CV NEWS FEED // Chastity speaker Jason Evert told hundreds in attendance during a talk at the National Eucharistic Congress that the Catholic approach to helping people who suffer from gender dysphoria should be one of love and truth, not false compassion or rejection.
Evert began by distinguishing between gender theory and gender dysphoria, which he respectively defined as “a set of ideologies” and “something individuals experience.” People with gender dysphoria feel a disconnect with their bodies and their sense of self, according to Evert.
He said that Catholics tend to react to gender dysphoria by either debating or dismissing it, which makes people experiencing it feel attacked or “erased.” Evert added that people actually struggling with gender dysphoria might be unsure as to how God thinks of them, a concern that he responded to with Wisdom 11:24.
“For You love all things that exist, and You loath none of the things that You have made, because You would not have made anything if You had hated it,” Evert quoted. He told the audience: “and so these individuals deserve truth, but also love.”
Evert later added that the world tells Catholics that there are only two options when responding to people suffering from gender dysphoria: either you accept and affirm them, or you abandon or reject them.
“These aren’t the only two options. It’s a false binary,” Evert said. “Pope Francis gives us the option of accompaniment, where we walk with these individuals in truth and in love … because [when] you give someone love without giving them the truth [it’s] false compassion, it’s misguided mercy, because if you love somebody you can’t lie to them.”
Evert provided a few biological arguments regarding the impossibility of changing human cells or chromosomes from one sex to the other, but emphasized that people with gender dysphoria would likely say: “I’m not arguing with any of your science. I’m not saying that I’m changing my chromosome. What I’m trying to say is I just want to look how I feel—why is that too much to ask for?”
Evert said that the mentality that bodies are somehow wrong or bad often stems from rigid gender stereotypes and a great divide has occurred in modern culture across the world, where people have separated body and identity.
“If we untether our identity from our bodies, your identity has to anchor onto something if not your body,” Evert said. “But if it doesn’t anchor to your body, what will it attach to? Your personality. But here’s the problem: there are as many personalities as there are persons and you’ll end up with an endless spectrum of gender identities.”
He added:
If someone hits you, you would say “why did you hit me?” And they wouldn’t say “well, I didn’t hit you, I just hit your body.” Your body isn’t something you have like you have a pair of jeans – your body is you.
Evert also pointed to Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, which condemns the gender stereotypes that so often lead people to believe they are in the wrong body.
“It is true that we cannot separate the masculine and the feminine from God’s work of creation, which is prior to all our decisions and experiences, and where biological elements exist which are impossible to ignore,” Pope Francis wrote. “But it is also true that masculinity and femininity are not rigid categories.”
Pope Francis added:
A rigid approach turns into an overaccentuation of the masculine or feminine, and does not help children and young people to appreciate the genuine reciprocity incarnate in the real conditions of matrimony. Such rigidity, in turn, can hinder the development of an individual’s abilities, to the point of leading him or her to think, for example, that it is not really masculine to cultivate art or dance, or not very feminine to exercise leadership.
Evert once again called his audience’s attention to the need to listen to and accompany those with gender dysphoria with a combination of truth and love, even if it creates issues later.
“Hold on to these individuals with one hand, and you hold on to the truth with the other hand, and don’t let go [with] either hand,” he challenged the audience. “This is going to create some tension at some point because they might say ‘well I want you to use my pronoun or my name.’ What do you do there?”
Evert recommended trying to use their biological pronouns as long as it doesn’t cause “considerable psychological distress,” in which case he said to avoid using pronouns altogether.
If it comes to a head and a person demands for their preferred pronouns to be used, Evert said it’s time for a difficult but loving conversation.
“Here’s what I would say,” he told the audience:
I would say: “you know that I love you. And you know—this is very important—that I would never, ever want to hurt you but know also because I love you, I can never lie to you. I feel if I were to use that word to describe you, I feel like I’m being dishonest with you. And I know this might not be easy to hear, but I need you to know I don’t reject you because of what you believe, and I’m really hoping you don’t reject me because of what I believe because I think we can still learn a lot from each other if we make room for one another in our lives.”
Evert explained that regardless of their response, speaking the truth is the right thing to do.
“Hopefully if you take that compassionate approach, they’ll give you some room, but if they don’t and if they resent you because you won’t call them whatever they want to be called, here’s my promise to you,” Evert said. “If you don’t speak the truth to them in love they are going to resent you so much more for all eternity for not having spoken the truth to them.”
Evert concluded by reminding his audience that those struggling with gender dysphoria have been called by God to accomplish great things that others cannot do, saying:
I think if a person wrestling with gender dysphoria, whether she’s 13 or he’s 47, comes to Christ, I believe that God would say “my beloved child, you are not born into the wrong body. You were born into the wrong culture—a culture that’s telling you that you have to hurt your body in order to be your authentic self. Your body does not need to be reconstructed—it is this culture that needs to be reconstructed, and so I have created you to participate with me in the reconstruction of this broken culture.”
“It’s a calling to sainthood,” Evert said.
