Gender-affirming surgery threatens ‘unique dignity’ of a person

The Vatican has issued a strong warning against “gender theory” and said that any gender-affirming surgery risks threatening “the unique dignity” of a person, in a new document signed off and approved by Pope Francis.

Titled “Dignitas Inifinita” (Infinite Dignity) the declaration focuses on what it describes as a range of threats to human dignity, including poverty, the death penalty, war, assisted dying, abortion, sexual abuse and the abuse of women.

 

The text, published by the Vatican doctrine office on Monday, states that attempts to obscure “the sexual difference between man and woman” should be rejected.

“It follows that any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception,” it adds.

 

On abortion, it strongly reiterates what the pontiff has said in the past, that the “defence of unborn life is closely linked to the defence of each and every other human right.”

Pope Francis has spoken out strongly against gender ideology in the past, describing it as “ugly” for erasing what he says are distinctions between men and women.

 Francis in this new document describes gender theory as a form of “ideological colonisation” that “intends to deny the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings: sexual difference” which it says is “the most beautiful and most powerful of them.”

Gender-affirming surgery, it adds, is to be avoided because “the body serves as the living context in which the interiority of the soul unfolds and manifests itself” but the document says medical intervention is permitted for those with “genital abnormalities.”

 

The latest Vatican document identifies various “violations” of human dignity, including in the digital world. It also cites the death penalty, which Francis has repeatedly condemned, and which it says “violates the inalienable dignity of every person.”

The document also addresses surrogacy, which it says “violates” both the dignity of the child and the woman, who “becomes a mere means subservient to the arbitrary gain or desire of others.” Pope Francis has recently called for the practice of surrogacy to be banned.

 

On assisted dying, the document reiterated the church’s opposition to euthanasia. “

 

There is a widespread notion that euthanasia or assisted suicide is somehow consistent with respect for the dignity of the human person,” the document states. “However… it must be strongly reiterated that suffering does not cause the sick to lose their dignity, which is intrinsically and inalienably their own.”