Gender ideology and its language should be resisted in all Catholic institutions, according to a new document by the bishops of England and Wales.
The 11-page paper also stated that the Catholic Church was firmly opposed to medical intervention for children who want to change their sex.
It also said that “social transition”, in which a person lives in a role of sex opposite to their own, must also be avoided in Church institutions and especially in the case of children.
In a press conference on 24 April, Cardinal Vincent Nichols of Westminster and Bishop David Oakley or Northampton declined to say whether their teaching would lead to a ban on the use of “preferred pronouns” in schools and other settings, and said that was a matter for the Catholic Education Service.
“This is not a doctrinal statement, it’s a pastoral reflection,” said Cardinal Nichols, the president of the bishops’ conference.
The statement, however, says: “This pastoral accompaniment also requires care in the choice of language used.
“Our choice of words is always to be assessed in the complex situation of social interaction. Sensitivity and a desire to show respect are important.
“We should never seek to cause offence to another, including in situations where the other person advocates a view of reality that is different from or departs from the Church’s vision of the human person.
“Yet care should be taken to resist the temptation to adopt the language of gender ideology in our institutions.”
It continues: “From a pastoral perspective, accompaniment must have at its heart an acceptance and celebration of the body as created, respect for parents as primary educators, and should uphold best practice in terms of safeguarding principles.
“Medical intervention for children should not be supported. It should also be recognised that social ‘transition’ (living in the opposite gender role) can have a formative impact on a child’s development and can set a child on a path towards later medical interventions. Care should be taken to avoid this especially with young children.”
The bishops’ document, called Intricately Woven by the Lord: A Pastoral Reflection on Gender, comes just weeks after the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith also released a document which explicitly rejected gender identity theory and its ideology.
Called Dignitas Infinita (On Human Dignity), the Vatican document said gender ideology “envisages a society without sexual differences, thereby eliminating the anthropological basis of the family”.
It condemned medical interventions to change sex as contrary to the human dignity, and said that “all attempts to obscure reference to the ineliminable sexual difference between man and woman are to be rejected”.
At the press conference yesterday, Cardinal Nichols said the bishops’ document was in “absolute harmony” with that of the Vatican.
“We didn’t have to change anything in our draft,” he added.
Gender identity theory emerged in the early 1990s and spread throughout the world in succeeding decades. It dismisses biological and scientific categories of male and female in favour of an individual constructing a “gender” of their own choosing.
In the last 10 years it has caused an explosion in the numbers of people, mostly young girls, who want to change their sex.
Its ideology has met with opposition from high profile women, such as novelist JK Rowling and Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies, who fear the loss of women-only spaces and the safety of women in jails, changing rooms and hospitals and also the loss of fairness in sport if physically stronger biological men are allowed to compete against women.
Amid a public backlash against gender ideology, the NHS last month banned prescriptions of puberty blockers ahead of clinical trials to show that they are safe.
A 400-page report published two weeks ago by paediatric consultant Dr Hilary Cass, went much further. Commissioned by the NHS, it contained 32 recommendations which included calls for the “unhurried” care of those under 25 who think they may be transgender, early help for primary school children who might want to socially transition, and a complete ban on puberty blockers and other hormonal drugs to under 18s.
This was all preceded by Pope Benedict XVI, with one of the final acts of his pontificate being his speaking forcefully against the emerging threat of gender identity ideology.
Dr John Haas, a former member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, said the Bavarian pope believed it was “the next great challenge the Church was going to face”.
In an address to the Roman Curia given at Christmas 2012, Benedict said: “The profound falsehood of this theory and of the anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious.”
He said: “If there is no pre-ordained duality of man and woman in creation, then neither is the family any longer a reality established by creation. Likewise, the child has lost the place he had occupied hitherto and the dignity pertaining to him.”
Pope Francis has also repeatedly spoken against gender identity theory’s ideology, implicitly condemning it in paragraph 155 of Laudato Si, his 2015 papal encyclical on the environment, and describing it publicly as part of a “global war on the family”.
The Pontiff has also repeatedly denounced gender ideology as an example of global “ideological colonisation”.
Photo: Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Cardinal Nichols delivers an Easter message in front of crucifix at Trafalgar Square, London, England, 2 April 2021. (Photo by Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images.)
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