gospel” (par. 57).
This presents the main reason that our faith in Jesus Christ considers gender theory problematic: instead of viewing human life as entirely a gift, a given reality that we must enter into and conform to, gender theory views human life as something to shape and form to our own “personal self-determination,” that is, in accordance to whatever we choose.
This is important to pause on: our faith in Jesus Christ assumes that we are not the arbiters of reality, that the reality of our human lives and the reality around us are given to us as a gift from Christ to discover, to grow in, and to conform ourselves to. Indeed, this is true of all realities that we experience, even suffering: one of the profound realities of the Christian life is that our crosses are given to us for our own salvation.
“Dignitas Infinita” continues:
“Therefore, all attempts to obscure reference to the ineliminable sexual difference between man and woman are to be rejected: ‘We cannot separate the masculine and the feminine from God’s work of creation, which is prior to all our decisions and experiences, and where biological elements exist which are impossible to ignore.’ Only by acknowledging and accepting this difference in reciprocity can each person fully discover themselves, their dignity, and their identity” (par. 59).
Since it is a fundamental reality that all human persons are created either male or female, a reality “prior to all our decisions and experiences,” it follows that “any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception” (par. 60).
Every human person is created, then, as a man or a woman. This judgement does not exclude the possibility of surgery or other interventions on the sexual organs for other reasons than to change one’s gender. Indeed, “Dignitas Infinita” specifically addresses the situation where someone’s gender is unclear or ambiguous. Such a situation does not imply that a person is not a man or a woman, even if the reality is unclear due to the phenotypical presentation of the body. An intervention to repair the body in this case should not be confused with an application of gender theory, as “Dignitas Infinita” clarifies.
To conclude, reality is something that we must conform to, not the other way around. If we do this with the mind of Jesus Christ, we find that every human person is a man or a woman. One’s own life, even one’s actions, happen in the context of being a man or a woman. Our faith in Christ shows us that to switch this around, to conform reality to our own desires and wishes, is the root of gender theory.
We are made a certain way, and God gives us everything necessary to give ourselves to him wholeheartedly. To desire to become something other than what God created us to be is, as “Dignitas Infinita” states, to “make oneself God” (par. 57).