The Catholic Church and its opinion on trans people - a neverending story
While in other parts of the USA a transsexual bishop has been elected to office in the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Catholics will obviously have to wait a very long time for this kind of equality. Among others, it was Bishop Michael Francis Burbidge who once again added fuel to the fire in the context of discussions around diversity and the church or faith. Burbidge has been bishop of the Diocese of Arlington for some time. He recently declared that transsexuality does not exist and thus caused a lot of incomprehension within the LGBTQI+ community.
The document on his statements was published on the homepage of the Diocese of Arlington. Already in the first lines it shows how fixed the bishop seems to be in his opinion around the already often quoted "gender ideology". The sentence alone, "This situation presents a serious challenge for all members of the Church because it presents a view of the human person contrary to the truth."and the reference to the fact that it is not in the power of people to determine their gender "self-defined" (or rather to feel that they belong to the other gender) should feel like a slap in the face of all those concerned.
According to Burbidge, there is no such thing as transsexuality
Instead, the church would stand for a person being created as either a man or a woman. No one is a transgender, he said. At the same time, the bishop speaks out against teaching children precisely these values and quotes the Pope in this context: "Today children-children!-are taught in school that everyone can choose his or her sex. Why are they teaching this?"
Those who still see themselves as transgender are probably confused or believe the wrong thing. It is also wrong to reject one's own gender. But: they are not bad people because of that. Again and again the bishop refers in his statements to the statements of the head of the Catholic Church. At the same time he connects his statements against transsexuals in regular intervals with the additions "ideology" and uses thereby exactly the word, which provided already in the past in the discussions between the church and the community for much uproar. After all, this designation also underlines his statement that transsexuality is merely a man-made construct but not a fact.
The Pope and Bishop Arlington seem to be of one mind
This is not only shown by the numerous quotes and references on the homepage of the diocese, but also by what happened in the past. That the Catholic Church in the past repeatedly criticized transsexuals or the LGBTQI+ community is not new. The mentioned term of gender ideology, for example, dates back to 2019.
Within the church, among other things, there are always even more radical positions than those of the Bishop of Arlington. So there are meanwhile also quite clergymen who regard an adjustment of the sex as sin.
However, the differences between the individual countries are particularly interesting in this context. Especially in America, the fronts between the LGBTQI+ community and the Catholic Church seem to be more than hardened by now.
Far more open: the Protestant church
A look at the Protestant church shows that same-sex love, diversity and the like can sometimes be combined with the topic of faith in a largely uncomplicated way. Particularly prominent examples of this are the two lesbian pastors behind the YouTube channel Anders Amen.
They openly address their lives, their faith and their love and thus reach a broad audience. Even if they also have to deal with a lot of criticism, they show that boundaries that were once set can often be overcome. Whether or when and to what extent the Catholic Church will also allow queer believers to hold such office at some point remains to be seen (probably for a long time to come).
Despite everything, the first transsexual bishop enters office in the USA.
One should orient oneself to the ICD-10 F.64.0, under which transsexualism is listed as a disorder of gender identity. To explain ICD-10, the following (Wikipedia): "The International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD) is the major globally recognized classification system for medical diagnoses." Imagine that a penetrating minority of disturbed people does not stop even before the Catholic Church to enforce their perverted narcissism according to the attitude "Everybody thinks and thought wrong, now you can choose or even invent your gender". That the church as one of the representatives of a faith makes an absolute claim so that only man and woman exist and that everyone belongs to the gender for which he came into the world according to God, is self-evident. If it does not fit this minority, it should found nevertheless a new church of disturbed confession, or change a confession with financial tutoring to the Homo church, as it already happened with the Protestant.