A Catholic case for choosing your own pronouns

Monday, April 24th, 2023

In recent months, a number of Catholic bishops in the US have spoken out against transgender and non-binary people’s decision to alter their pronouns, names and bodies.

Some have even insisted that Catholic schools must continue to use the birth pronoun and names of transgender and non-binary students in their schools, despite the pain that non-binary and transgender people have expressed over this practice.

The arguments of these bishops and others have been built on Catholic moral teachings and interpretations of Scripture.

And as I’ve read their statements, I’ve wondered whether there’s another theological case that can be made in favour of the decision by transgender and non-binary people to alter their pronouns and names.

So I reached out to three theologians:

the moral ethicist James Keenan, S.J., at Boston College;
Gina Hens-Piazza, Ph.D., a Scripture scholar at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, Calif.; and
Annie Selak, Ph.D., an ecclesiologist at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

In each case, I asked them whether they thought a Catholic theological case could be made for the acceptance of a person’s stated pronouns and name from the standpoint of their own discipline.

Here’s what they had to say.

Moral Requirement of Accepting Agency

“I don’t understand the problem,” Fr. Keenan tells me as we begin our conversation. “People may think I’m naïve, but it just strikes me that I don’t call somebody a name that they don’t want to be called.”

I note the argument made by some that what is at issue is the truth of who those individuals are.

“It’s their truth, though,” Keenan responds.

“That’s what we’re talking about: their truth. How does a bishop have more capability of grasping other people’s truth than they themselves do? There’s something deeply disturbing about claiming you understand a person’s truth better than they do.”

I wonder what Keenan makes of the decision by some bishops to frame transgender persons’ desires as indicative of a mental health crisis rather than a legitimate desire.

“These bishops, are they physicians?” Keenan asks.

“If you take away a person’s way of declaring their self-understanding, where is there room for any dialogue?

You’ve said, ‘I’m not going to talk to you on your terms.’ Who does that?

I don’t think they do that even in mental health places.”

In terms of Catholic ethics, Keenan looks to foundational concepts.

“Catholic moral principles need to begin with a sense of respecting the dignity of a human person,” he explains.

“In the horizon of meeting one another,” Keenan explains, “we have to allocate the agent their experiential self-understanding as privileged.”

There can be no getting to the truth, he argues, “if you’re not going to attend to agency.”

He notes that this is demonstrated in Scripture as well. How does God enter into a relationship with Israel through Moses?

By introducing himself.

“The beginning of all discussion is getting the name right.”

There’s another moral principle at work for Keenan, a virtue he’s alluded to already: humility.

“To say you know better than they know themselves, it strikes me as almost a divine perspective. How could you have such a transcendental viewpoint?”

Keenan compares this way of proceeding with that of his doctoral director Joseph Fuchs, SJ, who served on the Pontifical Commission on Birth Control first established by Pope John XXIII in 1963.

Prior to his appointment, Keenan explains, “Fuchs always thought that he knew what the moral law was.”

But listening to married people talk about their experiences revealed the deficits in his own analysis.

It did so to such a profound degree, in fact, that Fuchs “revised his entire moral theology,” says Keenan. Fuchs decided, “The question of competency for a moral judgment rests with those who are closest to the experience.” Continue reading for Gina Hens-Piazza, Ph.D., and Annie Selak, Ph.D., perspectives