By Eduardo J. Echeverria and Father Brian A. Graebe

But first a note from Dr. Royal: Our deep thanks to all of you who have already responded to the end-of-year fundraiser that we began yesterday. It's a good beginning, but we need to hear from many, many more of you. Please, don't wait. Click the button and make your contribution to our work. We only exist because of your support. And we can only carry out the work we think necessary if we know we'll have the resources. Our gratitude as well to the over 30,000 of you who watched the podcast discussion between Father Gerald Murray and myself about Bishop Strickland and the recent Vatican policies towards "trans" people.

Though we're determined not to become Catholic ambulance chasers at this site (please see my column yesterday), we're almost weekly facing confusing, sometimes perilous developments in the Church. So we're back again today with two deeper theological reflections on the very acceptance of the category "trans" by some of the highest authorities in the Church which we think will have consequences of great interest to our readers.

Now for "The Radical Implications of "Transsexual Baptism"

by Eduardo Echeverria

Does the Church now accept transgenderism, that is, "gender diversity," in virtue of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith's recent response to the question of whether so-called "transsexuals" may be baptized? If so, does it therefore eliminate the normative status of the creation-based anthropology wherein sexual difference between male and female is fundamental to our humanity, and hence to conjugal marriage?

And is the DDF's apparent rejection of sexual differentiation inconsistent, not only with the 2019 document from the Congregation for Catholic Education (hereafter CCE), namely, "Male and Female He Created Them: Towards a Path of Dialogue on the Question of Gender Theory in Education," but also from Pope Francis's teaching (following John Paul II and Benedict XVI) in Amoris Laetitia? And even more worrisome, what is to prevent the logical slippage of this position to transsexual marriage and transsexual priestly ordination?

The Dicastery responded to the question of whether a "transsexual" can be baptized.

A transsexual - who had also undergone hormone treatment and sex reassignment surgery - can receive baptism, under the same conditions as other believers, if there are no situations in which there is a risk of generating public scandal or disorientation among the faithful. In the case of children or adolescents with transgender issues, if well prepared and willing, they can receive Baptism.

What is a so-called "transsexual"? This term refers to a "transgendered individual" whose gender self-identity is contrary to the biological, chromosomal, and genetic sexual identity he has had from conception. Or someone having made a "transition" from female to male, or vice-versa through hormone treatment and sex reassignment surgery.

If a so-called transsexual may be baptized, does that mean that the Church now accepts the claim that gender dysphoria between the body and the mind is not a mental illness, reflecting the brokenness of our fallen world, but actually an indication that a person was born in the wrong body?

Pope Francis has rejected transgenderism as an ideology that "promotes 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, one which can also change over time."

He holds that "biological sex and the socio-cultural role of sex (gender) can be distinguished but not separated." (Amoris Laetitia, no. 56) That means that an individual's sexual identity is composed of biological, physical, psychological, and social dimensions in an integral anthropology.

The CCE suggests it might still be useful to study this distinction between sex and gender in order to "achieve a deeper understanding of the ways in which sexu...