On Monday, the Vatican deemed gender-affirming surgery and surrogacy to be grave violations of human dignity, ranking them alongside abortion and euthanasia as practices that contradict God’s intention for human existence.
The Vatican doctrinal office released “Infinite Dignity,” a 20-page pronouncement that has been in the works for five years. After significant revisions in recent months, Pope Francis approved it on March 25 and ordered its release.
Trans Catholics saw the letter as a setback, but anticipated, coming from a pope who has made outreach to the LGBTQ+ community a cornerstone of his reign. However, its message was consistent with the Argentine Jesuits’ long-held position that while transgender persons should be welcomed in the church, so-called “gender ideologies” should not.
In its most anticipated portion, the Vatican reiterated its opposition to “gender theory,” or the notion that a person’s biological sex can change. It stated that God created man and woman as biologically distinct, separate beings, and that individuals should not mess with this or attempt to “make oneself God.”
“It follows that any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception,” according to the report.
It distinguished between gender-affirming procedures, which it opposed, and “genital abnormalities” that occur at birth or develop later. According to the report, these irregularities can be “resolved” with the assistance of medical personnel.
Advocates for LGBTQ+ Catholics slammed the text as outmoded, hurtful, and contradictory to the professed purpose of recognizing the “infinite dignity” of all God’s children. They cautioned that it could have real-world consequences for trans individuals, inciting anti-trans violence and prejudice.
“While it lays out a wonderful rationale for why each human being, regardless of condition in life, must be respected, honored, and loved, it does not apply this principle to gender-diverse people,” said Francis DeBernardo of New Ways Ministry, which works for LGBTQ+ Catholics.
Nicolete Burbach, lead expert in social and environmental justice at the London Jesuit Centre, said the document demonstrated the Vatican’s continued failure to engage with queer and feminist approaches to the body, “which it simply dismisses as supposedly subjecting both the body and human dignity itself to human whims.”
“I think the main difficulty faced by the document is that it attempts to affirm the church’s authentic commitment to human dignity in the face of a troubling history on the part of the church itself around attacks on that dignity,” said Burbach.
In recent weeks, Argentine Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, a close Francis confidant and new prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, verified the existence of the document that had been suspected since 2019.
Fernández had framed the statement as a concession to conservatives after authoring a more controversial document authorizing blessings for same-sex couples, which drew criticism from conservative bishops around the world, particularly in Africa.
Nonetheless, in an apparent attempt to strike a balance, the text specifically targets nations that prohibit homosexuality, including those in Africa. It repeated Francis’s statement in a 2023 interview with The Associated Press that “being homosexual is not a crime.”
The most recent statement denounces “as contrary to human dignity the fact that, in some places, not a few people are imprisoned, tortured, and even deprived of the good of life solely because of their sexual orientation.”
The White House said President Joe Biden, a devout Catholic, was “pleased” to see that the proclamation “furthers the Vatican’s call to ensure that LGBTQ+ (individuals) are protected from violence and imprisonment around the world,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stated.
Regarding gender theory, Jean-Pierre stated that it was not Biden’s responsibility to “litigate internal church policy.”
When asked how its negative view of transgender people squared with Francis’ message of welcome, Fernández said the welcome remained, but the pope fervently believed that the idea that gender was fluid “rather than helping to recognize dignity, impoverishes the vision” of a man and woman coming together to create new life.
The statement is essentially a repackaging of previously defined Vatican stances, viewed through the lens of human dignity. It reiterates well-known Catholic doctrine against abortion and euthanasia while also addressing some of Francis’ primary concerns as pope, including the dangers to human dignity posed by poverty, war, human trafficking, the death penalty, and forced migration.
According to a freshly articulated perspective, surrogacy breaches the dignity of both the surrogate mother and the child.
While much of the discussion about surrogacy has focused on the potential exploitation of poor women as surrogates, the Vatican asserts that the child “has the right to have a fully human (and not artificially induced) origin and to receive the gift of a life that manifests both the dignity of the giver and the receiver.”
“Considering this, the legitimate desire to have a child cannot be transformed into a ‘right to a child’ that fails to respect the dignity of that child as the recipient of the gift of life,” the statement stated.