Logan Popp, a trans man, said he was speaking out to warn others in the rainbow community about the staff member's words - which he said "could be a matter of life and death".

Popp said he was a regular at Unichem Torbay, where he had always been welcomed and treated with respect before an incident on Friday left him feeling uncomfortable to return. Read more

For decades the Catholic right referred to the positions of Popes St John Paul II and Benedict XVI; now the Catholic left points to Pope Francis' pronouncements on everything from climate change to LGBTQ inclusion.

The strategy has been ramping up of late as October's Synod on Synodality, a meeting of the world's bishops on the church's future, approaches.

Critiques about how the synod is being used to push radical change in developed nations are rebuffed as dissent over the Holy Father's synodal process, with virtually no attention paid to how such changes would affect marginalised Catholic communities in the Global South.

But the jockeying ahead of the synod is only part of a broader claim by the left, long accused of picking and choosing among church teachings according to their taste, that the Catholic right are the real cafeteria Catholics.

Call out one of the left's favourite cardinals for his public statements on LGBTQ issues?

You're implicitly defying Francis, who appointed the prelate, and the pope's social justice agenda! Defend the church's ban on contraception by pointing out its harmful health effects on women?

Ugh, can't you see Francis wants to end the church's obsession with pelvic issues?

Most egregiously, these folks tend to invoke Francis when it is convenient and ignore him even when he has strongly and clearly laid out his views contradicting their agenda.

We've seen this political and theological whiplash time and again with Francis' views on abortion, which he calls akin to a white glove Nazi crime or hiring a hitman.

Some on the left genuinely wrestle with the fullness of what the Holy Father is teaching, but the majority refuse to subject themselves to his authority on this issue.

The same is true of the Holy Father's views on gender.

Francis has characteristically made pastoral care of people with gender dysphoria a priority, and he is rightly concerned about their health and well-being.

He has not sacrificed the truth in doing so.

He has called gender ideology "evil" and a contemporary example of colonization.

In his apostolic exhortations Laudato Si' and Amoris Laetitia, he compares it to the error of imagining ourselves as masters of the divinely created and ordered ecological world.

But is anyone taking Pope Francis' teaching on these matters seriously?

Many of those on the Catholic right, who are basically waiting for this papacy to be over, take little he says to heart.

And despite their insistence that their political opponents be bound by his teaching, those on the Catholic left are themselves likely taking a pass on this particular line of thought.

This hasn't stopped a wide range of ideologically diverse bishops from accepting it.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York and Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago — not exactly two peas in a pod — wrote a joint essay in America magazine insisting that Catholic hospitals must be permitted to affirm Francis' views when it comes to caring for persons with gender dysphoria.

"Does objecting to performing gender transition procedures — but welcoming patients who identify as transgender — constitute discrimination?"

The two cardinals spoke with one voice: "Of course not."

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Doctrine, led by Bishop Daniel Flores, pastor of the border city of Brownsville, Texas, recently issued a doctrinal note on "The Moral Limits of Technological Manipulation of the Human Body," in which he defended the fixed male-female binary of the human body.

This relatively brief document invokes Francis' teaching throughout and cites him six times.

Flores is an outspoken advocate of the church's teaching on immigration and is respected across the ideological spectrum.

His doctrinal note would almost certainly not have been published if it didn't have the approval of Rome.

It's difficult to dismiss it as a mere product of a right-wing US bishop — any more than a similar document issued by the Nordic bishops days later.

In it they "declare dissent" from an ideological movement that "puts forward a view of human nature that abstracts from the embodied integrity of personhood, as if physical gender were accidental."

Can the Catholic left honour their stated commitment to the authority of the Holy Father by declaring a similar kind of dissent from the orthodoxy of their political circles?

No one is talking about something other than genuine care for people awash in the evil of gender ideology, especially children.

Getting on the side of a child in this context doesn't mean affirming gender dysphoria but rather loving them through what's called "watchful waiting."

There's more than theology in this approach.

Most kids (around 80%) grow out of childhood-onset gender dysphoria by adulthood.

A non-medical approach is clearly the way to go as we find the best ways to work for the good of our children.

But Catholics who honour the teaching of Pope Francis would go a long way to stopping the whiplash effect by taking all his teachings seriously.

It would reduce the atmosphere of cynicism and mutual distrust as we head into the synod. And that will be good for everyone.

• Charles Camosy, though a native of very rural Wisconsin, has spent more than the last decade as a professor of theological and social ethics at Fordham University. He is the author of five books, including, most recently, "Resisting Throwaway Culture." He is the father of four children, three of whom were adopted from the Philippines.
• First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

The closure comes in response to an ongoing review led by senior paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass, who warned the gender clinic was 'not a safe or viable long-term option'.

Trans-medicine is not safe for children, says the Cass Review.

There are concerns about the 'scarce and inconclusive evidence to support clinical decision-making'.

"Staff should maintain a broad clinical perspective in order to embed the care of children and young people with gender uncertainty within a broader child and adolescent health context," said Cass.

The NHS received a damning report 10 days ago.

The Tavistock Gender Clinic will be replaced by regional centres at existing children's hospitals. They will provide more holistic care with 'strong links to mental health services.

Its closure comes after a huge rise in referrals; with more than 5,000 referrals made in the last year, compared to just a few hundred 10 years ago.

Children will not be pushed toward transitioning. Instead, their mental and emotional issues will be more thoroughly explored.

The UK is not the only country questioning gender-transitioning children at present.

Other countries are seriously reconsidering the rubber-stamping of a gender-dysphoric child's belief and the prescribing of puberty-blocking drugs.

Sweden, Finland and France are all pulling back from the rush to transition gender-dysphoric children.

France acknowledges part of the issue causing concern has been the exponential increase in cases.

Concerns about the sharp rise in referrals to the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) are also bubbling.

In the UK, for example, there were more than 5,000 referrals last year. There were just a few hundred 10 years ago.

Transition ideologues were also accused of pushing autistic children to transition in the UK.

The lack of knowledge about the impact that puberty-blocking has on maturing bodies is a big concern.

Some child specialists think the drugs used need re-evaluating.

The Cass report makes clear that they are entirely experimental.

The impact of puberty-blockers on children had not been studied with sufficient scientific rigour, it says.

More research into the effects of puberty blockers on a young person's brain development is needed.

Questions that need answering include:

• Does the medication "pause" puberty or serve as "an initial part of a transition pathway"?
• Was brain development "temporarily or permanently disrupted by puberty blockers?"

A concern is that adolescent sex hormone surges may trigger the opening of a critical period for the experience-dependent rewiring of neural circuits underlying executive function (i.e. maturation of the part of the brain concerned with planning, decision making and judgement).

"If this is the case, brain maturation may be temporarily or permanently disrupted by puberty blockers, which could have a significant impact on the ability to make complex risk-laden decisions, as well as possible longer-term neuropsychological consequences," says Cass.

"To date, there has been very limited research on the short, medium or longer term impact of puberty blockers on neurocognitive development."

Some former patients are now questioning their access to the trans-medicine drugs.

In fact, Tavistock patient Keira Bell (pictured) took the clinic to the High Court. She said she had not been challenged enough when she was prescribed the drugs at age 16.

Source

• National Review
• Daily Mail
• National Catholic Register