Vatican declaration criticized by LGBTQ+ community
Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez presented the declaration “Dignitas Infinita” (Infinite Dignity) during a press conference at the Vatican on Monday, Apr. 8. The Vatican issued a document declaring “gender-affirming surgery and surrogacy as grave violations of human dignity” according to NBC News, “putting them on par with abortion and euthanasia as practices that reject God’s plan for human life.” According to reports, these statements were approved by Pope Francis on Mar. 25.
According to The New York Times, the Vatican has stated through the Dignitas Infinita that the sex assigned at birth is an “irrevocable gift [from God]” and “any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.” The Vatican added that gender-afirming surgery is a risk “to the age-old temptation to make oneself God.”
Francis DeBernardo, the executive director of New Ways Ministry, a Maryland-based group that advocates for gay Catholics has stated “The Vatican is again supporting and propagating ideas that lead to real physical harm to transgender, nonbinary, and other LGBTQ+ people,” according to The New York Times. DeBernardo went on to explain that the document excludes “the segment of the human population who are transgender, nonbinary or gender nonconforming.” He continued, “While [the document] lays out a wonderful rationale for why each human being, regardless of condition in life, must be respected, honored, and loved, it does not apply this principle to gender-diverse people.” DeBernardo further criticized the document addressing the “stunning lack of awareness of the actual lives of transgender and nonbinary people.”
The New York Times explained that though this is an obvious step back for the LGBTQ+ community, the Catholic Church’s attempt to balance protecting personal human dignity and previously stated church values as “a tightrope Francis has tried to walk in his more than 11 years as pope.” The Dignitas Infinita expresses that to change sex is to “justify an arbitrary proliferation of new rights,” and would act as if “the ability to express and realize every individual preference or subjective desire should be guaranteed.” The consensus is that eliminating sexual differences is a threat to the nuclear family structure.
The Dignitas Infinita declares that the Catholic church unquestionably opposes surrogacy whether the woman carrying a baby “is coerced into it or chooses to subject herself to it freely,” claiming that surrogacy makes a child “a mere means subservient to the arbitrary gain or desire of others.” Pope Francis explained, “The path to peace calls for respect for life, for every human life, starting with the life of the unborn child in the mother’s womb, which cannot be suppressed or turned into an object of trafficking.”
Reports indicate that the document was intended to serve as a broad statement of the Catholic Church's values of human dignity, focused on issues such as “the exploitation of the poor, migrants, women, and vulnerable people.” The document has been embraced by conservatives, though Pope Francis has previously been more tolerable to the members of the LGBTQ+ community, leading many members of the community to become more critical and confused by this new document.
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