The Virginia Department of Education recently posted its “Model
Policies for the Treatment of Transgender Students in Virginia’s Public Schools.”
This radical document is to serve as a template for school divisions throughout
the state in addressing the transgender issues. The incoming Biden administration
is sure to press the transgender issues as well. In light of these
developments, Catholics should understand the church’s role and teaching in
such discussions.
A Teaching for All
What the church proposes in the public square is not uniquely or
exclusively Catholic. It is the truth of the human person accessible to all
people. In this regard, the church simply bears witness to what is true.
It is important for the church to be involved in this discussion because
“gender identity” is not ultimately a legal and political matter. It is a
fundamental question about the human person — about man and woman, the human
body, human sexuality, etc. Central to the church’s Gospel message is the full
truth of the human person. So the church has a great deal to contribute to
the discussion about the human person and human sexuality.
Now, the church has no teaching on “gender identity” per se.
She articulates the truth about the human person and within that we find
authoritative guidance on this particular issue. Although confirmed, deepened,
and defended by divine revelation, this teaching is nonetheless entirely accessible
to human reason. We can identify three principal points of this teaching.
Created
First, the human person is created. “Man does not create
himself,” Pope Benedict XVI bluntly stated. To be created means to accept
ourselves as having a certain nature and design — those defining features that
make us human. Shortly before his resignation, Pope Benedict described our culture’s current misunderstanding:
“The manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our
environment is concerned, now becomes man’s fundamental choice where he himself
is concerned. From now on there is only the abstract human being, who chooses
for himself what his nature is to be.”
Pope Francis returned to this same point in both “Laudato Sí’,
On Care for our Common Home” (155) and in his 2015 speech to the United Nations. This is indeed the most
fundamental principle. If we do not accept humanity as a created reality with
certain essentials and defining characteristics, then we will claim complete
authority over ourselves and become our own creators.
A Body/Soul Unity
Second, the human person is a body/soul unity. The human person
is not a soul with a body, but the body and soul as one organic whole. The
body as we receive it at our creation is essential to who we are.
Now, most people probably see the human person as a soul with a
body. The body is a mere possession, incidental to the person. Thus transgender
advocates argue that certain people are one gender physically and another
interiorly. This posits an opposition between body and soul that contradicts the
truth of the human person. Pope Francis has spoken out against this “ideology
of gender” that would divide soul from body, the spiritual from the physical.
In “Amoris Laetitia” he clarifies: “It
needs to be emphasized that ‘biological sex and the socio-cultural role of sex
(gender) can be distinguished but not separated” (AL 56).
Male and Female
Third, the human person is male and female. “Being man” or “being
woman” is a reality which is good and willed by God (CCC
369). This truth, confirmed by divine revelation (see Gen 1:27), is known
by human reason. Science witnesses to the fact that our identity as male
or female is not merely anatomical; we are male or female right down to our
cells. Further, this “being man” or “being woman” does not apply to either body
or the soul but to the person himself or herself — the body/soul unity. It is
the entire person — body and soul — who is either man or woman, male or female.
Fallen and Wounded
One additional and important teaching that the church brings to
this discussion — as we all experience, the human person is fallen and wounded.
Original sin caused a rupture in the harmony of God’s creation. One such rupture
was in the human person’s body/soul unity. In place of the harmony that we know
we should have, we instead experience a disharmony, a conflict and feeling
of division between them.
This truth about our fallen human nature provides the means by
which we can understand the deep division some experience between their biological
sex and their “gender identity.” For that reason, we do not make light of it.
But, acknowledging it as a departure from the design of our created nature,
neither can we affirm it as good.
Fr. Scalia is episcopal vicar for clergy.
Find out more
Read the Virginia Department of Education’s “Model
Policies for the Treatment of Transgender Students in Virginia’s Public Schools” or comment.
