The Vatican strongly criticized surrogacy and gender-affirming procedures as “grave violations of human dignity” in an explosive new document clarifying the position of the Catholic Church on several themes.
Published by the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on Monday, the declaration — titled “Dignitas infinita,” or “Infinite Dignity” — took about five years to complete and reiterates the church’s positions on several social issues.
A final version of the document was approved by Pope Francis on March 25 after undergoing several revisions.
The fully revised 20-page declaration outlines different threats to human dignity. They include war, poverty, sexual abuse, human trafficking, euthanasia, abortion and surrogacy, a practice “through which the immensely worthy child becomes a mere object.”
But the document approved by Francis, who has shown a certain degree of openness toward LGBTQ Catholics compared with his predecessors, also had strong words against gender-affirming procedures and “gender theory” — described as an example of “ideological colonization” that is “extremely dangerous since it cancels differences in its claim to make everyone equal.”
LGBTQ Catholics were dismayed by the document, which they say “fails terribly by offering transgender and nonbinary people not infinite, but limited human dignity.”
The Vatican is “again supporting and propagating ideas that lead to real physical harm to transgender, nonbinary, and other LGBTQ+ people,” Francis DeBernardo, executive director at New Ways Ministry, a U.S.-based organization that advocates for justice and equality for LGBTQ Catholics, told the Daily News in an email.
The document, which doesn’t mention the word “transgender,” shows that church leaders have completely dismissed the experiences of “people who have discovered, often after painful and torturous journeys, that God has naturally created them with a gender identity beyond social expectations,” DeBernardo added.
Maxwell Kuzma, a Catholic transgender man from rural Ohio, said the document was “very hurtful” to the trans community, while Michael Sennett, a Catholic trans man in Chestnut Hill, Mass., also took issue with its language.
“Avoiding the word ‘transgender’ speaks to limiting the dignity of transgender people,” Sennett said.
Monday’s declaration expands on a 2019 document released by the Vatican’s now-dissolved Congregation for Catholic Education stating that gender fluidity is “founded on nothing more than a confused concept of freedom in the realm of feelings and wants.”
With News Wire Services
