VATICAN CITY — The Vatican said Monday that gender-affirming surgery and surrogacy constitute serious violations of human dignity, putting them on par with abortion and euthanasia, practices that reject the plan of God for human life.
The Vatican’s doctrinal office released “Infinite Dignity,” a 20-page statement five years in the making. After substantial revision in recent months, it was approved on March 25 by Pope Francis, who ordered its publication.
In its most anticipated section, the Vatican reiterated its rejection of “gender theory,” or the idea that a person’s sex can be changed. He says that God created man and woman as biologically different and separate beings, and that people should not tinker with this plan or try to “make themselves God.”
“It follows that any sex reassignment intervention risks, as a general rule, threatening the unique dignity that the person has received from the moment of conception,” the document says.
She distinguishes between gender affirmation surgeries, which she rejects, and “genital anomalies” present at birth or which develop later. These anomalies can be “resolved” with the help of health professionals, it is specified.
The existence of this document, widespread since 2019, has been confirmed in recent weeks by the new prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Argentine Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, close confidant of Francis.
He had presented it as a sort of wink to conservatives after writing a more explosive document endorsing blessings for same-sex couples, which drew criticism from conservative bishops around the world, particularly in Africa.
And yet, the document directly targets countries – including many African countries – that criminalize homosexuality. This echoes Francis’ assertion in a 2023 interview with The Associated Press that “being homosexual is not a crime,” now part of the Vatican’s doctrinal teaching.
The new document denounces “as contrary to human dignity the fact that, in certain places, many people are imprisoned, tortured and even deprived of the good of life solely because of their sexual orientation”.
The document is in some ways a restatement of previously formulated Vatican positions, now read through the prism of human dignity. It reiterates well-known Catholic doctrine opposing abortion and euthanasia, and adds to the list some of Francis’ main concerns as pope: threats to human dignity posed by poverty, war, human trafficking and forced migration.
In a newly formulated position, he asserts that surrogacy violates the dignity of both the surrogate mother and the child. While much of the attention on surrogacy has focused on the possible exploitation of poor women as surrogates, the Vatican document focuses almost more on the resulting child.
“The child has the right to have a fully human origin (and not artificially induced) and to receive the gift of a life which manifests both the dignity of the one who gives it and that of the one who receives it”, the document states. “Considering this, the legitimate desire to have a child cannot be transformed into a ‘right to the child’ which does not respect the dignity of that child as a beneficiary of the gift of life.”
The Vatican issued its most articulate position on gender in 2019, when the Congregation for Catholic Education rejected the idea that people can choose or change their gender and insisted on the complementarity of biologically male and women to create a new life.
He called gender fluidity a symptom of the “confused concept of freedom” and “momentary desires” that characterize postmodern culture.
The new, more authoritative document from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith cites this 2019 educational document, but tempers the tone. Significantly, it does not repeat language from a previous doctrinal document from 1986 that homosexual people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, but that homosexual acts are “inherently disordered.”
The Rev. James Martin, who has called on the Catholic Church to expand its reach to LGBTQ+ Catholics, said the gender terminology was similar to past statements. But he welcomed the condemnation of the legislation and violence against LGBTQ+ people.
“This cannot be repeated too often as an offense to human dignity. The LGBTQ person, like everyone else, has infinite dignity,” he said in an email.
Francis has made reaching out to LGBTQ+ people a hallmark of his papacy, ministering to trans Catholics and insisting that the Catholic Church must welcome all of God’s children.
But he also denounced “gender theory” as the “worst danger” facing humanity today, an “ugly ideology” that threatens to nullify the God-given differences between men and women. He particularly criticized what he calls the “ideological colonization” of the West in the developing world, where development aid is sometimes conditional on the adoption of Western ideas on gender and reproductive health.
“It should be emphasized that biological sex and the sociocultural role of sex (gender) can be distinguished but not separated,” the new document states.
Transgender activists immediately called the document “hurtful” and devoid of the voices and experiences of real trans people, particularly regarding the distinction between transgender and intersex people.
“The suggestion that gender-affirming health care – which has saved the lives of so many wonderful trans people and allowed them to live in harmony with their bodies, their communities and (God) – could endanger or diminish the dignity of trans people is not only hurtful. but dangerously ignorant,” said Mara Klein, a non-binary transgender activist who participated in the church reform project in Germany.
“On the other hand, the fact that surgical interventions on intersex people – which, if carried out without consent, especially on minors, often cause immense physical and psychological harm to many intersex people to this day – are assessed positively just seems to reveal more of the underlying hypocrisy,” Klein said. .
The document comes at a time of backlash against transgender people, including in the United States, where Republican-led state legislatures are considering a new round of bills restricting medical care for transgender youth – and in some cases, for adults. Additionally, bills governing youth pronouns, sports teams and school bathrooms are also under consideration, as are some school books and curricula.
“In addition to growing hostility toward our communities, we face a Church that does not listen and refuses to see the beauty of creation that can be found in our biographies,” Klein said in an email.
ABC News
