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Catholic bioethics lecture suggests transgender experience is “contagion”

Views Ryan Di Corpo / May 10, 2023 Print this:
A crowd listens to the Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk during his talk on Catholic teaching and transgender issues at St. John Neumann Church in East Freetown, Mass., on March 28, 2023. Father Tadeusz is a nationally-recognized speaker on religion and bioethics. (Photo courtesy of Ryan Di Corpo)

A March lecture on gender identity at a Catholic parish in Massachusetts described some transgender people as mentally ill and blamed both academia and the mainstream media for a national increase in young persons identifying as transgender. 

The Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, a Yale-educated neuroscientist in the Diocese of Fall River, Mass., and the director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, in Philadelphia, addressed a crowded parish hall at St. John Neumann Church in East Freetown, Mass.

His talk, “Welcoming in Truth and Charity: The Church and Transgender Issues,” alleged the influence of small gender studies departments at American universities in promoting a “gender ideology” that “came out of the ivory tower and went mainstream.” He also explained the growing prominence of transgender persons in public life as a product of the mass media, which has influenced public opinion through “a blitzkrieg approach.”

Comparing transgender people who undergo surgical intervention to someone who claims to be a pirate and amputates his hand for a hook, Father Pacholczyk claimed that the transgender experience “spreads almost like a contagion through high schools” once one student comes out. During the question-and-answer session after his talk, an audience member, who described herself as a beekeeper, suggested that chemicals in our foods are turning people transgender.

Could this conspiracy be the case? Maybe, Father Pacholczyk theorized, as women eat these foods, pass the chemicals into the water supply people ingest and this, perhaps, distorts our hormones. 

Last June, the Pew Research Center found that only 1.6 percent of all U.S. adults say they are transgender or nonbinary; that number is 5.1 percent among people ages 18 to 29.

To be clear, there is no evidence that water consumption or food additives affect gender identity. The New York Times has noted that, according to experts, younger people now have the words to describe their gender diversity, which may explain a steep rise in Americans who identify as transgender.

Last June, the Pew Research Center found that only 1.6 percent of all U.S. adults say they are transgender or nonbinary; that number is 5.1 percent among people ages 18 to 29. These figures, while significant, do not suggest a type of fast-spreading “contagion.” 

“The hypothesis that transgender and gender diverse youth assigned female at birth identify as transgender due to social contagion does not hold up to scrutiny,” wrote Alex S. Keuroghlian,  an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, last August. 

A sought-out Catholic voice on medical and social ethics, Father Pacholczyk has appeared several times on EWTN, with anchor Raymond Arroyo, and written for The Wall Street Journal. His employer, the not-for-profit National Catholic Bioethics Center (N.C.B.C.), is an influential force in the American church that provides analysis to the Holy See and the U.S.C.C.B.

“Over the past few years, [the N.C.B.C.] has received numerous inquiries from Catholic school principals and superintendents asking for guidance on how they can … respond to gender ideology,” reads a September 2019 essay from the Center’s journal. “The N.C.B.C. reviewed various Catholic school policies concerning transgenderism to identify best practices.” (Outreach has published several articles on these diocesan policies.) 

The talk drew heavily from current church guidance on transgender concerns and the Vatican’s rejection of “gender ideology,” a term used by some Catholic leaders, including Pope Francis, to account for seismic shifts in society’s understanding of gender.

A recent doctrinal note from the U.S.C.C.B. affirms a Catholic anthropology that describes the male-female binary as an intrinsic part of the natural order and strongly opposes “technological manipulation” that seeks to physically alter the body. The bishops’ note states that human beings do not possess “unlimited rights” to change what was created by God. 

“The body is not an object, a mere tool at the disposal of the soul, one that each person may dispose of according to his or her own will, but it is a constitutive part of the human subject,” reads the U.S.C.C.B. directive. 

The bishops’ note states that human beings do not possess “unlimited rights” to change what was created by God. 

The concept of gender ideology, which the church describes as a dangerous cultural force that seeks to uproot long-understood differences between males and females, has been sharply criticized as inaccurate by transgender people and LGBTQ advocates. In an article for Outreach, James Martin, S.J., notes that most trans people “are responding to often decades-long feelings of deep dissatisfaction with their gender” rather than to any ideological movement. 

In a response to Outreach, Father Pacholczyk wrote that he did not state all transgender persons are mentally ill, but that “there is often a mental disorder” that calls for psychotherapy. “When an otherwise healthy biological male believes he is a female, or an otherwise healthy biological female believes she is a male, on objective psychological problem exists,” he wrote in an email.

His talk was not unique to one Massachusetts parish. In 2018, some 100 parishioners in the Diocese of Providence attended a lecture by Dr. Michelle Cretella, the president of the American College of Pediatricians. (The College, which promotes anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, has been designated as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. It is not to be confused with the American Academy of Pediatrics, the nation’s largest pediatricians’ group.)

Her talk—which was met with around 20 protestors—compared gender dysphoria to anorexia and rejected medical intervention as appropriate healthcare for transgender youth. Rhode Island Catholic, the diocesan newspaper, described Dr. Cretella as “a leading critic of the ideology behind transgenderism.”

Providence and Fall River are not the only U.S. Catholic dioceses to address transgender experiences in recent years, as numerous American bishops have issued policies that aim to curtail LGBTQ expression in schools and deny transgender Catholics roles in church ministry.

Calling its policy on transgender expression “intentionally exclusionary,” the Diocese of Sioux Falls, S.D., states that “those living a transgender lifestyle” should be barred from the Sacrament of Confirmation and excluded from receiving the Eucharist “until they fully accept the teachings of the church.”

Numerous American bishops have issued policies that aim to curtail LGBTQ expression in schools and deny transgender Catholics roles in church ministry.  

The Diocese of Marquette, in Michigan, issued similar guidance in December 2021, moving  to restrict LGBTQ Catholics from baptism and wider church ministry until they “repent.” The policy, as reported by NBC News, again compared being LGBTQ to suffering from anorexia—a psychological illness. 

Transgender persons are more likely than cisgender people to experience negative mental health outcomes. Gender-affirming care, in general, significantly decreases depression and suicidality within the first year, but the Journal of the American Medical Association notes that “less is known” about immediate effects. It is important to state that we do not have all the answers to this complex social and psychological phenomenon. 

In an article for Outreach, Christine Zuba, a transgender Catholic woman from New Jersey, explained that her gender identity is not part of a social agenda. “I don’t wake up in the morning thinking about being transgender,” she wrote. “Our lives are no different than anyone’s else’s. We live, we work, we pray. We have families.” Claire Gallagher, a transgender woman and practicing obstetrician-gynecologist, hopes that the church and broader society will understand the dangers of marginalization. 

“Terming a transgender individual’s treatment of a potentially morbid dysphoria a ‘lifestyle choice’ is to completely misunderstand … the pain and struggles that lead a transgender person to transition,” she wrote late August.

It is important to state that we do not have all the answers to this complex social and psychological phenomenon. 

As noted by Sister Luisa Derouen, a Dominican Sister of Peace who has ministered among the transgender community since 1999,  instances of depression, suicide and drug addiction are not the result of being transgender, but being ostracized from communities to which they seek to belong. 

“What I have witnessed in my ministry hundreds of times, up close and personal, is that transgeneder people experience all of this because they try to suppress who they are,” wrote Sister Derouen, “and because of the pervasive rejection they experience.”

Ryan Di Corpo

Ryan Di Corpo is the managing editor of Outreach. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, America, Boston College Magazine, The Emancipator and elsewhere. He holds an M.A. in journalism from Northeastern University, in Boston.

All articles by Ryan Di Corpo

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8 Comments
  1. I toggle emotionally between sadness and anger when I think about Catholic clerics, scholars, professionals and spiritual leaders who regard others in a way so antithetical to Jesus’s teachings and example.

    Thank you, Ryan Di Corpo, for this piece that reminds us that merely pronouncing a “Catholic” response does not make one an expert or credible. It’s the folks who share with us their lived experience, as well as those who listen and learn from them, who should be centered and who should guide us.

    • Amen

  2. Re: Genesis 1:27

    ‘Here there is no hierarchy between one human being and the next and, as transgender interpretations point out, the verse says ‘male and female God created them’, not male or female.”

    ‘That is, within that first human being created was the spectrum, one whose maleness and femaleness is expressed differently in each of us.” – Rabbi Leah Jordan

    The rabbi gets it right!

    God is both Mother and Father. He creates us in His/Her image!

    This image is being revealed to us through those who are non-binary and transgender. The church needs to be brave enough to listen!

    I’m a cradle Catholic. Our oldest child came out to us as transgender at age 27. The comments by the hierarchy have caused grave harm to us, so much so that I made the decision to become Episcopalian.

    I would suggest the Roman Church begin to listen to families like ours, or see more of us leave an emotionally abusive relationship. We are inundated with transphobia through the media every day. We don’t need it from the church?

    The universal (“catholic”) Church has many branches, including the Anglican (Episcopal) Church–the one Pope Paul VI called the “beloved sister church.”

    I like to refer to it as a peaceful home; one that accepts our family–as we are!

    • This is a very thoughtful response. But sadly so, many will continue to leave our Roman Catholic institution in response to LGBTQ, sexual abuse scandals, treatment of divorced parishioners, and more.
      My godchild is going through transition at this time. What a brave decision! We cannot imagine how hard it is to go through this experience when the person is risking rejection by family, friends, church, school…on and on.
      What happened to Universal Love? Love is unconditional.
      Thank you for sharing and for further enlightening those reading this article.

  3. Please make corrections:
    1) Our child came out at age 25
    2) We don’t need it from the church! (! not ?)

    Thank you

  4. Wondering if people think things through at all… “The Diocese of Marquette, in Michigan, issued similar guidance in December 2021, moving to restrict LGBTQ Catholics from baptism and wider church ministry until they “repent.” The policy, as reported by NBC News, again compared being LGBTQ to suffering from anorexia—a psychological illness. ”

    So–does the Diocese of Marquette ban people with anorexia or other “psychological illness” from the sacraments?!?!?!? On what possible grounds??? So even if they were correct about LGBTQ people–they’re not, but even if they were–you’d think decent people would be welcoming and inviting, not hostile and demanding repentance. Imagine asking a person with anorexia, or depression, or other mental illness, to repent. Medieval thinking…if it’s thinking at all…and certainly does not fit with Jesus’ example in ministry.

  5. This is it. This is why I have left the Catholic Church after more than 50 years of full, faithful, and active participation. My adult child is transgender, and I will choose my beautiful, truthful, principled daughter any day over blind, virtue-signaling, self-righteous Catholic leaders.

  6. The church is called to be holy and as long as we exclude people, we are not following the holiness to which we are called by Jesus. We have no right to have the hymn “All are Welcome” in our hymnals until that is truly lived out. Yes, there are many in our parishes who identify as LGBTQ2+ but they do so quietly. Having to be quiet about who they are takes a toll on them mentally and emotionally and spiritually.
    Thank you for the opportunity that you provide for inclusion. You are opening the door and I pray that the church will hear the message.
    God bless.