THE Roman Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales has called on church schools and parishes to exercise pastoral sensitivity, but to avoid being drawn into “dualistic” gender ideology and its language.
“There are pressures within the spheres of education, healthcare, business, wider society and our own pastoral settings actively to affirm and encourage adults and kids to evolve with the opposite gender to resolve their gender dysphoria,” the Bishops write.
“Many don’t find ultimate happiness with this transition. What we’re capable of affirm in every pastoral situation is the reality that the person person, regardless of how distressed and disturbed in their very own sense of self and reality, is understood and loved by God in all their complexity, including confusion about their gender identity.”
The Bishops’ 4800-word “pastoral reflection”, Intricately Woven by the Lord, says that a “recent language” has evolved around terms resembling “transgender” and “gender fluidity”.
“Those who propose these ideas are generally at odds with a holistic understanding of the human person; they adopt a dualistic understanding, totally separating the fabric from the psychological and spiritual. Such a view of the human person is extremely pervasive across sections of society, raising significant and pressing pastoral challenges for the Church, in addition to challenges within the fields of law, medicine, education, business and spiritual freedom.”
This has led to “education programmes and legislative enactments that promote a private identity and emotional intimacy radically separated from the biological difference between female and male”, and an ideological outlook by which “human identity becomes a alternative for the person, one which also can change over time.”
The document says: “We should never seek to cause offence to a different, even where the opposite person advocates a view of reality different from the Church’s vision of the human person. Yet care ought to be taken to withstand the temptation to adopt the language of gender ideology in our institutions.”
The reflection follows growing controversy over gender ideology in Britain, where transgender residents made up 0.5 per cent of the population of 67.85 million within the 2021 census; but sex-change requests have also increased sharply.
NHS doctors stopped prescribing puberty-blocking hormones to young individuals with gender dysphoria on 1 April, referring to safety concerns. An independent review, chaired by Dr Hilary Cass, found that gender services for youngsters were steered by ideology moderately than “normal principles of pediatrics and mental health”.
In Scotland, a recent Hate Crime and Public Order Act, in force since 1 April, makes it a possible criminal offence to query an individual’s transgender identity or “varied sex characteristics”. This has been condemned as contrary to church teaching by the Scottish Bishops’ Conference.
In their reflection, the Bishops say that female and male roles are determined not only by “biological or genetic aspects”, but in addition by “temperament, family history, culture, experience, education and the influence of friends, relations and revered individuals”.
But, they write, medical interventions ought to be “resisted” where “reassigning gender” destroys the body’s fertility or sexual function, together with a “misleading view” of the human body which fosters “a limited and flawed view of the human person”.
The Bishops say that a recent declaration from the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dignitas Infinita (Leader comment, 12 April), “solidified” RC teaching on gender, highlighting the importance of pastoral look after “those experiencing gender dysphoria or identifying as transgender”, but in addition reminding Roman Catholic parishes, workplaces, and schools to reflect “the foundational Catholic understanding of the human person” of their work.
While “rigid cultural stereotypes of masculinity and femininity” are “unlucky and undesirable”, people “across different spheres of society” share the RC Church’s belief, founded on Genesis, in “the importance of the human body as created”.
“Pastoral accompaniment is complex, encompassing legal, medical, psychological, theological, spiritual and pedagogical elements. It takes place inside the context of ever-changing and polarising developments within the political, cultural and business spheres,” the Bishops write. “Those who offer particular pastoral accompaniment to gender dysphoric individuals need a transparent understanding of the Catholic vision and understanding of the human person and a holistic view of human sexuality.”
Presenting the pastoral reflection, the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, told a press conference that the document was in “absolute harmony” with the Vatican, but also needs to be viewed as a “pastoral accompaniment” moderately than a press release of “rigorous teaching”.
