The intense public debate about gender raises profound questions for wider society about human nature itself and the truth and meaning of human sexuality, as well as the scope of human self-determination and how we are to understand ourselves and our relationship to self, to one another and to our world.
Catholic Church Teaching on the Nature, Dignity and Identity of the Human Person
The Catholic Church’s vision of the human person, of love and of sexuality, emerges from our understanding of human nature available to rational investigation and common experience, and from Revelation (the communication of truth by God to human beings) that informs our faith.
Building upon the affirmations of human reason, the Catholic faith further informs us that human beings are created in the image and likeness of God, body and soul, male and female.
God chose to create each human being uniquely as a person, calling each person into loving communion with Him and all other persons. Both through the evidence of our natural capacity of reason and freedom, as well as from our creation in God’s image, each person has an inherent dignity which is to be respected always and in all circumstances. The Catholic Church looks to Jesus Christ as the example of what it means to be human and the path by which all human beings are called by God in the full realisation of our human nature and identity.
Our sexuality pervades our being and personality and is included in all other essential aspects of our dignity and identity as a human person. While this is true, the Catholic Church does not align itself with certain contemporary trends that seem to reduce the wonder and complexity of the human person exclusively to matters of sexuality and sexual orientation. The history of thought and the development of cultures have revealed manifold and rich dimensions to human beings and persons in society, as well as warning of the dangers inherent in the practical reduction of the human person to only one dimension of consideration, as if this alone mattered. Moreover, the Catholic Church proposes in the light of faith a further supernatural identity, opened up to Christians in grace, as that of sons and daughters of God and heirs of eternal life.
In the pursuit of our wellbeing in this life and our happiness in the next, our sexuality matters categorically because, as one of many human expressions of our authentic self-giving in relationships, it is integrally connected with how we love and how we understand love. The Catholic Church cares deeply about how we love precisely because our welfare and salvation are caught up in how we live our image and likeness of “God (Who) is Love” (1 John 4:8). It is in loving as God loves, and means us to love, that we grow in His likeness and in our fulfilment as human persons.
In short, it is as persons defined in our communion of body and soul, and in the complementarity of our sexuality as male and female, and called in our being by God to give ourselves in love as the fulfilment of our meaning, that our true and authentic identity is found.
The Church proposes this Christian vision of the human person and sexuality as the fullest and most satisfying understanding of the human person. From that perspective it is far from being closed-minded or exclusive, like other models that are reductive of the human person and is misunderstood if it should be portrayed as a mere set of rules and prohibitions.
Sex and Gender as Given Realities
Following the data of the life sciences, the Church holds that human life, from the moment of conception, has its sexual state fixed genetically, anatomically and physiologically, as a constitutive part of our personal identity. Moreover, the Church, aware of the evidence of both life and human sciences, is convinced that gender identity and sexual identity arise from one and the same real foundation and are inseparable from each other in principle.
Sexual identity is expressed in our biological organisation and reproductive functioning which are recognised at birth, rather than something which is assigned by social convention, or arbitrarily. That is to say, gender is innate through its biological and other components, and is thus unchangeable.
Biological differences between men and women also mean that male and female bodies react differently to diseases and to treatment and this distinction is acknowledged in medical practice.
Recent Theories of Sex and Gender as Socially Constructed
This conviction of the Church, universally shared with society until lately, is now challenged by theories of social construction that affirm that gender identity has been imposed on individuals by established societal mores and that, left to itself, gender would show itself to be fluid and changeable. Such theories argue that gender is the subjective choice of the individual; that they are an expression of the unrestricted autonomy of the individual.
The situation is further complicated by the use of the terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ interchangeably, suggesting that sex can also be a subjective choice, such that any person at any time should be free to change their sex.
An Approach of Pastoral Sensitivity
The Church is pastorally sensitive to the experience of those who desire to have a body and identity other than their biological sex. They are to be met with compassion and a particular care and support in the challenges and distress that come with gender dysphoria.
At the same time, the findings of contemporary research encourage us, in the considered care we give to individuals, not to undermine any support they may receive to acknowledge and accept their given sexual identity (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2333). This approach receives further endorsement from the evidence that most young people do not persist in gender dysphoria beyond adolescence, after which they reconcile with their biological sex.
Taking everything into consideration, then, the Church proposes a compassionate approach of accompaniment, discernment and integration as a model across the whole of society.
Single-sex spaces
Women’s organisations have recorded their own concern that the proposed reforms will increase risk to the safety of women and girls. Their objections that a man self-declaring as female will have access to single-sex spaces such as a women’s refuge, safe house, changing facility, or gain access to a women-only prisons is to be taken seriously.
In 2018, twenty-two male-to-female transgender prisoners were in custody in Scotland, none of whom had self-identified as female prior to their conviction. At the time this represented around 7% of the population of its female prisoners, compared to 0.02% in the general population, or three hundred and fifty times higher. This highlights the potential for abuse, putting the safety and wellbeing of people at risk.
Freedom
The fundamental rights of freedom of thought, conscience and religion; free speech; freedom of expression; and freedom of association, which secures in law the handing on of religious, moral and deeply held beliefs, is the achievement of modern times. It was hard won against various threatening ideologies of the past century.
In our times such freedom should be upheld for those who, holding the reasonable view that sex and gender are given and immutable, therefore reject the idea of gender as fluid and separable from biological sex. This is particularly the case for those who work in education, healthcare, or as marriage celebrants who, from both reasonable and religious perspectives, hold an understanding of marriage as a union between one man and one woman, for prison staff and religious representatives. Likewise, the Catholic Church must be able to declare the marriages of its people in accordance with our own teaching.
Freedom of thought, conscience and religion; free speech; freedom of expression; and freedom of association now constitutes a precious inheritance that must be preserved and passed on intact to future generations.
The Sensible Parameters of the State and its Laws
It is not the role of the State or Democracy to redefine the scientifically accepted facts of sexual difference and gender. Attempts in civil law to redefine what it means to be male or female cannot be done without creating legal confusion, not least in implying there is nothing distinctive about womanhood or manhood, as well as spawning a plethora of unforeseen conundrums for society, and ultimately weakening the institution of marriage which has proved the surest foundation of family life and social stability. States will be aware of the profound and ongoing costs of forsaking principles that guide nature and human relationships. The climate crisis is a perilous example of the excesses that damage human dignity and our world when we redefine nature, human nature and relationships by unlimited individualism and so called “free choice” at the price of forsaking personal, community and societal responsibilities.
Conclusion
In the end, each generation, as it seeks to advance the common good, must ask anew: What are the requirements that governments may reasonably impose upon citizens, and how far do these extend? By appeal to what authority can moral dilemmas be resolved? These questions take us directly to the ethical foundations of civil discourse. If the moral principles underpinning the democratic process are themselves determined by nothing more solid than social consensus, then the fragility of the process becomes all too evident - herein lies the real challenge for democracy. The inadequacy of pragmatic, short-term solutions to complex social and ethical problems has been illustrated all too clearly.
The Catholic tradition maintains that the principles that uphold the dignity of the human person are accessible to all men and women through human reason. Through our Catholic vision of human rights and responsibilities, of the common good and of the distinction and reciprocal relationship between male and female, the Catholic Church proposes a way forward in the current debate and looks forward to cooperation with civil authorities. As Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI said to parliamentarians on his UK visit in 2010:
For such cooperation to be possible, religious bodies - including institutions linked to the Catholic Church - need to be free to act in accordance with their own principles and specific convictions based upon the faith and the official teaching of the Church. In this way, such basic rights as religious freedom, freedom of conscience and freedom of association are guaranteed.’ (Pope Benedict, Address at Westminster Hall. 7 September 2010)
The Catholic Church, mindful of the overriding concern for the pastoral care of all people, looks forward to freely contributing to this important public debate that has great significance for our understanding of the human person and sexuality.