In many ways, the Catholic Church’s witness is shaped by how it speaks about the people to whom it is called to minister. Conversations about gender are often framed as abstract or theoretical ideological disputes, yet for many Catholics—including transgender Catholics—they are lived as deeply personal encounters.
Taking this into consideration does not require abandoning theological convictions or moral teachings. Rather, it requires acknowledging that the church’s language has real consequences and impact: it can either open space for accompaniment and trust or reinforce distance and suspicion at precisely the moment when care is most needed.
On Feb. 17, 2026, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops released its annual report, “The State of Religious Liberty in the United States.” Among the report’s many sections, one in particular stands out for the attention it gives to contemporary cultural debates: a section titled “Further Repudiation of Gender Ideology.”
The topic itself is not surprising. Questions about gender identity, transgender rights and religious liberty have become central to public life in the United States and it is understandable that the U.S.C.C.B. would want to address them. Yet the way these issues are discussed in the report raises an important question—one that is worth reflecting on pastorally: How does the church’s language shape its witness in moments of cultural conflict?
How does the church’s language shape its witness in moments of cultural conflict?
The report is clearly motivated by a sincere concern for religious liberty. For Catholics, that concern has a deep history and theological roots. The church has long insisted that human beings must be free to seek the truth and to follow the dictates of conscience without coercion from the state. That principle was articulated clearly in the Second Vatican Council’s declaration “Dignitatis Humanae,” which affirmed that religious freedom is grounded in the dignity of the human person. In a pluralistic society like the United States, where believers and nonbelievers alike share public institutions, maintaining that freedom is an important task.
At the same time, the church’s commitment to religious liberty has always existed alongside another commitment: the responsibility to accompany people by following the example of Jesus Christ. The way the church talks about contested issues is never neutral. Words can open a door to deeper understanding or they can close it before a conversation has even begun. In moments when political debates become especially heated, that responsibility becomes even more important. The church’s voice has the potential to deepen polarization or to model a more careful and humane way of engaging difficult questions.
In the report, one of the central claims underlying the discussion of gender is that recognizing transgender people legally poses a threat to religious freedom. Yet it is not obvious that these two realities are inherently in conflict. Protecting people from discrimination through the law does not prevent others from practicing their religion.
The church’s commitment to religious liberty has always existed alongside another commitment: the responsibility to accompany people by following the example of Jesus.
Anti-discrimination laws establish norms for participation in public life—especially in institutions that receive public funding or serve the public broadly—while leaving individuals and religious communities free to practice their faith. To frame legal recognition of transgender people as a threat to religious liberty risks creating the impression that one must come at the expense of the other.
The report discusses the Supreme Court case United States v. Skrmetti as a major turning point in this debate. The decision is described in the report as a significant setback for what it calls “gender ideology.” Yet even the report’s own summary of the case indicates that the Court’s reasoning was narrower than that characterization suggests. The ruling focused largely on whether a state law regulating certain medical procedures for minors violated the Equal Protection Clause. It did not establish a sweeping constitutional judgment about transgender people as a class.
Even so, courts are already beginning to use its reasoning in more extreme ways. In a recent decision, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed West Virginia to exclude gender-affirming surgery for transgender adults from Medicaid coverage, citing Skrmetti repeatedly and suggesting that states may have a legitimate interest in encouraging people to “appreciate their sex.”
The court argued that the policy applies equally to everyone, since anyone diagnosed with gender dysphoria would be denied coverage. But because therapies sometimes collectively described as gender-affirming care are sought almost exclusively by transgender people, the effect of the policy falls almost entirely on them.
The result is a legal framework that treats restrictions on care that only transgender people need as acceptable—an outcome that raises an uncomfortable irony: Measures defended in the name of protecting freedom can end up restricting the rights and freedoms of transgender people themselves.
Language plays an especially important role in this section of the report through the repeated use of the phrase “gender ideology.” The phrase is often presented as though it refers to a clearly defined movement of some sort. In practice, however, the term functions as a broad rhetorical label that groups together a wide range of different ideas and experiences, calling that an “ideology,” despite the absence of any single movement, organization or shared program that could accurately be described by the term.
One serious consequence of this framing is that it turns the lives of transgender people into a concept to be debated rather than a human reality to be encountered. When gender is described primarily as an ideology, the conversation turns from the real experiences of actual people to a rhetorical or philosophical battle of ideas.
A second problem follows from this framing. Once transgender identity is cast as a mistaken “ideology,” discussions often move toward stories of regret or reversal, as though these experiences are the definitive ones. Available research shows that regret after transition is rare, and major medical organizations continue to agree that therapies sometimes collectively described as gender-affirming care are evidence-based treatments for gender dysphoria, despite debates around the efficacy of these treatments. When such complex realities are compressed into ideological labels or statistically unique anecdotes, it becomes difficult to engage the issue with the nuance and care that both the church’s pastoral mission and the dignity of the people involved require.
The language surrounding medical care in the report also deserves careful reflection. Therapies sometimes collectively described as gender-affirming care are repeatedly described using terms such as “mutilation.”1 Such language carries a powerful emotional charge. Again, major professional medical organizations—including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and many others—have recognized gender-affirming care as an evidence-based treatment for gender dysphoria. Whether one ultimately agrees with these medical approaches or not (and there are a variety of approaches), that medical consensus is extremely reputable and should be taken into consideration.
Unfortunately, the report often implicitly frames religious liberty as the freedom to resist legal or cultural recognition of LGBTQ people. Catholic teaching on religious liberty, especially since Vatican II, has emphasized protection for the conscience of every person, in order to let people freely cooperate with God.
Again and again in the Gospels, Jesus drew near to those whom society viewed with suspicion—people pushed to the edges of religious and social life, people labeled disruptive or beyond the bounds of respectability.
If that’s true, then it includes believers whose convictions differ from one another, as well as people navigating complex questions of identity within their own lives. In contemporary Catholic communities, transgender Catholics and their families are also part of that landscape. Their experiences, spiritual lives and struggles for dignity are part of the church’s pastoral reality.
Recognizing this does not require abandoning theological convictions or moral teachings. It simply means acknowledging that the church’s conversation about gender is not an abstract ideological debate. It is a pastoral encounter with real people. When the language used in official documents emphasizes conflict and threat, it can make that encounter more difficult. Many Catholics today know transgender people personally—within their families, their parishes and their communities.
The way the church speaks about these issues therefore shapes how those Catholics perceive the church’s willingness to listen and accompany them. For this reason, reflecting on language is not a peripheral concern. The church’s mission is not merely to win theoretical arguments but to accompany real people living their real, messy lives. The example of Jesus himself points us in this direction. Again and again in the Gospels, Jesus chose to draw near to those whom society viewed with suspicion or discomfort—people pushed to the edges of religious and social life, people labeled disruptive, scandalous or beyond the bounds of respectability. Rather than treating them as threats to the moral order, he met them face to face, listened to them and treated them with dignity.
If the church hopes to follow that example faithfully today, then the way we speak about contested questions must leave room for encounter rather than exclusion. Language that reflects humility, care and attentiveness to the lived realities of others can help ensure that even our most difficult conversations remain open to listening, learning and the possibility of genuine understanding.
- Notably, other forms of medical care such as circumcision, mastectomies, prostate removal, or even removal of one’s appendix that are performed for cultural or medical reasons are never called by this word. ↩︎
