Amid Nation’s ‘Transgender Moment,’ US Catholics Engage With Truth and Charity

Faithful Catholics are re-articulating the Church’s teaching on sexual identity and applying it to the challenges raised by gender ideology.

By Jonathan Liedl, Dec. 28, 2017

WASHINGTON — Four prominent U.S. bishops joined leaders of other Christian traditions in publicly reaffirming the inherent beauty and reality of each person’s God-given sexuality.

In an open letter, entitled “Created Male and Female” and released Dec. 15 by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Church leaders spelled out the harmful elements of gender ideology, which denies both the innateness of biological sex and the intrinsic link between gender and sex.

The authors also urged members of their faith communities to respond to those struggling with their sexual identity with “compassion, mercy and honesty.”

“We hope for a renewed appreciation of the beauty of sexual difference in our culture and for authentic support of those who experience conflict with their God-given sexual identity,” read the letter, whose authors included Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky; Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia; Bishop James Conley of Lincoln, Nebraska; and Bishop Joseph Bambera of Scranton, Pennsylvania. They are all U.S. bishops’ conference committee chairmen.

In many ways, though, the call to respond to gender ideology in truth and charity is already being answered by Catholics across the country.

From theologians to think-tank fellows, medical doctors to millennial ministers, faithful Catholics — most of them laity and many of them women — have been busy re-articulating the Church’s teaching on sexual identity and applying it to the challenges raised by gender ideology.

Positive and Pastorally-Focused

http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/amid-nations-transgender-moment-us-catholics-engage-with-truth-and-charity