Posted on 04/03/2025 10:35:44 AM PDT by ebb tide
In a striking departure from established Church teaching, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández has signaled that sex “change” surgeries may be morally acceptable under certain conditions.
Cardinal Fernández, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) offered this perspective in a conference he delivered via video to a Theological congress organized by the Catholic University of Cologne (Germany) in mid January. But then in March, the Cardinal posted the conference as an official “clarification” of Dignitas infinita, the Church’s 2024 declaration on human dignity.
While Dignitas infinita firmly rejected gender ideology and condemned sex “change” procedures as incompatible with human dignity, Cardinal Fernández’s “clarification” — posted in the dicastery’s official website exclusively in German and Italian — introduces a reinterpretation that departs from the document’s original moral clarity.
Dignitas infinita states, “[A]ny sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.”
Rather than reiterate the document’s opposition to the legitimacy of gender mutilation surgery outright, the Prefect suggested that its morality depends on the severity of a person’s suffering.
“When the document uses the expression ‘as a rule,’ it does not exclude the possibility that there are cases outside the norm,” Cardinal Fernández said. He referenced cases of “severe dysphoria” which might lead a person toward suicide.
In those instances, he suggested, medical interventions that would otherwise be morally impermissible might need to be “assessed with great care.”
“We don’t want to be cruel and say that we don’t understand the conditioning of people and the deep suffering that exists in some cases of ‘dysphoria,’ which manifests itself even in childhood,” he said.
This marks a noteworthy departure from the original Church stance. Dignitas infinita acknowledges only a narrow set of exceptions for surgery — specifically when correcting anatomical anomalies to align with genetic sex.
In contrast, Cardinal Fernández has now suggested that procedures intended to “change” one’s biological sex could be considered morally acceptable if motivated by “severe dysphoria” or suicidal ideation.
The DDF has not provided a framework for when gender dysphoria can be considered “severe.” In a highly critical analysis of Cardinal Fernandez’s “clarification,” Italian moral theologian Tommaso Scandroglio wrote in a March 27 Daily Compass article that “for the Prefect, the ‘change’ of sex is morally acceptable when the dysphoria is severe.”
“But surgical interventions that contradict the genetic sex are intrinsically evil acts and remain so regardless of the conditions that motivate them,” Scandroglio wrote. “This is why Cardinal Fernández has accepted the principle of ‘yes to sex reassignment.’ Once the principle has been accepted, logical consistency will take us from borderline cases to common cases, from the exceptional to the normal.”
Ping
So God does make crap? Maybe he’s ok with aborting handicapped children then?
Jerk. Pissing off God.
Millstone around his neck for eternity, helping NO ONE.
It seems to me that maybe the “crap” is what this guy is full of.
Agree 100%
The devil does not even bother disguising himself as an angel of light anymore.
“...the Prefect suggested that its morality depends on the severity of a person’s suffering.”
So is this true for committing suicide? What about euthanasia? Could this not apply to abortion? Certainly some homicides are a result of a person suffering. Green light those too?
It would be a more honest reflection of his position.
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.—Romans 12:2
Many years ago, just before all the sex abuse scandal broke in the news, I was praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament about normal stuff. My kids, my friends, etc. Out of nowhere the following words formed in my mind, as if put there by another being: “No matter WHAT happens, hold on to what you KNOW to be true.” I had no idea why. My faith was not being challenged at that time. Things were going fairly well, as the world judges them. But the admonition stuck with me. Within 3 months the proverbial crap hit the fan. Six men I thought I knew well, all apparently good Catholic men, had dramatically sinful parts of their lives made public. All unrelated to each other.
My faith was challenged, because I had put it more in men than in God. But I learned my lesson. I am no longer rattled by these kinds of things. As distressing as I find them, they do not rattle my faith. I know what is true, and that the Truth will always win in the end. I work to spread the Truth where I can, but I do not lose faith when a seed I’ve sown fails to sprout in the time I had hoped. I know that some of them will sprout later, some will sprout now, and some will never sprout. God has it under control, as He always did with unfaithful Israel. I’m not dismissive of what is going on. I am just at peace about it knowing that as long as I hold on to what I know to be true and do my part to spread the Kingdom of God, that is all that’s being asked of me, and that in the end, God will be gloriously victorious. And that is my motivation to continue the fight.
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