"The Image and Likeness of God is He/She!" 

An answer to the "Male and Female He Created Them" Document for Catholic Education

I have finally had a chance to review the document published by the Roman Catholic Congregation  For  Catholic  Education (for Educational Institutions), entitled

“Male  And  Female He  Created Them ” Towards A Path Of Dialogue On The Question Of Gender Theory In Education, first published on February 2, 2019, but not released until June 2019 as a part of th Vatican’s “commemoration” of Pride Month in this semi-centennial year since the Stonewall Riots in new York City.

In reading this document, I am quite aware of the unique way that Roman Catholic theologians build their castles on foundations of sand, and I have to burst their bubble

First, they create the “straw man” so that it can be properly whacked at

“an ideology that is  given the general name ‘gender theory’, which “denies the difference and reciprocity in nature of a man and a woman and envisages a society without sexual differences, thereby eliminating the anthropological basis of the family. This ideology leads to educational programmes and legislative enactments that promote a personal identity and emotional intimacy radically separated from the  biological difference between male and female. Consequently, human identity becomes the choice of the individual, one which can also change over time” (cited to Francis, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia,19 March 2016, 56)

Then they set up, based on a “Christian view of anthropology” that has no relation whatsoever to the study of humanity as we actually exist in nature, that is grounded in the idea that there are two sexes, and only two sexes.  In their view, everyone must be fitted, arbitrarily or willy-nilly, into one of two boxes – male or female.

But then we see a methodology expressed:

“to listen, to reason and to propose. In fact, listening carefully  to  the  needs  of  the  other combined  with  an  understanding of the true diversity of conditions, can lead to a shared set of rational elements in an argument, and can prepare one for a Christian education rooted in faith that “throws a new light on everything, manifests God’s design for man’s total vocation, and thus directs the mind to solutions which are fully human”

This is followed by a very confused discussion:

The following is an example:

“11. In this cultural context, it is clear that sex and gender are no longer synonyms or interchangeable concepts, since they are used to describe two different  realities.  Sex  is  seen  as  defining  which  of  the  two  biological categories (deriving from the original feminine-masculine dyad) one belonged to. Gender, on the other hand, would be the way in which the differences between the sexes are lived in each culture. The problem here does not lie in the distinction between the two terms, which can be interpreted correctly, but in the separation of sex from gender. This separation is at the root of the distinctions proposed between various “sexual orientations” which are no longer defined by the sexual difference between male and female, and can then assume other forms, determined solely by the individual, who is seen as radically autonomous. Further, the concept of gender is seen as dependent upon the subjective mindset of each person, who can choose a gender not corresponding to his or her biological sex, and therefore with the way others see that person (transgenderism).”

Let’s examine the above and propose something for the Magisterium to consider - the following are my thoughts:

When one differentiates between sex and gender, one is separating things that, together, make up “sex” but which may not be in congruence.  For cissexual/cisgender people, there are no issues of a lack of congruity, so it becomes difficult to understand the distinction as being useful.

However, if we look at the genital tract, the “standard” expectation is that during gestation, an embryo, which as it develops, starts with both a mullerian (female) and wolffian (male) tract development, but which during the course of an ordinary gestation, the fetus develops one, while the other withers. 

On the other hand, the brain develops a physiological sex of its own, at a different time during gestation, and while in the large majority of cases this development is congruent with the development of the wolffian or mullerian tract, that is not always the case.  It is in the physiology of the brain that modern medical science has found differences – for example, in the hypothalamus, the range of neuronal density of the basal stria terminalis for most people who emerge with a wolffian tract is starkly different from the neuronal density of those with a mullerian tract.  But in some people who are what one would call “classic” transgender, brain studies have emerged that show that people who identify as transgender have neuronal densities in this region of the brain that correspond with that expected of persons who would ordinarily have the other genital tract. (See Zhou J.-N, Hofman M.A, Gooren L.J, Swaab D.F (1997) A Sex Difference in the Human Brain and its Relation to Transsexuality. IJT 1,1, http://www.symposion.com/ijt/ijtc0106.htm , reprinted from NATURE, 378: 68-70 (1995)).

There are genetic and other factors that play a part in this – and these factors also play a part in the diversity of gender identities other than the “classic” transgender.

Further complicating things, when it comes to genital tract development itself, there are more genetic, chromosomal, and developmental outcomes other than the classic wolffian or mullerian tracts, and in some cases, someone who would have been genetically expected to develop a wolffian tract, and whose gonads develop as testes, by virtue of a single genetic difference resulting in “complete androgen insensitivity syndrome” develop bodies that are otherwise female in appearance, and their brains also develop along female lines – and this is just one example of an entire host of diverse outcomes in gestational development that result in human beings in actual nature, who are created by the mechanisms of human biology (that one may attribute to God or Evolution, or some other factor based on one’s beliefs), that does not conform to the overly simplistic notions of “nature” as seen through an Aristotelian lens and cisgender-heterosexual blinders, using a simplified concept derived from Genesis 1:27.

Turning to the theology of Genesis 1:27, there are aspects to this found in Jewish scholarship that is absent from the writings of the Church Fathers.

In the Vulgate, we have

et creavit Deus hominem ad imaginem suam ad imaginem Dei creavit illum masculum et feminam creavit eos

The emphasis is that human beings are made in the image and likeness of God.

This is so important that it is repeated twice - we are created “male and female” in this image of God – that is, that each one of us is both “male and female” – it’s clear, at least from what I understand, that it is “male and female” and not “male or female.”  This is a creation that is not something we find in nature, but is more allegorical than not.

Despite the images we see of God portrayed as an elderly gentleman with a long white beard (perhaps the most famous image being the Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican), we actually have a God who is all-male and all-female, as well as being (at least for Trinitarians) a Triune Being, one God in Three Persons: Father, Son and Spirit. (Some scholars posit the idea that it is possible that even more Persons than the official three being supported by the Hebrew term Elohim, and include Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia) and Holy Light (Santa Lucia) as “Persons” – even “female aspects” of God – but these are usually seen as being part of the Holy Spirit, and of course, then one gets close to the Roman idea of a corporate God, a Jupiter Optimus Maximus, into which all the various “gods” of myth, legend, and religion were being seen as aspects or persons.). (I won't even get into the strange notions of the late Cardinal Navarrete as to the purely masculine terminology that the Church insists is necessary to make baptisms valid.)

One resolution of the first Creation story with the second (the “Adam and Eve” story) is that Adam, as originally created in God’s image, was “male and female.” In the second story, this “male and female” Adam was put into a deep sleep while God separated him out into two people, Adam and Eve. The Hebrew story here is surprisingly similar in ideation to a creation story mentioned in Plato’s Symposium, attributed to Aristophanes, which also postulates a sort of combined “male-and-female” being as the initial creation, and posits that they were divided in two, though the Greek version shows a greater allegorical understanding of both the nature of Eros and the idea that there are different sexual orientations. Not only are there “male and female” people being split in Aristophanes’ story, there are “male-and-male” and “female-and-female” people as well. On the splitting, though, each half is busy seeking its other half, whether that other half is same-sex or opposite sex. One might posit that the bible story covers the majority, but doesn’t necessarily cover everyone, if one is meditating on sexual orientation.

But we’re thinking about sex assignment and gender identity, and how most people see gender identity (or more specifically sex identity, as my intention is to refer to the feeling of “rightness” in being a man or a woman – something that is a given for those who are cissexual/cisgender).

In a very interesting article Rabbi Mark Sameth, formerly of Pleasantville, New York, wrote something in 2009 on a surprising disclosure of an aspect of the nature of God found by studying the Tetragrammaton, which dovetails nicely with Gen.1:27 - read YHWH backward and one gets HWHY, which reads (in English) as ''he/she'' - an epithet usually hurled at persons who are visibly different, but who are special to God (Is.56:5).God’s Hidden Name Revealed

By Rabbi Mark Sameth (Reform Judaism Magazine,  Spring 2009)

And this flies in the face of the pat answers proposed by “Christian Anthropology” as the Congregation’s document rattles off at it Paragrah 31.

So, now the Congregation for Catholic Education has an opportunity to read my thoughts and listen carefully, to deconstruct that straw man, to re-evaluate a lot of its fundamentally flawed theological underpinnings, and perhaps to one day come up with something a little bit more rooted in actual nature, and a little less rooted in imaginary straw men and flawed theology.

If we have the example of Galileo to consider as a guide, I suspect we’ll have to wait around 400 years for things to improve.