The Vatican Office has laid down the official line for Roman Catholic educational institutions released a 30-page document yesterday, titled “Male and Female he created them,” which rejected the idea that people can change their gender.
The document said that the notion of gender being determined by personal feelings rather than biology was an attempt to “annihilate nature.”
The document was issued by the Congregation for Catholic Education, which oversees Catholic education policy, as a guide for Catholic schools on how to approach answering questions from pupils about gender identity.
The document called gender fluidity a “confused concept of freedom” and “momentary desires” that characterize post-modern culture and rejected terms like “intersex” and “transgender.”
The document is the first time the Vatican has attempted to put the position in an official text.
The document called for families, schools and society to come together and offer a “positive and prudent sexual education” in Catholic schools so children learn the “full original truth of masculinity and femininity.”
“Efforts to go beyond the constitutive male-female sexual difference, such as the ideas of ‘intersex’ or ‘transgender,’ lead to a masculinity or femininity that is ambiguous,” the document stated.
