Vatican goes against choosing one’s gender
Document cites potential threat to traditional families
ROME — The Vatican on Monday released its first extensive official document on gender theory, rejecting the notion that individuals can choose their own sexual identity.
The document, issued by the Vatican department overseeing Catholic education, argued that increasing acceptance of fluid definitions of gender by schools and legal systems posed a threat to traditional families and ignored the natural differences between men and women.
It lamented “calls for public recognition of the right to choose one’s gender and of a plurality of new types of unions, in direct contradiction of the model of marriage as being between one man and one woman, which is portrayed as a vestige of patriarchal societies.”
The document broke little new ground in promoting traditional Catholic teaching on the intrinsic biological differences between men and women. But coming from a church led by Pope Francis, who has struck an inclusive tone toward homosexual Catholics, it disappointed advocates who had hoped for a more tolerant message.
They warned that the church was inviting discrimination and that in delivering an anachronistic message on human sexuality, it had apparently decided to take on esoteric theories rather than the lived experiences of LGBT people.
The document marked an attempt by the church to weigh in as countries such as the United States wrestle with increased acceptance of gender fluidity and sexuality.
Titled “Male and Female He Created Them: Towards a Path of Dialogue on the Question of Gender Theory in Education,” the document seemed to lay down a line on how far it was willing to go.
The document was signed by Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi, head of the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education, and written as a guide for Catholic schools, teachers and educators.
“This oscillation between male and female becomes, at the end of the day, only a ‘provocative’ display against socalled ‘traditional frameworks,’ and one which, in fact, ignores the suffering of those who have to live situations of sexual indeterminacy,” the guidance said.
The document argued that the church should be open to listening to and talking with proponents of gender theory and should not discriminate against those who defined their gender differently, something it acknowledged it had done in the past.