Image source: Facebook Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend
CV NEWS FEED // Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, this week released guidelines for all Catholic schools in his diocese ensuring that all policies align with the Church’s teaching on sexual identity.
In the guidelines, Bishop Rhoades rejected so-called “gender ideology,” affirming that sexual difference is from God, there are only two sexes (male and female), and the sexual identity of the human body cannot be changed.
The guidelines prohibit school staff from adopting “preferred pronouns,” recommending or administering the use of puberty blockers or hormone infusions, or teaching “gender ideology.”
Participation in sports and use of single-sex bathrooms and locker rooms must all be done in accord with a person’s “God-given sexual identity, that is, his or her biological sex.”
The diocesan-wide policies likewise stipulate that “participants in overnight events or programs sponsored or approved by diocesan institutions may only reside in single-sex rooms or accommodations consistent with their God-given sexual identity.”
“One of the greatest challenges today is the criticism and rejection by many of the Catholic Christian anthropology that is part of the Gospel message and the teaching of the Church,” the guidelines state. “In particular, the truths we uphold regarding sexual identity, sexuality, and marriage have become increasingly unpopular after decades of a cultural shift away from a previous consensus on these matters.”
The document added that the guidelines were especially necessary “with contrary views on the meaning and purpose of sex, the advent of gender ideologies, and the redefinition of marriage” in civil society. The Church’s teaching concerning sexual identity, sexuality, and marriage, the document affirmed, “lead(s) to human flourishing and true happiness in this life and in the next.”
Reiterating that teaching, the document continued:
The Church maintains that our sexual difference is an essential part of the goodness of creation and part of our dignity as human persons. Therefore, the Church teaches that “everyone, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his or her sexual identity. Physical, moral, and spiritual difference and complementarity are oriented toward the goods of marriage and the flourishing of family life. The harmony of the couple and of society depends in part on the way in which the complementarity, needs, and mutual support between the sexes are lived out” (CCC 2333).
The guidelines unequivocally reject so-called gender transition treatments, stating:
The Church cannot accept gender ideologies which deny or obscure sexual difference and complementarity nor can the Church accept as treatments for gender dysphoria or incongruence “interventions that involve the use of surgical or chemical techniques that aim to exchange the sex characteristics of a patient’s body for those of the opposite sex or for simulations thereof. … Such interventions do not respect the fundamental order of the human person as an intrinsic unity of body and soul, with a Body that is sexually differentiated. Bodiliness is a fundamental aspect of human existence, and so is the sexual differentiation of the body” (Doctrinal Nate on the Moral Limits to Technological Manipulation of the Human Body, USCCB Committee on Doctrine, March 20, 2023).
The guidelines also clarify that acceptance of young persons who experience “gender dysphoria” “does not mean affirmation of conduct or ideologies that contradict the Word of God and the teaching of the Church.”
