U.S. Catholic: Gender diversity has always been part of the church
By Emma Cieslik
This past April, the Pew Research Center shared that 54 percent of U.S. Catholics believe the church should recognize the marriages of gay and lesbian couples. The data affirmed that 2024 was ripe for LGBTQ+ inclusion in the Catholic Church, but the timing—the report released just one week after the Vatican’s Dignitas Infinita document denouncing gender-affirming health care, “gender theory,” and any identity challenged strict male/female binary, showcased how the church’s confusing and often contradictory guidance forebodes a gender reckoning.
The church’s gender foundations are cracking—its scaffolding of doctrinal semantics and conflicting guidance from Pope Francis and the Vatican buckling under pressure for LGBTQ+ inclusion, women’s ordination, and abortion rights. At its core is church leadership’s fear of “ideological colonization,” or the spread of western gender values to a traditional church. But if the church pushes for modernization, a progressive view of gender must be part of it. …
…The same Pew study shared that 64 percent of U.S. Catholics believe the church should allow women to become priests, mirroring the growth of the Roman Catholic Womanpriests Movement in the last three decades. While women’s ordination was discussed at the Synod on Synodiality that concluded this past October, the closing report reinforced that women’s ordination should be limited to permanent deacons or “new ministries” that have yet to be defined. The Women’s Ordination Conference responded that a responsive church which “fails to be transformed by the fundamental exclusion of women and LGBTQ+ people fails to model the gospel itself.”