The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Doctrine Committee’s recent statement “The Moral Limits to Technological Manipulation of the Human Body” has elicited some predictable wailing and gnashing of teeth among self-identified progressive Catholics. These critics complain that the document fails to take science seriously and overlooks the voices and experiences of transgender persons. In case we didn’t get that last point, Father James Martin, best known for his vociferous defense of half of the Church’s teaching on same-sex attraction (i.e., that such persons should be treated with “respect, compassion, and sensitivity”), tweeted out the story of a father of two, married for 29 years, who now identifies as a “transgender Catholic woman.”
What exactly did the bishops say or fail to say that has provoked such dismay?
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