No place for refuge

I was raised a devout Catholic. My childhood and young adulthood were firmly rooted in church activities and religious milestones: communions, confirmations, baptisms, wakes and funerals. Then, the Catholic church refused to marry my now-husband and I.

We had gotten engaged and wanted to have our wedding over a holiday weekend, so our families - all of whom lived out of state- could join us and not have to miss work or their kids miss school. 

Our desired date fell nine days short of the required 6 month "pre-Cana" waiting period. We said we would do anything required by the church, including driving 90 minutes each way to another parish to complete our pre-Cana sessions. The church would not bend.

Unless I was pregnant, of course. Then they'd marry us on any open date we chose.

 I refused to lie about being pregnant to have a Catholic wedding. And I refused to get married without our families present.

So we got married in a Lutheran church, and that ended my active relationship with the Catholic faith. Over the ensuing twenty-five years, I've continued to intermittently pray at home.

That is, up until the last few years. 

My desperation and need for guidance, comfort, and solace over our trans-identified daughter spurred me to begin praying more. I bought the Hallow app and have been doing novenas for her. I walked the Camino de Santiago in Spain and, clutching my grandmother's rosary, prayed to Mary at every Catholic church I walked by for twenty-one straight days, begging for only one thing: that she could accept herself exactly as God made her and turn away from the evil forces that prey upon her and tell her that there is something wrong with her body.

So I was perplexed to read an article that the Vatican has made a new statement that under certain circumstances, transgender people can be baptized and serve as godparents - while still banning same-sex marriages and same-sex sexual activity.

The National Catholic Register put out a piece that tried to explain what those circumstances might be. According to this,  “pastoral prudence demands that it not be permitted if there is a risk of scandal, undue legitimation or disorientation in the educational sphere of the ecclesial community. As with the baptism itself, avoiding a risk of scandal or disorientation requires three conditions. The individual seeking to serve as a godparent must have (1) acknowledged making a mistake, (2) started again identifying with their sex, and (3) taken steps to undo any surgery, to the extent possible. That is the natural reading of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s conditions."

My reading of this says the person would have to no longer identify as trans which would make them....not transgender, but a detransitioner. So why would the church even need this guidance in the first place? They wouldn't actually be baptizing a transgender person, or allowing them to serve as godparents.

What is the end game here?

Is this the Catholic Church's first step toward accepting trans ideology?

We've all seen other institutions get ideologically captured, and it doesn't happen overnight. It happens slowly. Tiny changes happen in the name of "being kind,"  -  until men are playing on women's sports teams and housed in female prisons. And kids are being medicalized.

The church wouldn't marry my husband and I due to an arbitrary rule around waiting periods, but might they someday baptize people who deny their biological sex?

I refused to lie and say I was pregnant in order to get the wedding I wanted, but might they someday allow a man to stand before God, lie about his sex, and act as a godmother?  

Is it possible it would someday endorse biological men becoming nuns and living in convents? And how will they reconcile this with how the church treats homosexuals?

It would be hard for me to recite Catholic prayers in the hopes my daughter will accept herself as God made her if the church could one day say it's fine that she thinks her body is "wrong." Not only might they accept it, they might honor, celebrate, and bless it, as so many other churches are now doing.

I've already been betrayed by the Democratic party, the companies I've worked for, the medical community, and the schools my kids attended. They all fell under the sway of trans ideology. I never expected religion to fall so hard, so fast. The Catholic church has been one of the last strongholds.

Maybe I'm overreacting over nothing, but this is a red flag that doesn't sit well with me.

I hope I don't lose my last place of refuge.