Ah, the Church!

This via Boston's The Edge: a hurting transsexual woman wrote to a well-known Catholic blog, plaintively seeking her advice vis a vis her place in the church. Here is part of her letter:

Is there room in the Church for such as me?  I certainly can’t be active as a man — no one would possibly take me seriously and my very existence in men’s spaces or roles would beg the question of just what I am and how I got to be this way.  I don’t want to be a lightening rod, I don’t want to tear the Church apart, I don’t want to teach kids that this is “perfectly normal” or something they’d want to do, I just want to go home again.  Is the Church’s heart big enough to embrace me as a woman, or do I, and by extension my family, simply no longer exist?

The answer, published in two parts here and here, is a model of Church doublespeak.  It's author, one Mary Kochan, goes out of her way to "discern" whether any medical condition is active here, presumably so that she will be acceptable.  Here's part of what she says in Part I:

There are conditions — deformities of genitalia, genetic anomalies, intrauterine interference with normal development, etc. — that can make what is usually a straightforward identification of someone as male or female problematic. While these are blessedly rare, they are real medical conditions and the persons afflicted with them deserve and should have access to medical care that performs two critical functions: 1. Determining to the best of scientific accuracy what the sex of the person really is 2. Providing the person with the medical and/or surgical and/or psychological intervention to promote physically, emotionally, and socially healthy adaptation to that sex.

 All this left me wondering what Ms. Kochan's medical credentials are, and whether she has she done research to determine that these "deformities" indeed are "blessedly rare."  Apparently, she has read none of the mounting evidence that transgenderism may result from just such a developmental anomaly.

Be that as it may, she determines that the letter-writer does not have any of these characteristics, from evidence she does not share with her readers, and proceeds in part two to tell the hurting woman the following:

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.  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.

Oh, she prefaces all of this with "we've all sinned" and "nobody has the right to judge," yadda, yadda, yadda, but then proceeds to do exactly 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.

Ah!  Now I understand the nationwide trend sweeping the Roman Catholic Church, throwing women out who have pierced their ears.  I hope Ms. Kochan is not in danger ... has she mutilated her body by getting little holes punched in her lobes?  After all, if God had wanted us to have little dangly things hanging from our ears, he would have done it himself.

But the biggest bit of hypocrisy is buried in that same paragraph:

If there was indeed some kind of interference with your development in the womb, that was caused by human agency, not by God.

Oh really?  Does Ms. Kochan feel that the mounting evidence that the fetus -- which starts out as female -- is insufficiently hormonally bathed in TG folks is caused by "human agency?"  And where is her evidence for that?  Further, what is the difference between something like this and one of the author's "acceptable" anomalies like "deformities of genitalia, genetic anomalies, intrauterine interference with normal development?"

In the comments section of the post, the author of the letter revealed that she had written Ms. Kochan in confidence, and that she was not asked whether Ms. Kochan could publish her letter.  After she did -- twice! -- she hid behind a policy stating that any correspondence was fodder for publication (way to show compassion and discretion, Mary), then courageously closed comments on the post.

Actually, the author of the letter should have written me.  It wouldn't have taken me two lengthy, redundant posts to answer her questions:

Is the Church’s heart big enough to embrace me as a woman, or do I, and by extension my family, simply no longer exist?

My answer would have been only three words: "No and Yes."