Consult professionals who deal with people who experience your condition. It is only relatively recently in human history that we have discovered so much about our world (think of the advances in physics and biology these past 100 years) and ourselves (sexuality wasn’t even spoken about in very recent eras). The reality of transgender people may be as old as humanity but the ability to do something to transform a person’s gender on both the physical and psychological levels is only a few decades old. One who feels trapped in the “wrong” body should consult widely. Most importantly, take your feelings to God in prayer and listen long and lovingly to what God desires of you in this life.
The Church’s moral teaching urges us to live lives of virtue. Our lives are happy when we habitually follow St. Thomas Aquinas’s adage “do good and avoid evil.” We are all called to live the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity, and the cardinal virtues of prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice (CCC #1803-1845) Can transgendered persons live such virtuous lives? Yes. The proof is that so many do.
Fr. Rick Malloy, S.J., is a Jesuit priest, fisherman and author. He is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia, and serves as a Chaplain at the college. His book, A Faith That Frees: Catholic Matters for the 21st Century, (Orbis Books 2007) examines the relationships between the practices of faith and the cultural currents and changes so rapidly occurring in our ever more technologized and globalized world.
