Not Just Men and Women: Is the Church Open to Gender Identity?

Man, woman or? Who would have thought to read a third option about sex (“does not apply to you”) in a questionnaire due to arrive at the table Synod of Bishops It is expected in October 2023. However, this is what we have read in the form that has been circulating on the web in recent days for about 200 influential Catholics from all over the world as part of the “The Church Listens to You” project. A survey entrusted to the so-called “Digital Evangelists” which aims to collect the impressions and opinions of Internet users about them. Relationship with the Church.

The initiative hasa permit The Vatican since the coordinator of “the Church listens to you” is Monsignor Lucio Adrian RuizSecretary of the Communications Directorate. according to mentioned From future, Italian Episcopal Conference newspaper, the decision to resort to it influential To enrich the contributions to the process Collective method In progress, it was possible to transfer it after the accession of the limited youth to the diocese stage which ended last April.

In the exploratory studywhich asks participants to say what they think the church should do to bring it closer, you can declare yourself a man or a woman or check the box “Does not apply to you” that goes towards those who sympathize with the following-contact non-binary type. Rainbow themes also find space in the rest of the model: “Does the church listen/talk to other social groups? LGBTQI+, journalists, labor unions, entrepreneurs, other religions, scholars,” one of the questions reads. Moreover, the option “Help and Accompaniment” LGBTQI + peopleIt is referred to as one of the obligations which may be chosen from among those which he believes the Church must undertake in order to draw near to the people.

On this point, it is one of the most important documents of the Church b message To the Bishops on the Pastoral Care of Homosexuals Written in 1986 by the then Cardinal Governor in Congregation for the Doctrine of the FaithJoseph Ratzinger and approved by Saint John Paul II in which we read it “It must be clear that any departure from the teaching of the Church, or silence about it, in concern for the giving of pastoral care is neither a form of genuine concern nor proper pastoral care. Only what is real can in the end also be pastoral. And when a place is not taken Church in mind, gay men and women are denied the care they need and are entitled to.”. Regarding gender identity, Pope Francis expressed himself clearly several times and about a year ago, in the course of a conversation with Slovak Jesuits during his Apostolic Visit, He said which – which”sex ideology It is dangerous, because it is just an abstraction in relation to the concrete life of a person, as if a person could abstractly decide at will whether he is a man or a woman and when“.

Survey results, as indicated in opening the form, will be sent to Synod of Bishops. It will be the first of its kind at the end of the process that began in October 2021 and was articulated by a first diocesan phase, a subsequent and final continental phase scheduled to take place in Rome in October 2023. The Synod which Pope Francesco Proclaimed under the title “For a Synod Church: Communion, Participation and Mission”.