Minnesota bishops issue guidelines on transgenderism in Catholic schools 

March 2, 2020 CNA Daily News News Briefs 0 Print

St. Paul, Minn., Mar 2, 2020 / 03:52 pm (CNA).- The Catholic bishops of Minnesota have published guidelines regarding gender identity and Catholic schools, emphasizing the Catholic mission of schools and the Church’s doctrinal teaching on sexuality and identity.

“The Catholic school is committed to providing a safe environment that allows students to flourish academically, physically, and spiritually. Catholic schools are obliged to provide an education and resources consistent with Catholic teaching,” the guidelines state.

Catholic education has as its foundation “the God-given irrevocable dignity of every human person.”

The guidelines use the term “sexual identity” in a way that is synonymous with “biological sex,” and they state that Catholic school students will be referred to by names and pronouns that reflect their sexual identity.

Students will also be allowed to use only those facilities (such as bathrooms or locker rooms) and participate in single-sex sports and activities that align with their sexual identity, rather than with their chosen gender identity. 

Referencing the book of Genesis, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and Pope Francis, that document then states that God created each person “in His own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” and that “God uses the body to reveal to each person his or her sexual identity as male or female.” 

“A person’s embrace of his or her God-given sexual identity is an essential part of living a fulfilled relationship with God, with oneself, and with each other,” the document states.

“The physical, moral, and spiritual differences between men and women are equal and complementary. The flourishing of family life and society depend in part on how this complementarity and equality are lived out,” it adds.

The guidelines were presented Feb. 20-21 during a seminar for priests and Catholic educators in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

The document explains that schools will be responsible for communicating their particular policies regarding sexual identity “to each student in a way that is respectful of and consistent with each student’s God-given sexual identity and biological sex.”

The Minnesota document comes one month after Bishop Thomas Paprocki issued pastoral guidelines on the issue of gender identity for the Diocese of Springfield, Illinois.

The guidelines are similar to the pastoral recommendations made by Paprocki, who noted that “the presentation of this truth must be made with love,” while the diocese must also communicate clear policies that reflect the faith of the Catholic Church.

While guidelines have now been issued for several dioceses, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has thus far remained quiet on the issue.

“Gender identity is an issue that the education committee has begun discussing, but at this time, there isn’t anything to release,” Chieko Noguchi, director of public affairs for the U.S. bishop’s conference, told CNA in response to questions about whether the national bishops’ conference plans to issue nationwide guidelines.

Noguchi added that because the bishops’ committee meetings are private, she could not comment on whether the bishop have already begun working on a document on transgenderism.

According to The Catholic Spirit, Minnesota bishops and the state Catholic conference began working on statewide guidelines in 2015, when Pope Francis began addressing the issue of gender identity in his encyclicals and exhortations.

The state’s bishops officially adopted the guidelines in June 2019, the same month that the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education released a document entitled “Male and Female He Created Them,” which denounced so-called gender theory and affirmed the principles of human dignity, difference, and complementarity. 

“The denial of this (male-female) duality not only erases the vision of human beings as the fruit of an act of creation but creates the idea of the human person as a sort of abstraction who ‘chooses for himself what his nature is to be,’” the Vatican document stated.

CNA asked the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis why the guidelines were publicly released 8 months after they were adopted, but has not received comment as of press time.

Auxiliary Bishop Andrew Cozzens of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis said at the introduction of Minnesota’s guidelines in February that he has had personal conversations with family members of those who identify as transgender, and that he knows the issue can be painful for those involved, The Catholic Spirit reported.

“A lot of times, when we’re in pain, we look for quick answers for that pain, and the culture wants to provide quick answers for that pain, but we know that the quick answer for that pain doesn’t ultimately bring healing,” Cozzens said.

“One of the things we have to do in our pastoral care is be willing to stand with people in their pain, and walk with them with an eye toward the greater good.”

According to The Catholic Spirit, Cozzens, who serves as the archdiocese’s vicar for Catholic education, said he and the state’s other bishops wanted to provide “practical clarity” on this issue to the parents who send their children to Catholic school and expect that they will be taught the truth according to the Catholic faith.

“(A)nd we knew that we had to do this in a way that’s calling people to a higher standard of these truths than our culture currently is, to help people get beyond the ideology and to the truth of who they are.”

 

 

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Pope Francis meets with U.S. LGBT group previously denounced by Vatican

October 17, 2023 Catholic News Agency 5
Pope Francis waves to pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square during his Angelus address on Oct. 15, 2023. / Credit: Vatican Media

CNA Staff, Oct 17, 2023 / 18:30 pm (CNA).

Pope Francis met Tuesday at his residence with leadership from the U.S. LGBT organization New Ways Ministry, which was previously denounced by both the U.S. bishops’ conference and the Vatican’s doctrinal office for causing confusion on sexual morality among the Catholic faithful.

It’s unclear what the topic of the meeting was, but the organization said in an Oct. 17 statement that it lasted 50 minutes and its controversial co-founder, Sister of Loretto Jeannine Gramick, thanked the Holy Father for “his openness to blessing same-sex unions, as well as for his opposition to the criminalization of LGBTQ+ people in civil society.”

None of the Holy Father’s comments in the meeting were reported in the organization’s statement. CNA asked the organization what was discussed in the meeting but did not receive a response before publication.

New Ways Ministry was founded in 1977 in the Archdiocese of Washington by Gramick and Father Robert Nugent, who were both “permanently prohibited from any pastoral work involving homosexual persons” after an investigation into their work, the Vatican’s doctrinal office ruled in a 1999 notification.

No authority to bless

Gramick’s words of gratitude to the pope on his alleged “openness” to same-sex blessings refers to a response that the Holy Father gave to five cardinals in July of this year after they requested answers to a set of questions known as “dubia.” 

Several mainstream media outlets were fast to report that Pope Francis was “open” to giving blessings to same-sex couples after the publication of the response in October but were too quick to the trigger, as the Holy Father had already affirmed in 2021 that the Church has no authority to do so.

Additionally, theologians who spoke with the National Catholic Register last week said the pope’s focus was not on same-sex unions but instead on same-sex-attracted persons who may be in some kind of same-sex relationship.

Vatican investigation

Gramick and Nugent began running workshops in Washington, D.C., for “Catholic pastoral workers and others interested in gay and lesbian issues,” the organization’s website said. But they also co-wrote and edited books together, which became the subjects of the Vatican investigation.

The Vatican’s 1998 investigation heavily focused on their book “Building Bridges: Gay and Lesbian Reality and the Catholic Church,” which “summarized their activities and thinking,” the notification said.

The Holy See ultimately concluded that there were “serious deficiencies in their writings and pastoral activities, which were incompatible with the fullness of Christian morality,” the notification said. 

Their case was referred to the then-Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which queried them on their positions on sexual morality.

In their responses, “Sister Gramick and Father Nugent demonstrated a clear conceptual understanding of the Church’s teaching on homosexuality but refrained from professing any adherence to that teaching,” the notification said. 

That notification, signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, said that their positions “regarding the intrinsic evil of homosexual acts and the objective disorder of the homosexual inclination are doctrinally unacceptable because they do not faithfully convey the clear and constant teaching of the Catholic Church in this area.”

In 2010, under the leadership of the late Cardinal Francis George, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement emphasizing that New Ways Ministry “has no approval or recognition from the Catholic Church and that they cannot speak on behalf of the Catholic faithful in the United States.”

Corresponding letters

Tuesday’s meeting comes following a few years of correspondence between Gramick, the organization, and the Holy Father, according to New Ways Ministry’s statement.

In April 2021, the organization’s executive director, Francis DeBernardo, wrote to Pope Francis explaining the organization’s mission, the statement said.

On May 3, 2021, Pope Francis responded to a letter from DeBernardo and said that he read the letter, which helped him to better understand the organization’s history, according to the National Catholic Reporter.

“It helped me a lot to know the full story you tell me,” the Holy Father wrote. “Sometimes we receive partial information about people and organizations, and this doesn’t help. Your letter, as it narrates with objectivity its history, gives me light to better understand certain situations.”

In a June 2021 letter to DeBernardo, the Holy Father thanked him for his “heart, open to your neighbor” and wrote of Gramick that “I know how much she has suffered,” according to the National Catholic Reporter.

“She is a valiant woman who makes her decisions in prayer,” the letter said.

The correspondence has continued since then, “always receiving cordial and affirming handwritten notes in return,” the organization’s statement said. 

“This meeting is remarkable because it reflects the steady acceptance of Catholic officials to LGBTQ+ issues and ministry,” the statement continued.

New Ways Ministry has not only gained an audience with Pope Francis but also with Xavière Missionary Sister Nathalie Becquart, undersecretary at the Synod of Bishops, who gave a lecture to the organization in 2022 titled “Synodality: A Path of Reconciliation.”

The decision to offer the “Father Robert Nugent Memorial Lecture,” given in honor of the priest, who died in 2014, was denounced by Cardinal Raymond Burke, prefect emeritus of the Apostolic Signatura, in comments to the National Catholic Register as “simply wrong.”

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