CV NEWS FEED // The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops this week will vote on a directive against subjecting people to so-called “transgender” surgeries and treatments in Catholic healthcare institutions.
The vote has long been slated to take place at the U.S. Bishops’ Spring Assembly taking place this week, but a new report showing that doctors are engaging in so-called “transgender medicine” within a major Catholic health system will likely add urgency to the bishops’ deliberations on the issue.
The Lepanto Institute published a bombshell report Monday revealing that hospitals within a leading non-profit Catholic health system are engaging in “sex change” operations and drug prescriptions. “The largest Catholic health system in the United States, CommonSpirit Health, is acting directly against Catholic moral teaching in direct defiance of its Catholic identity,” the report states:
This report will prove that CommonSpirit Health is performing transgender surgeries, providing hormone-based transgender therapies, providing puberty blockers to children under the auspices of so-called “gender-affirming care,” is financially subsidizing the same through its employee benefits packages, is financially subsidizing medical institutions performing these procedures and therapies, is providing all forms of modern contraception (including abortifacients) to patients, and is even performing elective abortions and surgical sterilizations.
The left-wing National Catholic Reporter framed the bishops’ impending vote as a potential threat to so-called “transgender care.” The outlet obtained a copy of the ballot item the bishops are considering.
If the bishops vote to move forward this week, it “would authorize the bishops’ doctrine committee to begin the process of revising the Religious and Ethical Directives for Catholic Health Care, which are described as the ‘authoritative guidance’ for U.S. Catholic health care institutions,” according to the Reporter:
The revision would change the directives to align with a doctrinal note the bishops released in March, which focused on what the prelates called the “moral limits to technological manipulation of the human body.”
The directives, or ERDs, also include the bishops’ mandates on issues that include end-of-life care and abortion.
The March doctrinal note indicating the bishops’ position offered a robust defense of Catholic teaching on sexuality, and squarely condemned subjecting people to sexual surgeries and hormone treatments in the name of the LGBTQ movement.
The document made a clear statement to Catholic hospitals in particular: “Catholic health care services must not perform interventions, whether surgical or chemical, that aim to transform the sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex or take part in the development of such procedures.”
As CatholicVote reported when the note was first released:
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued an unequivocal statement condemning transgender interventions and forbidding Catholic hospitals to perform them.
The document lays out principles on the broader issue of attempts to manipulate and customize the human body – such as genetic engineering, “cybernetic enhancement,” and other aspects of transhumanism – which is expected to become of increasing importance as technology advances.
“There is an order in human nature which we are called to respect,” the document states. “Genuine respect for human dignity requires that decisions about the use of technology be guided by genuine respect for this created order.”
The bishops also directly rejected the tenet of transgender ideology that some are born into the wrong body. “The soul does not come into existence on its own and somehow happen to be in this body, as if it could just as well be in a different body,” the doctrinal note stated. “A soul can never be in another body, much less be in the wrong body.”
Readers can click here to read further about the doctrinal note which is reportedly guiding the bishops’ upcoming vote.
