What The Catholic Church Says About Gender Identity

The Church recognizes that every human person is created in the image and likeness of God, male or female (Gen. 1:26-27). The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that our bodies, souls, and identities as male and female are all integral to who we are as human persons. (#362-369).

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Therefore, the Catechism continues, “Each of them, man and woman, should acknowledge and accept his sexual identity.” (#2393)

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Therefore gender transition surgeries are also condemned. As the Catechism states...

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“Directly intended amputations, mutilations, and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law.”

(Catechism of the Catholic Church #2297) 

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In fact, in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church the Church states, “It is obligatory that positive law be conformed to the natural law, according to which sexual identity is indispensable, because it is the objective condition for forming a couple in marriage.” (#224)

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That’s why, on July 21, 2014, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Committees responded to President Obama’s executive order to prohibit federal government contractors from what the Administration deems “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” discrimination and to forbid “gender identity” discrimination in the employment of federal employees.

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In the letter, the bishop-Chairmen wrote, “[The executive order] lends the economic power of the federal government to a deeply flawed understanding of human sexuality, to which faithful Catholics and many other people of faith will not assent…” (Our emphasis added.)

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Likewise, several Popes have spoken consistently about the need to reaffirm there are only two, indispensable, God-given genders… especially Pope Francis. Keep scrolling to read more or click the Candidate below to see where they stand on the issue of gender identity.

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Kamala Harris on Gender >

Donald Trump on Gender >

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Pope Francis On Gender Ideology

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In his address to the Bishops of Puerto Rico (June 8, 2015), Pope Francis said, “The complementarity of man and woman, the pinnacle of divine creation, is being questioned by the so-called gender ideology, in the name of a more free and just society. The differences between man and woman are not for opposition or subordination, but for communion and generation, always in the ‘image and likeness’ of God.”

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The following year, Pope Francis wrote in Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia (March 19, 2016), “Let us not fall into the sin of trying to replace the Creator. We are creatures, and not omnipotent. Creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift. At the same time, we are called to protect.” (#56)

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Later in that same document, Pope Francis wrote, “the young need to be helped to accept their own body as it was created, for thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation… “ (#285)

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In his address to the Polish Bishops during the Apostolic Journey to Poland (July 27, 2016), Pope Francis said, “In Europe, America, Latin America, Africa, and in some countries of Asia, there are genuine forms of ideological colonization taking place. And one of these - I will call it clearly by its name – is [the ideology of] ‘gender’. Today children – children! – are taught in school that everyone can choose his or her sex. Why are they teaching this? Because the books are provided by the persons and institutions that give you money. These forms of ideological colonization are also supported by influential countries. And this is terrible!

“In a conversation with Pope Benedict, who is in good health and very perceptive, he said to me: ‘Holiness, this is the age of sin against God the Creator’. He is very perceptive. God created man and woman; God created the world in a certain way… and we are doing the exact opposite. God gave us things in a ‘raw’ state, so that we could shape a culture; and then with this culture, we are shaping things that bring us back to the ‘raw’ state! Pope Benedict’s observation should make us think. ‘This is the age of sin against God the Creator’. That will help us.”

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In his address to Priests, Religious, Seminarians and Pastoral Workers during the Apostolic Journey to Georgia and Azerbaijan (October 1, 2016), Pope Francis said,  “You, Irina, mentioned a great enemy to marriage today: the theory of gender. Today there is a world war to destroy marriage. Today there are ideological colonizations which destroy, not with weapons, but with ideas. Therefore, there is a need to defend ourselves from ideological colonizations.”

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Pope Benedict XVI On Gender Ideology

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In an address to the Roman Curia given at Christmas 2012, less than two months before he stepped down, Pope Benedict XVI said, “the very notion of being – of what being human really means – is being called into question…These words lay the foundation for what is put forward today under the term “gender” as a new philosophy of sexuality. According to this philosophy, sex is no longer a given element of nature, that man has to accept and personally make sense of: it is a social role that we choose for ourselves, while in the past it was chosen for us by society. The profound falsehood of this theory and of the anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious…The words of the creation account: “male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27) no longer apply. No, what applies now is this: it was not God who created them male and female – hitherto society did this, now we decide for ourselves.”

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Addressing the Pontifical council on January 19, 2013, Pope Benedict XVI said, “The Church reaffirms her great ‘yes’ to the dignity and beauty of marriage as an expression of the faithful and generous bond between man and woman, and her no to ‘gender’ philosophies, because the reciprocity between male and female is an expression of the beauty of nature willed by the Creator.”

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Addressing the German Bundestag on September 22, 2011, Pope Benedict said, “…There is also an ecology of man. Man too has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will. Man is not merely self-creating freedom. Man does not create himself. He is intellect and will, but he is also nature, and his will is rightly ordered if he respects his nature, listens to it and accepts himself for who he is, as one who did not create himself. In this way, and in no other, is true human freedom fulfilled.”

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Pope St. John Paul II On Gender Ideology

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In his Theology of the Body, Saint John Paul II taught over and over that we must understand our bodies as gifts meant to be given to another—specifically as a man or a woman—either in marriage, celibacy, or in committed friendships. God created us male and female because our sex is relational to another or, as St. John Paul II put it, spousal. The late Holy Father’s Theology of the Body is massive and cannot be covered entirely here as it comprises 129 Wednesday Audience Addresses that he gave from 1979 to 1984. However, it is highly recommended for additional information.

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In his general Wednesday audience address on November 14, 1979 St. Pope John Paul II said, “In the first chapter, the narrative of the creation of man affirms directly, right from the beginning, that man was created in the image of God as male and female… Right from the beginning, the theology of the body is bound up with the creation of man in the image of God. It becomes, in a way, also the theology of sex, or rather the theology of masculinity and femininity, which has its starting point here in Genesis.” 

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Gender, therefore, cannot be fluid or ever-changing as that theory denies God’s sovereign plan for humanity seen from the beginning in Scripture.

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