By Craig A. Ford, Jr.
Many in Jesuit higher education have likely heard about the new policies recently enumerated in “Catechesis and Policy on Questions Concerning Gender Theory,” a document released by the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, which is led by Archbishop Jerome Listecki.
The document—which applies to all the archdiocesan parishes, organizations, and institutions (and even to contracted vendors while working on archdiocesan property)—prohibits, among other things recognizing transgender persons by their chosen gender identity, including the use of a transgender person’s chosen pronouns; allowing transgender persons to use the bathroom of their choice; and permitting transgender persons to “have on site” any medications related to their gender transition, even if they would administer these medications themselves.
Along with similar documents issued by the Diocese of Marquette, the Diocese of Arlington, and the Archdiocese of St. Louis, this document aims to promote resistance to what many bishops around the world consider “gender ideology,” described by Pope Francis in his apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, as a constellation of beliefs that deny
the difference and reciprocity in nature of a man and a woman…This ideology leads to educational programs and legislative enactments that promote a personal identity and emotional intimacy radically separated from the biological difference between male and female. Consequently, human identity becomes the choice of the individual, which can also change over time (No. 56).
These policies and statements are profoundly misguided, and ultimately dangerous, for two reasons.
First, despite the implication of these documents, accepting transgender people according to their own self-understanding does nothing to threaten Catholic institutions or the individuals associated with these institutions. There simply is no threat in asking to be addressed by one’s preferred name and pronouns, or in being able to go to the bathroom during the course of the day. Further, since data indicates that there is no connection between trans-inclusive policies and bathroom safety, there is no physical danger, at least not any based in reality.
Instead, the danger lies entirely in the fact that Church leaders’ refusal to respect people will only continue to alienate them. In the United States, three out of every ten adults identify as religiously unaffiliated; 79% of LGBT adults find the Catholic Church to be unfriendly to them; and in 2021, more than half of all transgender and gender nonbinary youth seriously considered attempting suicide.
In view of statistics like these, the public face of the Church—especially toward transgender youth and the parents who love them—cannot afford to be one of seeming condemnation, no matter how much these messages express the intention of helping people “embrace the truth of who we are as children of God,” as Archbishop Listecki’s document indicates (emphasis in original).
Second, documents like these are misguided and dangerous because they distort Pope Francis’s vision for the Church by only offering half of that vision. Prior to issuing these policies, the Milwaukee document provides the catechetical foundation for them. Here it invokes Pope Francis’s teaching in the encyclical Laudato Si’ that accepting one’s sex assigned at birth is “vital for welcoming and accepting the entire world as a gift from the Father and our common home” (No. 155).
Invocations like these remind me of passages from Francis’s famous 2013 “Big Heart Open to God” interview with Antonio Spadaro, S.J., where the pope remarks that he is a “son of the Church” when it comes to issues like abortion, gay marriage, and artificial contraception. But I’m also reminded of what he says shortly after in the same interview:
A beautiful homily, a genuine sermon must begin with the first proclamation, with the proclamation of salvation. There is nothing more solid, deep and sure than this proclamation. Then you have to do catechesis. Then you can draw even a moral consequence. But the proclamation of the saving love of God comes before moral and religious imperatives. Today sometimes it seems that the opposite order is prevailing.
It's important to recognize that Francis isn’t only talking about homilies. In his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium he broadens this theme. When people encounter the Church in public, Francis believes they should experience the warmth and love of God—in a word, joy.
Through his ongoing outreach to ecumenical leaders such as Bishop Mary Ann Swenson, vice-moderator of the World Council of Churches’ Central Committee (above), Pope Francis has tried to model the importance of building bridges that bring people together in joy. Photo courtesy of Claremont School of Theology.
“Joy,” the pope writes, “is a sign that the Gospel has been proclaimed and is bearing fruit” (No. 21). Indeed, Francis invites us to think of the public activity of the Church as always constituting an invitation. And “if this invitation does not radiate forcefully and attractively,” he continues, “the edifice of the Church’s moral teaching risks becoming a house of cards…It would mean that it is not the Gospel which is being preached, but certain doctrinal or moral points based on specific ideological options” (No. 39).
In the end, there is no doubt that Pope Francis joins Archbishop Listecki and other bishops in believing that transgender identity is a problematic example of “gender ideology.”
Yet at the same time, truth must be grounded in the joy of the Gospel, and there simply is no joy in documents like “Catechesis and Policy.” With each official statement of this type, we are witnessing Church teachings used as bricks to build walls, when Francis’s full vision calls us—in an image he’s made famous—to build bridges instead that bring people together in joy.
Craig A. Ford Jr., is assistant professor of theology and religious studies at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisc. He received his doctoral degree from Boston College.
The featured cover photo (above) is courtesy of Leighann Blackwood via Unsplash.