The guidelines state that a person's biological sex is a gift from God that is "unchangeable" and "inseparable" from a person's gender. The four-page document summarizes a selected range of church teachings that deal with questions of personhood, biological sex and gender. The guidelines, Listecki wrote in his email, apply to all church employees, personnel, volunteers, contracted vendors "and those entrusted to the care of the Church."Įxplaining his reasoning for the guidelines, Listecki wrote that every time and age is presented with particular challenges and opportunities, and that the current period poses "the need and gift of sharing fundamental tenets of a basic Christian anthropology, one that understands each man and woman as made in the image and likeness of God, imbued with dignity, and gifted as male and female." The Milwaukee Archdiocese did not respond to request from NCR for comment about the policy. Javier Bustos, an archdiocesan vicar general and healthcare and bioethics delegate, and other members had backgrounds in theology, education and psychiatry, according to the email. They were compiled at Archbishop Jerome Listecki's request by an ad hoc committee of the archdiocesan healthcare and bioethics committee, according to an email Listecki wrote to priests announcing the new policies. The guidelines from the Milwaukee Archdiocese, titled " Catechesis and Policy on Questions Concerning Gender Theory," were issued Jan. "And I think now that that's sort of boiling over into a Catholic discussion."
The lives of transgender people "have become a lightning rod for people to declare certain ideological allegiances," said Craig Ford, a theology professor who studies sex and gender at St. "That we are not listening to the LGBTQ population once again, and the stories and the experiences of the LGBTQ community." Bernadette Catholic Parish, told NCR about the new policy. "My initial reaction was one of fear," Fr. While their supporters say the policies are necessary guardrails, others have labeled them anti-transgender, "callous" and likely to push more people out of the church. The Milwaukee rules are the latest in a stream of such regulations issued in the past two years by nearly a dozen dioceses across the United States. The policy also bars use of preferred pronouns, a now fairly common practice in which people identify in advance how they wish to be addressed by others. In addition, the archdiocese's new rules stipulate that a person's biological sex dictate which dress codes they follow, that medications like "puberty blockers" be barred on church property, and that transgender people and their families be directed to ministers and counselors who can provide support "in accord with the directives and teachings of the Church." The Archdiocese of Milwaukee has issued a sweeping new policy aimed at persons who do not identify with their biological sex, stipulating that parishes, schools and other Catholic organizations across Wisconsin's largest city must require people to use bathrooms associated with their birth gender.