Catholic & Transexual: One Woman's Confession

A Catholic blogger has taken on the question of transgendered individuals and their rights and needs in a two-part column at religious site Catholic Exchange.

The blogger, Mary Kochan, posted the content of a letter she had received from a reader of her blog who claimed to be a transgendered individual born anatomically male, who married, fathered children, and then became female through gender reassignment surgery.

Kochan started out by addressing philosophical, versus practical, applications of theology. "Everything does not remain on paper, or floating up in the rarefied air of theological theory," Kochan wrote. "Every doctrine comes down to earth, becomes incarnated by an act: a ritual is performed; a Sacrament is received; a vow is made and kept for life; a prayer is made by human lips and ascends to God; an act of penance is performed. This is where the rubber meets the road."

Kochan then posted the letter, in which the author claimed to have been born transgendered but married a woman with the hope that his marriage might "cure" him of his deep-seated identification as a woman. "My marriage helped...for a while...but in the end my nature could not be denied," the letter's author wrote. "We tried for 7 years to 'beat' it," the letter continued. "We tried so hard. We failed. In the end, my body was tearing itself apart--I was running a blood pressure of 180/120, my blood chemistry was a wreck, and I was suffering cardiac arrhythmias which placed me in the ER too often for our comfort. I was also miserable. I made it clear to my wife that I was willing to die for her, but I couldn't promise to live much longer even despite the fact I would not suicide."

The letter went on, "You have very absolute views on my status as still male. I make a pretty pathetic one, but that's fine. I'll accept you don't see the need for special protections. That said, you suggest I should not be able to get documents as a woman. I'm curious, though, does this mean you believe I should be detained with "other men" in jail? Keep in mind, I have a reasonably petite female figure, size C breasts (hormones are amazing), and a vagina (whatever you might think of it, it would function were a man to decide to use it as such). If I am documented as a man, I would be incarcerated as one were such an unlikely event to happen--a thought which terrifies me given I have known violent rape once before...

"About showering facilities--I am indistinguishable externally from a biological female--do you propose I shower with men before and after I go swimming?" the letter continued. "As far as bathrooms, one of the reasons I transitioned when I did was because men who didn't even know me were uncomfortable in the bathroom with me--they'd walk in and march right back out. One outright challenged me on being in the men's restroom despite my man's shirt and slacks--my form said otherwise."

Kochan declared herself "very moved at the plight of this person," and set out the medical situations in which a newborn might be discovered to have ambiguous genitalia or characteristics of intersex babies, such as possessing both male and female reproductive organs. "The first question I asked myself about this letter was whether this person represented such a medical case," wrote Kochan. "Based solely upon the information presented it does seem this could have been possible, although by no means did the letter make that claim. Instead, the writer identifies as a person who has gone from being male--revealing no ambiguity, genetically or anatomically--to being female.

"One more basic point to get out of the way at the outset: where the rubber meets the road we all have a blowout," wrote Kochan. "We all sin and fall short of the glory of God." In part two of her column, Kochan responded directly to the letter's author, assuring her that she still had a place within the church, but setting out the Catholic Church's views on sexual identity, and opining that the letter's author, whatever her internal feelings, was in fact a man: "Not just because you say so, but you fathered children with this woman. That is pretty strong evidence that you were a man when you got married.

"The Church does not accept that you have 'become a woman' regardless of your ability to pass as one, either by demeanor, dress, physique, or external anatomy," Kochan continued. "If you ever were really a man, then you still are, regardless of what you have done to yourself. It is not my 'absolute views on your status as a male'--it is the Church that says it."

Added Kochan, "I understand that you were in distress even to the point of your health being wrecked and I'm not in any way making light of that. But objectively speaking, what you proposed and carried out as a remedy to your distress was the breaking of God's law that says that you may not mutilate your body." Continued Kochan, "It is better to die than to offend God. It would have been better for you to have given your life to stay in obedience to God, than to break His law and to drag along into sin your poor spouse." Kochan continued, "That is hard, but really everyone of us should feel that way about every serious sin we have committed. We should prefer the death of our bodies to the death of our souls, shouldn't we?

"We just never know what fruit may come when we determine that no matter what we are not going to break God's law," Kochan's reply continued. "For all you know, God may have given you peace and healed you. We can't know that, but we can see some of the fruit of the course of action you did pursue."

Kochan went on to say that as far as the question of what shower facilities or restrooms to use, "these things are not necessities of life. I guess you will have to live under a few restrictions because of what you did to yourself. You can just consider all that part of your penance."

Questions of sexual morality such as same-sex marriage, sexual intimacy between consenting adults of the same gender, and sexual identity and expression, are an ongoing controversy within the church. The church's official teachings state that gays and lesbians do not choose their sexual desires, but that they are nonetheless "disordered" individuals who have been "called by God" to lead lives of celibacy. In a similar vein, the church teaches that one's physical gender determines whether one is a man or a woman, regardless of the deep-seated convictions transgender individuals experience, typically from extremely early ages, that they are, in fact, in the wrong kind of body and belong in the body of the opposite gender.

Conservative Catholics denounce efforts of reform-minded members of their faith to re-cast the church's teachings and stance on such issues, but efforts at reform from within the church continue. In one such example, the newly formed Catholics for Equality seek input on clergy who act or speak in ways that indicate anti-gay bias, according to an Aug. 22 report at Catholic News Agency.