The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has established a ban blocking Catholic hospitals from offering gender-affirming care to patients. USCCB is based out of Washington, D.C. and is a group of Catholic bishops in the U.S. who jointly exercise pastoral functions on behalf of the country’s Christian community. According to their website, their goals include: to unify, coordinate, encourage, promote, and carry on Catholic activities in the U.S.; organize and conduct religious, charitable and social welfare work at home and abroad; aid in education; care for immigrants and more.
NPR reports more than one in seven patients in the U.S. are treated each day at Catholic hospitals, and in some communities, Catholic hospitals are the only medical centers. “In order to respect the nature of the human person as a unity of body and soul, Catholic health care services must not provide or permit medical interventions, whether surgical, hormonal, or genetic, that aim not to restore but rather to alter the fundamental order of the human body in its form or function,” the directive reads. “This includes, for example, some forms of genetic engineering whose purpose is not medical treatment, as well as interventions that aim to transform sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex (or to nullify sexual characteristics of a human body.”
However, some might argue that the ban does not align with Christian values. According to Michael Sennett, a trans Christian man who serves on the the board of New Ways Ministry which advocates for LGBTQ+ inclusion in the Catholic church, “Catholic teaching upholds the invaluable dignity of every human life, and for many trans people, gender affirming care is what makes life livable.” New Ways Ministry encourages the tolerance and acceptance of LGBTQ+ in the global Catholic community, but with many Catholic leaders slow to embrace queerness, it’s been an uphill battle.
New Ways’ executive director Francis DeBernardo says that for trans Catholic people, transition is not just “a biological necessity, but a spiritual imperative. That if they were going to be living as authentic people in the way they believe God made them, then transition becomes a necessary thing.”
After the ban was announced, various progressive leaders of religious denominations issued a joint statement in support of trans, intersex and nonbinary people, according to NPR. These included members of the Unitarian Universalist Association, the Episcopal Church, the Union for Reform Judaism, and the Presbyterian Church.
The statement reads in part: “There is a disgraceful misconception that all people of faith do not affirm the full spectrum of gender, but a great many of us do. Let it be known instead that our beloveds are created in the image of God – Holy and whole.”
The USCCB continues to claim it is their obligation to redirect and mitigate “the suffering of those who experience gender incongruence or gender dysphoria.” How they plan to do this, based on the ban of Gender Affirming Care, remains to be seen.
