Vatican says it's permissible for transgender Catholics to be baptized
Vatican says it's permissible for transgender Catholics to be baptized
In the United States, the national conference of Catholic bishops rejects the concept of gender transition, leaving many transgender Catholics feeling excluded.
Any day now the American Catholics will break away from the Vatican because of all these smart and modern ideas.
If the Vatican could get away with running the order like they did in the 1950s where masses were in Latin and women were seen not heard they would. Changes by the Vatican aren’t due to an enlightenment; they are an act of self preservation. The young are less interested in religion and active members and tithes continue to freefall. Most American Catholics are only Catholic because they were born that way not because they give a rat’s ass about eating meat on a Friday. It’s the evangelical nutters that have broken away long ago when they realized that the wedding-and-funeral Catholics couldn’t be arsed to hate the right people.
Isn't protestantism the wider belief in the US?
They are the biggest group, but it's a pretty diverse group with a wide range of beliefs. It covers the whole gamut from Evangelicals who declare anything that has ever made someone smile to be of the devil and the King James Bible to be the literal word of god to the hippy dippy churches that are cool with gay marriage and will say the whole bible is just metaphorical, so come play guitar with them at coffee hour before the church goes on a nature hike to do yoga and meditate on top of a local mountain. If you consider the denominations individually, Roman Catholicism is a larger denomination than the biggest Protestant denomination, at least according to Wikipedia.
Also worth considering how many people in all camps don't really practice their professed faith and just keep saying they identify as follower of whatever creed anyway.
Maybe St. Malachy was onto something about the idea that this would be the last pope before the Catholic Church ends. I always figured that was just the whiskey talking.
I am sorry, what?
If it did not cause scandal or “disorientation” among other Catholics, a transgender person “may receive baptism under the same conditions as other faithful,” the document said.
How is this allowing anything? The hardliners among Catholics will just always see it as a scandal. So if you are a religious transgender person you need to find a community where everyone is quite open minded to this. How nice...
There is a lot of division in the Catholic Church right now, because of the strict traditionalists that are now in it. So it's not out of the realm of possibility for someone to get a more accepting congregation across town.
I see progress here, though, because now they are acknowledging that the issue with accepting transgender people is with the "disorientation" among the congregation, not with anything disqualifying about the Trans person themselves. Prior popes would have called them "disordered" and "unnatural" and excluded them with vigor.
Catholic church moves glacially on everything. They didn't jail Galileo because they actually disagreed with him on anything, but rather because he was trying to jump in immediately (and being a dick about it).
Now, jailing a person for moving too fast and being a dick isn't a good thing to do. Neither is further perpetuating ostracism of LGBTQ+ folk just because they want to introduce change slowly. But at least they're consistent about it.
Seems to me like an attempt to placate the conservatives while allowing room for progressives.
Won't be very successful.
He can claim that all he wants, while quietly telling clergy not to. Go to Latin America or anywhere in the Catholic third world and ask a priest to baptize a trans person, see how that goes for you
I think that's part of why he is being so careful with language, it's in line with him coming out to say homosexuality is not a crime earlier this year.
Hopefully this is just paving the way for further change but when the Church holds a lot of power in countries where lgbtq+ people are outlawed and heavily oppressed I can see why he's slowly introducing ideas like it's not against the law and being permissible to baptise.
I'm no fan of the RCC but if the pope quickly does a full 180 on these issues the church will likely fracture and the countries where things are pretty extreme will break away and, double down on the persecution and allow it to become an identity marker.
I’m a strong atheist, vehemently ex-Catholic, and a member of Team Rainbow, just so that no one thinks I’m defending indefensible things. And I agree that this is going to make little change in the behavior of most parishes, especially in heavily Catholic countries. I don’t think that’ll be due to the pope, though.
The Catholic Church has always taken an openly violent stance against LGBT people. They still do. I consider even the position of more liberal Catholics who take the position that it’s just like any other sin and can send you to hell but still reject all the social war stuff as wishing violence, although they’re not really problematic.
But Francis has gone out of his way more than any pope I can remember to be a progressive reformer. I’m not comparing it to Vatican II or anything, but it’s significant progress on issues like women and LGBT. He’s resisted by a lot of the politics of the church, but as the chief god-person he has some flexibility. So I think it’s less about him speaking one thing in public and another in private, and more about a conservative institution that will not implement his orders (such as they are).
Maybe that will speed up the process of religion dying off
Does the Venn diagram have a big overlap? If I were trans (very important note for my question, which is likely ignorant), why would I now want baptized by a group that has shunned and hated me until now?
You are not forced to. If one is a believer, they are free to practice it. This is all about choice, like many modern and going to be modern things.
It would have not been better if they kept shunning it. They know the practice of the religion needs to be adapted (as in fact, its a belief), as it always did in modern history. An example of this is also the transmission of the services in television, despite it not being considered an "holy" way of transmission.
I agree the choice is what matters. I was just curious :)
Brace yourself for “But what about mUH BaAaBLe??!?!!??!” crowd calling pope an antichrist
Bandwagoners. Lutherans have been calling the Pope the antichrist since 1520.
It's interesting to watch, though. American Catholics have aligned many of their beliefs with the Protestant-derived churches around them. Try asking Paul Ryan what he thinks of the Vatican's position on evolution.
I don't think I will ever forgive Christianity for inventing a doctrine of an afterlife where babies who died during childbirth are to be tortured. They could have invented anything, and they went with that.
Good for the Vatican. That would never be said before.
Not surprising. Religious people have a problem acknowledging reality as well, LMAO.
Not surprising. Religious people have a problem acknowledging reality as well, LMAO.
I'm always a little confused by people who seem to think that the reality of biological sex is some sort of profound argument that precludes the social construct of gender. Indeed, the definition of "transgender" essentially requires the factual nature of biological sex, or there would be nothing to be across from.
They know. The difference between sex and gender has been explained to the point of nausea. They are over simplifying on purpose; if you are willing to lie to make your point, there is no bottom to how simple you can make your argument, while the truth has a lower limit on simplicity.