Marianne Duddy-Burke, the executive director of DignityUSA, which advocates for LGBTQ rights in the Catholic Church, said the guidance is part of a larger trend of dioceses’ "making statements that look like they're trying to be helpful to gay, queer and transgender people but that are really doing harm to the spiritual, emotional and physical health of our community and to families." The statement also noted that the diocese's bishop, John Doerfler, "served as a Courage chaplain" in his previous ministry and "found working with the Catholic apostolate to persons with same-sex attraction for several years as a priest to be a ‘privilege’ and he remains inspired by the members’ ‘faith and desire to live chastely.’” “The Church teaches that persons experiencing feelings of same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria is not sinful, but freely acting upon them is,” read the statement, shared by John Fee, the diocese's communications director. In a statement emailed Thursday, the Diocese of Marquette said the guidance was shared with pastors and school principals, among others, to provide "a framework" for them to develop pastoral relationships with LGBTQ congregants. He continued, "The Catholic Church needs to listen to LGBTQ people, not give them more reasons to distance themselves from the church.” He tweeted later that assertions that being transgender is a sin and that trans people don’t exist "do immense harm to LGBTQ people and their families." Wilton Gregory, the archbishop of Washington, D.C., is the former president of the U.S. They need to be accepted with 'respect, compassion and sensitivity.' As Cardinal Gregory told a trans person, 'You belong to the heart of this church.'" Martin added: "Transgender people are beloved children of God struggling to understand their identity. James Martin, a Jesuit priest, LGBTQ advocate and best-selling author, criticized it on Twitter, writing Tuesday, "It is not a sin to be transgender." "To avoid scandal, the baptism should be celebrated privately, and care should be taken to avoid the impression of accepting the redefinition of marriage and parenthood." "Unlike a man and woman who are cohabitating or in an invalid marriage, the status of same‐sex couples can never be regularized, which presents a particular pastoral concern," it says.
For gay, lesbian, bisexual and queer people, that would mean ending same-sex relationships, and for trans people, it would mean living as the sexes they were assigned at birth, although the guidance says trans people who have undergone "physical changes to the body" aren’t required to reverse them.Īlso, in accordance with Catholic doctrine, the guidance says children of same-sex married couples can be baptized if they are raised in the Catholic faith and taught that same-sex marriage goes against the church's teachings.
They also can’t serve as witnesses at Catholic baptisms or confirmations.īut, the guidance says, gay and transgender people can participate in such sacraments if they repent. The document says people in same-sex relationships and trans people can’t be baptized or confirmed or receive Holy Communion. "Just as we would refer a person with anorexia to an expert to help him or her, let us also refer persons with gender dysphoria to a qualified counselor to help them while we show them the depth of our love and friendship." "In this disorder there is an incongruence between how the persons perceive themselves and their bodily reality," the guidance says. The Diocese of Marquette said in its guidance that trans people deserve "love and friendship" and compared them to people "suffering from anorexia nervosa." Regarding transgender people, the Vatican in June 2019 released " Male and Female He Created Them: Towards a Path of Dialogue on the Question of Gender Theory in Education," which rejected the idea that trans people can exist and said the “ideology” aims “to annihilate the concept of ‘nature.’”