The instruction comes in a new document about Catholic schools from the Vatican Congregation for Catholic Education.

"The Identity of the Catholic School for a Culture of Dialogue" focuses on the schools' obligations to students and the wider community.

Catholic schools are obliged to protect and promote the Catholic identity. They are also expected to reach out to a broader community of students and teachers. This requires a commitment to dialogue, the document says.

Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi, the prefect for the Congregation for Catholic Education, says the congregation was asked to write the document.

He says the request followed conflicts and appeals resulting from different interpretations of the traditional concept of Catholic identity by educational institutions.

Many of these concerned rapid social change including globalisation and growing interreligious and intercultural dialogue.

The document offers an in-depth, up-to-date reflection and guidelines on the value of the Catholic identity of educational institutions in the Church, Versaldi says. It provides criteria responding to today's challenges in continuity with the criteria that always apply.

Recruitment and school culture

Job applicants must be informed of the school's Catholic identity, its implications and their responsibility to promote that identity.

Schools should "formulate clear criteria for discernment" when considering candidates for positions in Catholic schools.

Schools are responsible for recruits who don't comply with its Catholic and church community requirements.

"A narrow Catholic school model" is not acceptable - it conflicts with the model of a ‘church which goes forth' in dialogue with everyone.

Everyone involved in conflicts over "disciplinary and/or doctrinal" matters must be told how "these situations can bring discredit to the Catholic institution and scandal in the community."

Catholic identity and mission

Catholic education is an essential part of the church's identity and mission. It is not strictly catechetical. Nor is it a "mere philanthropic work aimed at responding to a social need."

Catholic schools are open. They do not limit enrolment or employment to Catholics alone. Part of their mission is to promote "the complete perfection of the human person, the good of earthly society and the building of a world that is more human." (Second Vatican Council.)

To be open, Catholic schools must "practise the ‘grammar of dialogue". This is a profound way of relating to others. "Dialogue combines attention to one's own identity with the understanding of others and respect for diversity."

Everyone — administrators, teachers, parents and students — has "the obligation to recognise, respect and bear witness to the Catholic identity of the school," the Vatican's new Catholic schools' document says.

This identity should be clearly stated in each school's mission statement and presented to prospective employees and parents of prospective students.

"In the formation of the younger generation, teachers must be outstanding in correct doctrine and integrity of life," it says.

The entire school community is responsible for the school's Catholic identity. It cannot be "attributed only to certain spheres or to certain persons" like liturgical, spiritual or social occasions, or the school chaplain, religion teachers or principal.

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The teacher's husband then lost his teaching job at another school when it followed the archdiocese's directive. He is currently suing the archdiocese.

The standoff between the Jesuit school and the archdiocese hit the news-stands in June.

It was then that Archbishop Charles Thompson said the school, Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory, "can no longer use the name Catholic and will no longer be identified or recognized as a Catholic institution.

"Whether they teach religion or not, all ministers in their professional and private lives must convey and be supportive of Catholic Church teaching.

"The Archdiocese of Indianapolis recognizes all teachers, guidance counselors and administrators as ministers," Thompson said.

However, the Vatican's intervention means the school has won a reprieve from the archbishop's ruling while it appeals its status as a Catholic school.

"We have just learned that the Congregation for Catholic Education has decided to suspend the archbishop's decree on an interim basis, pending its final resolution of our appeal," the school president, Father Bill Verbryke, wrote in a letter posted to the school's website.

"The archbishop very kindly informed me that, as a result of this temporary suspension of his decree, Brebeuf is free to resume our normal sacramental celebrations of the Eucharist.

"Most happily, this means that we will be able to celebrate the Mass for the Feast Day of St. Jean de Brebeuf on Oct. 24."

The archdiocese says the temporary suspension is common practice and does not affect the outcome of the appeal.

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She later described feeling like she was in "doctrinal limbo" because there is no universal teaching on gender from the church.

"I'm hurt by the Catholic Church every single day," she said. "They want me and they don't want me."

On June 10, the Vatican released a document that seems to seek to clarify the ambivalence Fay and other transgender Catholics have described.

It is the most comprehensive document on gender identity the Vatican has ever released.

Called "Male and Female He Created Them: Towards a Path of Dialogue on the Questions of Gender Theory in Education," the document aims to address what it calls "educational crisis" surrounding sexuality and gender.

But its conclusion has not been received favorably by trans Catholics; it says that Catholic schools must help teach young people that gender is fixed at birth.

According to the Congregation for Catholic Education, the Vatican office that released the document, "gender theory" has misled people to think that gender is different from biological sex.

"Oscillation between male and female becomes, at the end of the day, only a ‘provocative' display against so-called ‘traditional frameworks', and one which, in fact, ignores the suffering of those who have to live situations of sexual indeterminacy," the authors write.

The announcement comes at a time when trans people's rights are under threat on a national level.

Last month the Trump administration announced a proposal to roll back protections for discrimination against trans people by healthcare providers.

Transgender people make up only 0.6 percent of the US population, and they are about 8 times as likely to report attempting suicide than the rest of the population.

This rate rises even higher depending on the type of discrimination they are subject to, says a 2014 study by the Williams Institute.

It is not clear why the Congregation for Catholic Education has decided to weigh in on gender identity now.

The past few years have seen a rapid increase in conversations about LGBTQ Catholics within the church — the Vatican used the acronym LGBT for the first time in June of last year, in a document written for a meeting of bishops in Rome. In a final version of the document, the acronym was removed.

In the United States, attitudes of Catholics have been shifting.

Sixty-eight percent of Catholics in the United States say they feel more supportive toward transgender rights than they did five years ago, compared to 62 percent of the general population, according to a survey conducted this year by Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI).

In 2017, Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest, wrote "Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBTQ Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity," a book that affirmed LGBTQ Catholics and received praise from several bishops as well as members of the LGBTQ community for advancing the conversation on this topic.

The new document talks about gender and transgender people in a less polemical way than the church has done previously. (Pope Francis, for example, has in the past compared arguments for transgender rights to those for nuclear weapons.)

It dedicates a section to "Listening" and "Points of Agreement" that concedes that "unjust discrimination" has been "a sad fact of history" and has taken place within the church.

But it also reiterates views that the pope and the US bishops has expressed which characterize transgender people as "choosing" their gender on gender, which themselves have been called transphobic and discriminatory by some trans Catholics.

So what does this mean for transgender Catholics? Here, five trans Catholics respond. Continue reading

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The Holy See's Congregation for Catholic Education says the document is intended to help guide Catholic contributions to the ongoing debate about human sexuality and to address the challenges that emerge from gender ideology.

Catholic schools must help parents teach young people that biological sex and gender are naturally fixed at birth and part of God's plan for creation, the Congregation says.

However the document, published during LGBT Pride Month, was immediately denounced by LGBT Catholics as contributing to bigotry and violence against gay and transgender people.

Gay advocacy group New Ways Ministry says the document, which rejects the idea that people can choose or change their genders and insists on the sexual "complementarity" of men and women to make babies, would further confuse individuals questioning their gender identity or sexual orientation and at risk of self-harm.

The Congregation rejects this idea, saying the Catholic Church and those proposing a looser definition of gender can find common ground.

It says common ground can be found in "a laudable desire to combat all expressions of unjust discrimination," in educating children to respect all people "in their peculiarity and difference," in respecting the "equal dignity of men and women" and in promoting respect for "the values of femininity."

While agreeing it's important to be very careful to respect and provide care for persons who "live situations of sexual indeterminacy," the document also points out that those who teach in the name of the Catholic Church must help young people understand that being created male and masculine or female and feminine is part of God's plan for them.

Those who see gender as a personal choice or discovery unconnected to biological sex are, in fact, promoting a vision of the human person that is "opposed to faith and right reason," the document says.

Not so, says Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest who wrote "Building a Bridge" - a book about improving Catholic Church outreach to the LGBT community.

"The real-life experiences of LGBT people seem entirely absent from this document."

"We should welcome the Congregation's call to dialogue and listening on gender, and I hope that conversation will now begin," he says.

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Pope Francis has amended canon law so marriage annulment cases are handled more quickly, more pastorally and with less expense.

Catholic universities should therefore strengthen their canon law programmes, the Congregation says.

At the same time, bishops should send more of their priests "and, if possible, laypeople" to Catholic universities to earn canon law degrees.

The new rules, which go into effect in the 2019-2020 academic year, require all students in what is known as the "first cycle" of studies for church licenses in theology to take at least three semesters of canon law courses.

These courses include "at least one devoted exclusively to church law regarding marriage and the process of recognising the nullity of a marriage."

The instruction also strongly encourages schools and faculties of canon law to offer courses designed for bishops, who have greater responsibility in determining the nullity of a marriage under the rules introduced by Pope Francis in 2015.

Canon law faculties are also being encouraged to offer training to parish priests and staff who work with families so they can provide basic information when they're approached about annulments.

Archbishop Angelo Vincenzo Zani, secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education, says the Church as a community needs its legal framework, but it cannot be "just any law, but a law that responds as a service for the good of the church".

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