CNA Staff, Nov 13, 2025 / 13:20 pm (CNA).
Catholic hospitals in the United States are explicitly forbidden from carrying out transgender-related surgeries on individuals who believe themselves to be the opposite sex, the U.S. bishops said this week.
The prelates, gathered at the plenary of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in Baltimore, voted on Nov. 12 to direct hospitals to “preserve the integrity of the human body” when treating individuals with gender dysphoria.
Such individuals often seek surgery to make their bodies conform to that of the opposite sex. But in updated guidance, the bishops said that while Catholic health care providers must employ “all appropriate resources” to mitigate the suffering of such patients, they can use “only those means that respect the fundamental order of the human body.”
The new rule makes into explicit USCCB policy what the bishops expressed in a doctrinal note in 2023 when they said Catholic providers must not take part in procedures that “aim to transform the sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex.”
The revised directives were hailed by the Catholic Health Association, which in a Nov. 12 statement said that the rules “reaffirm the Church’s teaching on the dignity of all persons and their right to life from conception to natural death.”
The revisions “clarify and affirm current clinical practices” and “are consistent with Catholic health care practice that does not allow for medical interventions that alter sexual characteristics absent an underlying condition,” the group said.
The organization said Catholic health care providers would continue to treat those who identify as transgender “with dignity and respect.”
In their guidelines the bishops noted that it can be “morally permissible” to “remove or to suppress the function of one part of the body for the sake of the body as a whole,” though only in very limited circumstances, such as when a body part is diseased.
In forbidding medical practices that “aim to transform sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex,” the bishops cited the Vatican’s 2024 document Dignitas Infinita, which in part disallows “all attempts to obscure reference to the ineliminable sexual difference between man and woman.”
The USCCB’s guidance comes several months after the Trump administration moved to prohibit transgender procedures performed on children at U.S. hospitals.
Multiple U.S. hospitals earlier this year ended their child transgender programs under pressure from the Trump administration. One watchdog group determined that doctors in the U.S. performed around 14,000 “gender transitions” on underage children between 2019 and 2023.
In January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to prohibit hospitals that receive Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements from performing transgender operations or providing transgender drugs to anyone under the age of 19.
An EWTN News analysis in 2024, meanwhile, showed that nearly 150 Catholic hospitals across the United States provided children with transgender drugs or performed gender-transition surgeries on them between 2019 and 2023.
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Kudos to the USCCB!
What took them so long?
Please Edward, for once be thankful for what they did!
Why? Their willful moral weakness over the decades has effectively been criminal.
With many victims.
Good point as the Bishops just trimmed their sails to the prevailing winds…
The fact that they need to do this tells you they have have no authentic Catholic character. Much like “Catholic” colleges and university with pride clubs.
Transgenderism is no biological, medical or psychological anomaly. It is a concoction resulting from a breakdown in the moral and cultural fiber of society. As such, it requires a restoration of moral and cultural values and practices.
Now that the teens have already moved on to the next fad, revenues are down, and there is the possibility of lawsuits…
Please, God.
I’m thankful for the Bishops conference and what they are doing and think that we should support them in any way that we can. It’s time for the whole Church to come together and stand for truth and recognize the different ministries working on different issues. Abortion is just one of many moral and social concerns that we face. Scriptures teach us that the body ( Church) has many members and that each contributes to the good of the whole. While some members may be more important, the lesser should not be neglected or despised- all are equally needed for the health of the whole. The work and mission of the Catholic Worker movement, for instance, is just as necessary as the pro- life movement. Note I DID NOT say “as important “. While the Church allows for one to be pacifist and non-resistant, it does not require these beliefs of all, and they are not to be scorned or belittled. We must not put down those who have been called to minister to the immigrants among us. If God called them to this ministry, who are we to question or judge? It is between them and God and we should keep our nose out of it and do what we are called to do. The same stands for all of the other ministries in the Church. We should thank God for them all. God loves us all and we are all on different levels and stages on our various paths to sanctification. Hopefully, we are ever changing and growing closer to God. We can’t judge anyone, because we don’t know the burdens that they are carrying or effect of their physical and emotional makeup. In short- we can’t walk in their shoes.let’s lay down the hatchet and unite against our common enemy- moral and secular decadence. God bless you all.
I have no trouble with people who minster to migrants and/or immigrants and I doubt very deeply any so-called MAGA person does either; however, I am deeply disgusted with the graft and human trafficking that has occurred, the waste of tax payer dollars, the enrichment of NGOs, circumvention of law, etc.
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The bishops are receiving criticism, rightly or wrongly, because too many of us no longer have anything left with which to “give them the benefit of the doubt.”
What Church are you talking about? What moral precept allows for not defending innocent life under assault? Absolute pacifism is immoral, evil, a sin. Defensive action is not a prudential option. And the Catholic Worker movement, for which I did volunteer work decades ago, today reflects the disintegration that inevitably occurs from minds convinced that social concerns necessarily calls for revolutionary thought and action. It does not. We are not God’s superior, and God does not abandon us to a capricious inadaquate understanding of how we ought to order our lives. He gave us a moral order innate to our being, for all times and all places.
When we lose sight of unchanging truth, we are more subject to the temptations of assumed enlightenment acquiescent to culture. Many good people have passed through CW, but more recent divisions have occurred among differing voices including support of all manner of the LGBTQ agenda and support for abortion by some. And Catholic witness ought never include a “religious calendar” by any group identifying itself as Catholic that features celebratory days primarily for pioneers of communism and anarchy alternating with selected feast days of a handful of saints whose lives have been coopted in a manner that depicts them as revolutionaries “before their time.”
I challenge anyone to tell me what constitutes calling any “Catholic” hospital CATHOLIC. The staffs are comprised of a minority of practicing Catholics and the healthcare provided is never carried out in the name of Christ nor as an expressuon of the mission of the Church. These “Catholic” hospitals are no different from any secular hospital. And just because you have a chapel and a saint’s name attached to the building doesn’t make it “Catholic”. I know; I worked at a Catholic hospital for 30 years.
For my money and guided by the ecclesial principle of subsidiarity, I would like to see all “Catholic” hospitals sold to the highest bidder and use the proceeds to set up neighborhood CATHOLIC clinics that strictly follow CATHOLIC teachings. Another preference of mine for these neighborhood CATHOLIC clinics would be services for women with crisis pregnancies as an alternative to abortion.
Supposedly, the Catholic Healthcare Initiative is trying to do something like that
https://chi-usa.com/about-catholic-healthcare-international/padre-pio-hospital-is-coming-to-the-usa/
Well said and I totally agree with you .
more are closing, along with others, that cannot keep up after the covid money dried up but the costs haven’t decreased
a friend works in one of the larger chains and the coworkers would talk about taking out Trump after his second election, pro abortion stuff etc… he said it was/is depressing
Wonderful !!
But they don’t “forbid and condemn” vital organ harvesting of comatose patients !
Consensus and ignorance, indeed ! Meet moral relevance and stupidity !
This is why you must push back when Cafeteria Catholics flaunt the dogma of our faith: “nearly 150 Catholic hospitals across the United States provided children with transgender drugs or performed gender-transition surgeries on them between 2019 and 2023.”