Welcome to Giving Tuesday. Two Catholic ethicists argue that the church should respect the dignity, integrity and agency of transgender and intersex persons. A bishop's warnings about a coronavirus vaccine has an NCR commentary writer mad about single-issue tunnel vision.
The biological reality of intersex people can give insight into the complex reality of transgender people and provide direction for the church's moral response to both groups, argue Catholic ethicists Michael G. Lawler and Todd A. Salzman in an essay in NCR.
A quick scan of medical literature reveals that about two in every 1,000 live human births (0.2%) is a child who is intersex—a small number, but almost double the frequency of the birth of Down syndrome children, who deservedly get attention and respect in our society. Surely intersex children, lost and crying out in the social and Catholic wilderness, deserve the same attention and respect as human beings created by and in the mysterious image of the mysterious God, Lawler and Salzman say.
Their intersex bodies are troubling to their parents, their society and their church for only one reason: They are judged to be biologically sexually ambiguous when compared to the dominant female-male binary. They would not be ambiguous and troubling, the authors suggest, if society and church were to listen to their claim that they constitute a minority third sex.
Read the entire essay here.
More background:
Commentary writer Valerie Schultz was not surprised by the tone of a video statement from Fresno, California, Bishop Joseph Brennan, who warned that the COVID-19 vaccine must prove to be "ethical and morally acceptable" before any sheep in his flock can get it. The problem: He singles out the Pfizer vaccine as relying on "stem-cell lines derived from, well, babies who've been aborted."
"Oh, Lordy," writes Schultz. "For some Catholic leaders, everything comes down to abortion, even the ones that happened in the 1960s and provided stem cells that have been used in medical research ever since."
She asks: Where are the videos about the need to protest the ongoing vigorous schedule of federal executions? Where are the videos about the morally unacceptable situations of, say, homeless people living in our streets or brutally separated families wailing at our borders or people of losing their lives because of their color or desperate women seeing no alternative to abortion? Where are the videos promoting living wages and safe workplaces, especially for the many farmworkers in the Diocese of Fresno?
You can read the essay here.
More background:
- The chairmen of the U.S. bishops' doctrine and pro-life committees said that the use of Pfizer, Moderna COVID-19 vaccines is morally acceptable, according to an internal memo.
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Final thoughts
Today is Giving Tuesday, an annual day of giving across the world. Please consider supporting the independent Catholic journalism you rely on and trust with a gift to NCR.
Until Wednesday,
Heidi Schlumpf
NCR Executive Editor (filling in for Stephanie Yeagle)
[email protected]
Twitter: @HeidiSchlumpf
