Vatican sparks anger among LGBT+ Catholics by rejecting right to choose or change gender

‘The Vatican remains in the dark ages, promoting a false teaching,’ says New Ways Ministry advocacy group

The Vatican has issued a document rejecting the idea that people should be able choose or change their genders.

The text issued by Vatican office responsible for overseeing Catholic educational institutions around the world Monday is the church’s first statement on gender theory.

The educational report – entitled “Male and Female He Created Them” – reportedly says the idea gender identities exist on spectrum was “nothing more than a confused concept of freedom in the realm of feelings and wants, or momentary desires provoked by emotional impulses”.

Catholic LGBT+ advocacy groups immediately denounced the document – issued during LGBT+ Pride Month – as a “harmful tool” that could contribute to hatred, bigotry and violence against gay and transgender people.

New Ways Ministry said it could also confuse people who are struggling with questions about gender identity and sexual orientation.

The text issued by the Congregation for Catholic Education is aimed at helping Catholic teachers, parents, students and clergy address the “educational crisis” in the field of teaching sexuality.

Denouncing theories that attempt to “annihilate the concept of nature”, it insists biological difference between a man and woman were essential and “constitutive of human identity”, according to the National Catholic Reporter.

The Vatican educational body also rejects the construction of identities such “intersex” and “transgender”, stating that they would “lead to a masculinity or femininity that is ambiguous”.

New Ways Ministry’s executive director Francis DeBernardo said: “The Vatican’s new document on gender identity … is a harmful tool that will be used to oppress and harm not only transgender people, but lesbian, gay, bisexual people, too.

“The document associates sexual and gender minorities with libertine sexuality, a gross misrepresentation of the lives of LGBT people which perpetuates and encourages hatred, bigotry, and violence against them.”

Mr DeBernardo added: “By ignoring new scientific understandings of gender identity, and by refusing to engage in dialogue with LGBT people about their lived experiences of self-understanding and faith, the Vatican remains in the dark ages, promoting a false teaching that relies on myth, rumour, and falsehoods.”

Although it has not been signed by Pope Francis, it contains the signatures of the Vatican’s educational leaders Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi and Archbishop Angelo Zani.

A prominent US Jesuit writer, Father James Martin, tweeted: “The document is mainly a dialogue with philosophers and theologians, and with other church documents; but not with scientists and biologists, not with psychologists, and certainly not with LGBT people, whose experiences are given little if any weight.”

Additional reporting by AP