Originally published at: The Vatican declares trans Catholics can be baptized | Boing Boing
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Some transgender people can be baptized.
Most transgender people who were associated with Catholicism were baptized way before they transitioned. It’s a vanishing small number who seek Catholic baptism after transitioning.
They also just said that children of gay parents can be baptized.
Slow down, you’re moving too fast. /s
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a more progressive Pope- and granted, that bar isn’t very high, but we have to take what we can get.
That’s how I look at it. Still, I like the idea of Ratzi’s minions and American conservative Catholics stewing over this latest result of having a Jesuit as Pope (members of the order are not usually given the Papacy because they’re prone more toward reason and pragmatism – again, by relative standards).
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Things have changed.
Andre Marie Jean Jacques Dupin “The Jesuits are a naked sword, whose hilt is at Rome but its blade is everywhere, invisible until its stroke is felt.”
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Because nothing says ‘courage of your convictions’ like “I guess we won’t stop you if nobody else seems to mind.”
Not a huge surprise as a product of large org controversy-averse communication but looks pretty shabby in the context of celebrating the if-necessarily-radically countercultural element of moral conviction.
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That sword turned out to be a double-edged one for conservatives in the RCC.
Speaking of which, more good news from the Vatican today…
[Archive]
Strickland was anti-trans in addition to his other Xtianist positions, opposing gender-affirming care in Catholic-affliliated hospitals.
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That’s new? Interesting. I have a good friend who is gay and Catholic and married, and he and his husband adopted two children about 9 or 10 years ago, I think? Anyway, they had them baptized as infants. At the time, I just thought, “Oh, that’s cool. I wouldn’t have thought the Church would be ok with that.” And they’ve been attending a Catholic church in Missouri as a family for the past 8 years or so. I always wondered if they ever ran into any issues, but he’s never said anything. Of course, he’s also white and not quite rich but well off (he retired at age 40 something after a career as an executive chef to be a stay-at-home dad, and his husband is a paralegal), and he’s a conservative who usually votes Republican, so…he seems unaware of his own privilege. That probably explains a lot, actually.
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The Catholic Church is not a monolith. There are various orders (Jesuits, Benedicts, Dominicans, etc.), and they sit on various locations on the socioeconomic scale between conservative and liberal ideology. I don’t recall the order, but the church I grew up in was very progressive and liberal, to the point you could call it a practitioner of liberation theology.
Meanwhile, the church my cousin across town grew up in was archly conservative, to the point they only held mass in the vernacular because they were ordered to.
I can’t speak about today, but at the time (and to my child-mind and experience) that church was very accepting and welcoming, and probably wouldn’t have had a problem with gay marriages or baptizing trans children.
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“risk of generating a public scandal or disorientation among the faithful”
“Scandal” in this context is a term of art – it means leading others into sin.
As this document also addresses the baptism of children of gay couples, I’ll put in that more specific context – there a Priest would need be careful not to approve their relationship in way that would suggest it’s a valid marriage, as that might encourage others to follow that same path. (They would also do this in the case of a second heterosexual marriage where the first hasn’t been accounted for (annulment, Pauline privilege, etc.)).
“Scandal” in this context wouldn’t mean the same thing as with covering up child sexual abuse. Not that that’s not scandalous and sinful and a grave moral failing – but that’s not the way the word is being used here. This is about the public endorsement of a sin.
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As Magicfox says, there are various orders within the church with their own rules an interpretations. In addition to that, Jesuitical thinking places the emphasis on the results of the actions, so if behaving in a way contrary to church discipline will bring more souls into the church, then that must be good thing. There is a word for this, which doesn’t just apply to clerics, but worshippers as well - so one CAN (apparently) be a good catholic AND use birth control AND/OR have an abortion. Some kind soul might remind me of the word, I am old and prone to aphasia. On the other hand there also die-hards who would sooner cut off their right hand than baptise a trans person.
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This a very good thing those who may have been excluded from religous family members in the past.
It is also a good thing for everybody, despite what we may think about “family values”, family is not a bad thing. It is bad when the definition of a family is hijacked & narrowed down to exclude certain people.
When we expand that definition of family, everybody benefits.
Except the “family-values” mob.
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Casuistry?
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Yes, thank you, well done! It came to me a 4 am, as usual.
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Definitely a Jesuit speciality (if not a raison d’etre for the order). The term is used as pejorative by religious fundies and, to a lesser degree, by secular people.
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