Vatican denounces gender-affirming surgery, surrogacy
Document sees threats to human ‘unique dignity’
The Vatican denounced gender-affirming surgeries Monday and what it called “gender theory” as giving into an “age-old temptation to make oneself God.”
“All attempts to obscure reference to the ineliminable sexual difference between man and woman are to be rejected,” the Vatican argued in a highly anticipated document titled “Infinite Dignity.”
The Vatican’s doctrine office issued the document after five years of development. Pope Francis ordered the publication of the message and approved its contents last month.
In the document, the church asserted that changing one’s gender or sex, including via surgery, “risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.”
Francis has distinguished his papacy by reaching out to LGBTQ+ communities and blessing same-sex marriages. The document released Monday noted the church’s repudiation of discrimination based on sexuality, saying “it should be denounced as contrary to human dignity the fact that, in some places, not a few people are imprisoned, tortured, and even deprived of the good of life solely because of their sexual orientation.”
Still, the moment marks a painful one for LGBTQ+ Catholic people. New Ways Ministry, an organization that advocates for LGBTQ+ Catholics, said in a statement that the Vatican’s document “fails terribly by offering transgender and nonbinary people not infinite, but limited human dignity.”
“While it lays out a wonderful rationale for why each human being, regardless of condition in life, must be respected, honored, and loved, it does not apply this principle to gender-diverse people” Francis DeBernardo, the group’s executive director, said in a statement.
The document addressed surrogacy, a practice that the church said “violates the dignity of the child.”
“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 Vatican wrote.
Additionally, the message reaffirmed Francis and the Vatican’s stances against the death penalty, abortion and assisted suicide or euthanasia.