The Supreme Court has declined to intervene in a lawsuit against a Catholic hospital that declined to perform a hysterectomy on a woman who identifies as a transgender man on the grounds that doing so would violate Catholic ethics and the U.S. bishops’ directives.
“In keeping with our Catholic faith, at our Catholic-sponsored care sites we do not offer certain services including sterilizing procedures such as hysterectomies to any patient regardless of gender identity, unless the patient has a life-threatening condition,” the Dignity Health hospital network said Nov. 1. “Courts have long recognized the right of faith-based providers to offer services that are consistent with their religious beliefs. Although the Supreme Court will not consider this important issue at this time, we plan to continue to pursue the case at the lower-court level.”
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch wanted the court to hear the case, which comes amid debate over religious freedom, the ability of U.S. Catholic institutions to follow Catholic ethics, and political and legal claims related to LGBT causes.
The lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Evan Minton, a Sacramento-area woman who identifies as a transgender man. Minton’s suit claimed a Catholic hospital in the Dignity Health network violated state law when it cancelled her hysterectomy procedure to remove her uterus and rescheduled it within three days at a non-Catholic institution.
Full story at Catholic News Agency.
Fr. Dan Horan published an awesome article about how it’s a sin not to call people by their new trans-names and to refuse to use their preferred pronouns. He based it on the Bible in which God changed people’s names and “do unto others” means we should call people by the names and pronouns they want just as we want people to call us by our names and use the right pronouns we like. It’s all about Christian love.
I haven’t read the article so let me agree with this much of what he has said: If I met this lady, this biological woman face to face I would call her Evan, for that is what she wants me to call her. To do otherwise would be a sin against charity. If she asked me to believe her a man, I would say squarely no, you are a biological woman and will be so until life’s end. To do otherwise would be a sin against biology. I would use her pronouns if I were talking with her, should pronouns actually become necessary in the course of conversation. When talking of her, I would use her biological pronouns, as I am doing here. But there is one thing I would not do: use the Bible to compare God’s changing names, as from Simon to Peter (which in Aramaic is Kepha, or rock, signifying Peter’s new role as chief apostle) with the case here, which, as I have indicated above, is an affront to God and his creating her a woman. One affirms a truth, the other a lie. This is a mental health issue and a biological issue at one and the same time. Odd that the anonymous clergyman should speak of “dismemberment” when that is precisely what the poor woman has done to herself.
Whoever is in Christ is a new creation. The old has passed away.
So in Scripture it states that new creation, removing the old and putting on the new, is part of God’s plan. What you were born as is no longer you. You are newly made. That can apply to understanding trans people too.
No no no no. This is sophistry.
https://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/balt/balt1.htm
Here is a link to the Baltimore Catechism. Read thru this and learn about God and His Holy Catholic Church.
3. Q. What is man?
A. Man is a creature composed of body and soul, and made to the image and likeness of God.
We are a new creation in Christ. All the baptized are. And yes, if a trans person is not baptized, it is a different thing that if a member of the brethren decides to transition.
A lack of self-acceptance is so prevalent in our culture today. Maybe it starts with hair color and makeup, tanning spray and wigs. It progresses to plastic surgery. People used to be ashamed of this stuff and tried to hide it because what is the point of trying to be something you are not and then telling people you are not it?
Sex change became gender re-assignment became gender confirmation. Rather than accepting themselves the way they are or changing themselves and pretending to be something they are not, it is now considered “authentic” to change yourself. On the belief that the outside can be modified to match what one wishes one was or even genuinely feels that one is, it is permissible to do anything. Now even interior change like this hysterectomy, which in a young person with healthy tissue really should not be attempted, is being done.
There is a lack of wisdom and a lack of acceptance of reality which is the Church’s point in this: God made you a certain way. You should accept that. The new creation in Christ is to realize that you have died to the world and to all this stuff and only Christ and His Salvation is important.
Good Try, but no! It is an affront to God to destroy how he has created you to conform with your own wishes. You might not be happy as you are, but many of us are not “happy” with lots of things about our selves; we pray, we sacrifice and we praise God for all that he has given us, we don’t’ reject what God has done.
“,,,God changed people’s names…”
God did not change these peoples names, people did. This is the same non servium from the fallen angels.
Don’t mistake false charity for true charity. Confirming people in their delusions or sins is not charity.
“do unto others” means we should call people by the names and pronouns they want just as we want people to call us by our names and use the right pronouns we like.”
So you’ve invoked Mt. 7:12 and interpreted that for me. I now invoke Mt 7:14 and so interpret:
“For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few”. Which obviously means that the unfortunate souls with gender dysphoria should receive compassionate assistance to live the way in which they were created even though it is difficult and painful (much like life in general for….everyone)
Mark, it is one thing if the person was born with a genital defect that needs remedy, and he/she is trying to determine the sex to which he/she is closest versus a normally developing or developed person who is trying to be something he/she can never really be and is deconstructing his/her body and will be taking opposite sex hormones for the rest of his/her life and destroying his/her body in the process. The latter should never be encouraged. Normally developing children should never be told that they can actually change their sex because they cannot.
trans names, In following that logic, if I demanded that you call me “Lord Most High God,” would you?
I could not call anyone other than God that. Such would be false and idolatry.
I understand your general point about respecting persons. I call people by their preferred address; whether doctors, professors, clergy, etc. Yet, there are some limits. Should an Air Force airman be called “General,” if they so desire? Or a seminarian “Your Excellency?” Should teachers and others be fired for using accurate terms and not using “preferred pronouns?” What about paramedics, who have to indicate whether a patient is male or female?
I realize that’s reductio ad absurdum, but I’m trying to follow your logic.
Wouldn’t lovingly speaking the truth to someone be more compassionate and Christian?
“… rescheduled it within three days at a non-Catholic institution.” Well my poor woman, then why sue the Catholic hospital? You got what you wanted, a mutilated body elsewhere. Just another effort to squeeze Christian witness out of society, as Archbishop Gomez so eloquently expressed in a related thread. Your anti-Christian action engaging in this vindictive suit matches your anti-Christian action in denying the identity God gave you. What a mess you have made of your life, and now you want to mess it up for others. You have my poor prayers, dear lady.
This woman, and others like her, need compassion and help with their gender dysphoria, not genital mutilation. Some people believe that their limbs are not their own and want them amputated. They too deserve compassionate care, love and truth, not dismemberment. Let’s not confuse a mental health issue with a biological (and theological) reality.
She had it done at another hospital. Yet she sued Dignity Health. This is not about compassion or love. It’s about coercing cooperation in a subversive ideology.
It’s about making a statement and money
What does one do with these people pray for them? It’s very sad they are mentally unstable confused and need psychiatric help, to Mutilate your body is against God‘s order, yet our society sanctions it, Our Lord will not tolerate this and will not be mocked. There is no such thing as transgender people, you’re either a man or a woman end of story.
What about circumcision? God commanded that mutilation.
I read comments here and am often struck with curiosity at where folks are coming from….
Circumcision – Are you a Jew? Are we Catholic Jews. Jesus both priest and prophet came to fulfull the old laws and some like circumcision and dietary strictures were no longer part of New Covenant.
in Acts, Paul does not merely call circumcision for Gentiles meaningless, he says it is dangerous. If one allows himself to be circumcised, he is in danger of nullifying the grace of God! (See Gal 1:6-9, for example.)
‘course you could just be another troll, atheist, or demon.
Well, in Genesis God commands Abraham to get circumcised and all his household.
The fact that it’s no longer required is avoiding the plain fact that God commanded genital mutilation.
So if it wasn’t intrinsically evil then, it’s not intrinsically evil now. Trans can do it if they want. Not intrinsically evil then, not intrinsically evil now.
This is so illogical I can only conclude that you’ve made up your mind. But, don’t claim that God’s covenant with the Hebrews is the same as removal of primary and secondary sex organs, taking hormones and rejecting the gender and sex God assigned at your birth. Obviously none of this is done according to God’s Will nor permitted by Him. I sincerely hope that you and others like you get the help you clearly need.
“If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe but yourself.” St. Augustine
Of course it is not intrinsically evil.
Who said it was?
No wonder some hate Latin. It only has “he, she, it (singular) and you, y’all and they (plural)”. One best not mess with that. God made two sexes, all else is a genital defect, just like all of us have some bodily defect , whether an extra bone in the body, arthritis, cancer, blindness, etc. those we do what we can to repair and make normal, but none of them are a normality. Deconstructing a normally developing body is an abuse, and no one has the right to force a doctor to abuse his/her body or anyone else’s body.
Catholic theology 101 — if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. When we do, we suffer terrible consequences.
Oops! Correction: “you” is singular and “y’all” and “they” are plural.
the delusion is deep with this one
As a Catholic RN for many years in the Seton Medical Center framework many patients, staff and families searched for excellence in practice and adherence to the teachings of the Catholic Church in choosing their providers of care or where to work. This continues to this day, especially in light of secular and public hospitals promoting forced euthanasia, the slaughter of the child in the womb, transgender transition surgeries that forever mutilate and remove healthy organs from people that often regret this premature “choice” and trends to advances unethical practices that use and destroy embryos for research and failed treatments in medicine. Pope Paul VI predicted all of this in humanae vitae. It should be read again and again. I pray for these hospitals, M.D.’s, and R.N.’s to counter sue these misguided souls.
I disagree that they should counter sue. But the rest I agree with.
I think that is more of the issue than the other comments about transgenderism.
The story is about a Catholic hospital which deserves support for its decision and is not really finding it in the courts. I think the Supreme Court should have taken the case and protected Catholic and other hospitals that have prohibitions on certain procedures because of a religious belief.
Depending on the decision in this case, it may be appealed and appealed, and eventually will end up in the Supreme Court. Hopefully.
The Supreme Court declined it.
I love people’s reading comprehension skills.
“The love for equals is a human thing–of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles. The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing–the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world. The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing–to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints. And then there is the love for the enemy–love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured’s love for the torturer. This is God’s love. It conquers the world.”
Frederick Buechner
Anne TE you are correct about Latin, the one that hates and fears Latin is the Devil himself that is why he fears and hates the Traditional Latin Mass and the new Rite of Exorcism does not work in the vulgar vernacular.
Where did you hear that the Rite of Exorcism in the vernacular does not work?
Romulus Augustus, I believe Fr. Amorth said Latin was more efficacious for exorcisms. I think Fr. Rippinger has said the same thing, but exorcisms can be done in the vernacular if the priest or natural father is in a state of grace. It might take longer. I believe it was Jess Romero, who has helped exorcists, who said that a young man’s father was used one time to perform an exorcism on him in an emergency when the priest could not get there in time. Women can only use certain prayers for laypeople over their families. Read Fr. Amorth, Fr.Rippinger, Paul Thigpen and Jesse Romero’s books..
No lay person and no unauthorized priest can perform an exorcism.
The language used in an exorcism is up to the discretion of the exorcist.
You can find exorcism prayers and rites on the internet. What’s to stop anyone from praying them or using them?
It is dangerous for a layperson to try to do an exorcism as they are not trained to distinguish between what is a medical problem, a psychological problem or a demonic problem for one thing. There are prayers of blessings and protection over oneself and family, though, in the books of the authors I have mentioned — the Lorica (Breastplate) of St. Patrick being one of them.
Do not do that!!!!!
Ordinarily laypeople cannot and should not try to do exorcisms. It is dangerous. The books I mentioned tell you that. In the one instance I mentioned, it is my understanding that the exorcism team had permission from the exorcist as to prayers to have the father say until he got there as the son was violent. The exorcist had already had permission from the bishop to do exorcism. At least one woman should be present when a woman is the victim to protect reputations.
Parents can use lay prayers in books to bless and protect family, though.
Exorcisms are divided into two kinds (or forms). Simple or minor forms of exorcism are found in two places: first, for those preparing for Baptism, the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) and the Rite of Baptism for Children both call for minor exorcisms; secondly, the appendix of Exorcisms and Related Supplications includes a series of prayers which may be used by the faithful.
The second kind is the solemn or “major exorcism,” which is a rite that can only be performed by a bishop or a by priest, with the special and express permission of the local ordinary (cf. Code of Canon Law, can. 1172). This form is directed “at the expulsion of demons or to the liberation [of a person] from demonic possession” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1673).
From the USCCB page on exorcisms
All people have infinite worth. God loves everyone.
Straight, cis-gendered people assume that everyone knows this.
Trans people have such a deep feeling of being flawed that they do not know this.
Everyone here can affirm that God loves everyone and that Jesus’ redemption is for all humankind.