Transgender people can't be baptized unless they've 'repented,' Catholic diocese says
The guidance issued by the Diocese of Marquette also stipulates that transgender people may not receive Communion, which Catholics believe is the literal body and blood of Jesus Christ. In most circumstances, they cannot receive the anointing of the sick, which is meant to provide physical or spiritual healing to those who are seriously ill. The guidance was issued in July but only recently sparked a debate after a prominent priest and advocate for LGBTQ Catholics shared it on Twitter.
“The experience of incongruence in one’s sexual identity is not sinful if it does not arise from the person’s free will, nor would it stand in the way of Christian Initiation,” reads the document. “However, deliberate, freely chosen and manifest behaviors to redefine one’s sex do constitute such an obstacle.”
Because the Catholic Church primarily baptizes infants, the Diocese of Marquette’s policy is likely to primarily impact non-Catholic adults seeking baptism in the Catholic Church, transgender teenagers preparing for confirmation and children of Catholic migrants who were not baptized as infants because their parents were frequently moving, among other possible reasons...
While other dioceses have released guidance on transgender people, several experts said they believe Marquette is the first to deny access to baptism and confirmation. That decision comes in an absence of significant guidance from the Vatican or the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which have said little about transgender individuals and the sacraments. The closest piece of direction comes in the form of a 2019 document from the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education that says people should be treated as the sex they were assigned at birth.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2021/12/08/catholic-diocese-transgender-people/
Meanwhile, the Church continues to protect pedophiles.
I wonder if Pope Francis will weigh in on this.
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Fuck them.
"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Seems pretty comprehensive that the doors to church should be open to everyone. By the way, note how Paul says "there is no male and female" a departure from the mutually-exclusive categories that go before (Jew nor Greek, slave nor free).
Is the Bible saying that gender constructs are not mutually exclusive? You could make a case for that here, and in the creation story at Genesis chapter 1, verse 27, whose language Paul is echoing in Galatians: "So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." (The use of "his" and "he" in the verse is a translation choice forced by English, which doesn't admit to addressing a person or even a deity as "it."