It’s worth noting that there were fewer Pride flags and celebrations this June than in years past. But Catholics never needed the secular calendar’s permission to know that June actually belongs to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a devotion to Christ’s own love that predates any corporate rainbow campaign.
Now August has arrived, carrying a new label of its own. The National Catholic Reporter, an outlet claiming a Catholic identity, is promoting “Transgender History Month” along with a roster of supposed “trans saints.”
The Church, however, actually asks Catholics to honor the Immaculate Heart of Mary in August. That contrast is the whole story.
The Church does not have Pride Month, and it does not have Transgender History Month. Instead, it has a calendar built around the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts, the saints, and singular moments in the life of Christ. In short, the rhyme and rhythm of Catholic liturgical life is anchored in faith.
Attempting to stitch Catholic saints into the ideological fabric of an invented celebration misleads Catholics, especially the young and poorly catechized, about the lives of those saints and about what we celebrate as Catholics.
And suggesting that medieval saints anticipated and endorsed transgender ideology sits in direct tension with the guidance of the Church’s own shepherds.
In our diocese of Arlington, Virginia, for example, Bishop Michael Burbidge published a lengthy 2021 catechesis on the human person and gender ideology, laying out in careful detail why the anthropology behind gender ideology cannot be reconciled with Catholic teaching about “who we are.”
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco and Bishop Michael Barber of Oakland issued a joint pastoral letter making the same case, describing gender ideology as opposed to reason, science, and a Christian view of the human person.
Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City wrote his own pastoral letter that same year on the unity of body and soul.
These are not fringe or isolated voices. They are diocesan bishops, writing pastorally and publicly, and their conclusions run in a single direction.
The USCCB has likewise offered guidance prohibiting sex-rejecting procedures at Catholic hospitals. Rome has weighed in as well. The Dicastery for Doctrine of the Faith, in Dignitas Infinita (57), characterized gender ideology’s focus on “personal self-determination,” regardless of the body, as a “concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God.”
Although it is problematic to distort the histories of particular saints, the deeper problem is a grave misunderstanding of what sainthood actually is.
The Church does not canonize people because their biography fits a contemporary cause. It canonizes people because they lived with heroic virtue and cooperated with grace in their lives.
Augustine, for example, spent years before his conversion enslaved to disordered desire. And while the Church did not scrub that chapter to make him presentable, his turning to Jesus matters more than the disorder that preceded it. Mary Magdalene’s witness works the same way. Whatever her life held before she encountered Christ, tradition has always centered on her fidelity to him afterwards.
That is what a saint’s life offers us: proof that grace, coupled with the proper exercise of free will, can direct a life towards God. None of that requires inventing identity confusion in the historical record of any canonized saint.
“Transgender” identification is a politicized phenomenon, not something the Church has ever encountered, much less celebrated, in the lives of men and women it has raised to the altars. Pretending otherwise does not honor those saints. It uses them.
Retrofitting hagiography does not help Catholics, family members, and friends who genuinely struggle with identity distress or confusion. What helps is real accompaniment that is patient, attentive, and never abandons a person, precisely because it takes their good seriously enough not to affirm what is not true. Authentic charity wants the good of the other.
Revisionist history does not serve that good; it distracts from it.
And that distraction carries real costs. The rapid spread of gender ideology has triggered escalating identity distress among adolescents and young adults in recent years. Confusion is disproportionately high among teenage girls, in a pattern experts describe as resembling a social contagion moving through friend groups and online communities.
Young people caught in that dangerous current need clarity and real accompaniment, not saints reinvented to tell them their confusion is a calling. Families, parish staff, and priests who want a serious resource for these conversations have one close at hand in the Ethics and Public Policy Center’s Person and Identity Project, which offers sound, compassionate, doctrinally grounded material on these questions.
That is where this conversation should be happening. Not in a manufactured history month that hijacks the dead to bear witness to ideological claims.
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It is a mortal sin to give false testimony. Transgenderism is just that – purposive deceit. No one should give any traction to lies. There are two sexes and only two sexes -male and female. All assertions otherwise are lies and mortally sinful.
Thank you for this article. Unbelievable “Catholic National Reporter”?! See below the quote from Augustine on these matters.
Romans 1:26-27
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
1 Corinthians 6:9-11
9 Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men[a]
10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
The excellent site Catholic Answers has posted numerous examples of the early Christian thinkers on the subject of homosexual relations, in answer to the modern Catholic Church claim that “loving” homosexual relations, and not just “lustful” relations are OK and can be blessed by priests. Here are a few, which today’s popes and cardinals and bishops and priests act against and probably would label as “hate speech”: https://www.catholic.com/tract/early-teachings-on-homosexuality
SAINT EUSEBIUS OF CAESAREA
“[H]aving forbidden all unlawful marriage, and all unseemly practice, and the union of women with women and men with men, he [God] adds: ‘Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; for in all these things the nations were defiled, which I will drive out before you. And the land was polluted, and I have recompensed [their] iniquity upon it, and the land is grieved with them that dwell upon it’ [Lev. 18:24–25]” (Proof of the Gospel 4:10 [A.D. 319]).
SAINT CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
“All honor to that king of the Scythians, whoever Anacharsis was, who shot with an arrow one of his subjects who imitated among the Scythians the mystery of the mother of the gods . . . condemning him as having become effeminate among the Greeks, and a teacher of the disease of effeminacy to the rest of the Scythians” (Exhortation to the Greeks 2 [A.D. 190]).
SAINT BASI THE GREAT
“He who is guilty of unseemliness with males will be under discipline for the same time as adulterers” (Letters 217:62 [A.D. 367]).
SAINT JOHN CHRYSOSTOM
“[Certain men in church] come in gazing about at the beauty of women; others curious about the blooming youth of boys. After this, do you not marvel that [lightning] bolts are not launched [from heaven], and all these things are not plucked up from their foundations? For worthy both of thunderbolts and hell are the things that are done; but God, who is long-suffering, and of great mercy, forbears awhile his wrath, calling you to repentance and amendment” (Homilies on Matthew 3:3 [A.D. 391]).
“All of these affections [in Rom. 1:26–27] . . . were vile, but chiefly the mad lust after males; for the soul is more the sufferer in sins, and more dishonored than the body in diseases” (Homilies on Romans 4 [A.D. 391]).
“[The men] have done an insult to nature itself. And a yet more disgraceful thing than these is it, when even the women seek after these intercourses, who ought to have more shame than men” (ibid.).
SAINT AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO
“[T]hose shameful acts against nature, such as were committed in Sodom, ought everywhere and always to be detested and punished. If all nations were to do such things, they would be held guilty of the same crime by the law of God, which has not made men so that they should use one another in this way” (Confessions 3:8:15 [A.D. 400]).
TERTULLIAN
“[A]ll other frenzies of the lusts which exceed the laws of nature, and are impious toward both [human] bodies and the sexes, we banish, not only from the threshold but also from all shelter of the Church, for they are not sins so much as monstrosities” (Modesty 4 [A.D. 220]).
SAINT JUSTIN MARTYR (the first recognized philosopher of the Christian era)
“[W]e have been taught that to expose newly-born children is the part of wicked men; and this we have been taught lest we should do anyone harm and lest we should sin against God, first, because we see that almost all so exposed (not only the girls, but also the males) are brought up to prostitution. And for this pollution a multitude of females and hermaphrodites, and those who commit unmentionable iniquities, are found in every nation. And you receive the hire of these, and duty and taxes from them, whom you ought to exterminate from your realm. . . . And there are some who prostitute even their own children and wives, and some are openly mutilated for the purpose of sodomy; and they refer these mysteries to the mother of the gods” (First Apology 27 [A.D. 151]).
THE DIDACHE
“You shall not commit murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not commit pederasty, you shall not commit fornication, you shall not steal, you shall not practice magic, you shall not practice witchcraft, you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill one that has been born” (Didache 2:2 [A.D. 70]
It’s not a myth. It’s mockery.
Thank you for the link to this fascinating article detailing the lives of Holy Saints with gender confusion. God’s Grace is truly awesome to help us carry any burden to claim victory in salvation!
“Holy Saints with gender confusion.”
What foolish nonsense!
Guess you didn’t bother to read the linked article?
“Transgender” identification is a politicized phenomenon, not something the Church has ever encountered, much less celebrated, in the lives of men and women it has raised to the altars.”
Just as reordering persons according to sexual desire/inclination/orientation which sexually objectifies the human person and denies their inherent Dignity as being, in essence, a beloved son or daughter, in order to justify the engaging in of sexual acts that regardless of the actors or the actor’s desires, even if the actors are a man and woman united in marriage as husband and wife, in all cases, demean the inherent Sanctity and Dignity of the human person, and are physically, psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually harmful, and devoid of Love, is a politicized phenomenon, not something the Church has ever encountered, much less celebrated, in the lives of men and women until the invalid election of Jorge Bergoglio to The Papacy who justified his embrace of this politicized phenomenon by his claim “if there is a union of a private nature, there is neither a third party (No Holy Ghost?) nor is society affected”, ipso facto defecting from Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, denying God’s Universal Call To Holiness is God’s Call that we be Temples of The Holy Ghost in all our relationships and experiences, and in denying The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, denied The Spirit Of Perfect Divine Eternal Infinite Love Between The Father And His Only Begotten Son, Jesus The Christ, Who Proceeds From Both The Father And His Only Begotten Son, Jesus The Christ, denied The Divinity of The Most Holy Blessed Trinity, demonstrating that he, Jorge Bergoglio, had neither the ability or desire to accept The “forever” Office of The MUNUS, and thus The Ministerial Office, as that which denies The Word Of God cannot subsist within The One Body Of Christ ; Christ’s Church Is One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, The Spirit Of Perfect Divine Eternal Infinite Love Between The Father And His Only Begotten Son, Jesus The Christ, Who Proceeds From The Father And His Only Begotten Son, Jesus The Christ.
For “The Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter that by His revelation they might make known new doctrine, but that by His assistance they might inviolably keep and faithfully expound the Revelation, the Deposit of Faith, delivered through the Apostles. ”
Today, as James Martin , who, like Jorge Bergoglio and Robert Prevost, denies The Unity of The Holy Ghost and thus denies the fact that “it is not possible to have Sacramental Communion without Ecclesiastical Communion”, is being honored at Notre Dame to promote his politicized phenomenon that denies God’s Universal Call to Holiness is our Call to be “Temples of The Holy Ghost” and thus Abide In The Word Of God , we need only ask him this question to expose his apostasy:
James, “The fundamental virtues that a good father and family man must have are the same virtues required to make a good priest”, since it is true that regardless of the actors or the actor’s desire/inclination, the desire to engage in a demeaning act of any nature, does not change the nature of the demeaning act. What Father, who loves their child, would possibly promote and affirm the engaging in of demeaning sexual acts that deny the Sanctity and Dignity of all beloved sons and daughters, and are thus devoid of Love, in every case, when demeaning sexual acts cannot possibly serve for human flourishing because they deny the inherent Sanctity and Dignity of the human person, who, from the moment of conception, has been Created In The Image of God, equal in Dignity, while being complementary as a beloved son or daughter, Willed by God, The Most Holy Blessed Trinity, worthy of Redemption.
God’s Universal Call to Holiness exists for all persons, regardless of our desires/inclinations, because God’s Universal Call to Holiness affirms the inherent Sanctity and Dignity of all Human Persons.
Pope Benedict’s warning to Christ’s Church regarding The Great Apostasy:
“When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker Himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being. The defence of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears. Whoever defends God is defending man.” – Pope Benedict’s Christmas Address 2012 Christmas greetings to the members of the Roman Curia (21 December 2012) | BENEDICT XVI
A “transgender saint” is like a unicorn, or a leprechaun, or the tooth fairy – something that exist only in people’s imagination.
Obviously you didn;t bother to read the linked article. Typical troll.
You should check the link before assuming you know everything.
Making America great again!
Commenting from ignorance. You didn’t read the article did you?
You’re projecting again 🙄.
Making America great again!
“Commenting from ignorance.”
You tell them Susanne Lee. I see your comments as among the most smart here.
Ennasus: Making America great again.
A few years ago the acronym LGBTQ was used in a sybodal document. People complained and it was removed. Now it’s used everywhere in the church. We even have a proliferation of pride masses.
I believe somewhere this idea will take root in some parts of the Church, and met with the usual silence from Rome.
Yet Francis clarified “we can’t bless sin.”
Nick,
You are recalling the two-phased 2018 Synod on Youth and Vocations. The draft report gratuitously inserted the tribal acronym “LGBTQ”.
Two points and a summary:
FIRST, Archbishop Chaput objected to this edit, which had not come from the youth at all: “There is no such thing as an ‘LGBTQ Catholic’ or a ‘transgender Catholic’ or even a ‘heterosexual Catholic,’ as if our sexual appetites defined who we are; as if these designations described discrete communities of differing but equal integrity within the real ecclesial community, the body of Jesus Christ.”
Chaput politely wrote to ask that the edited term be removed. The synodal maestro at the microphone refused (Cardinal Baldisseri).
SECOND, in introducing the second session, Cardinal Erdo of Hungary included these words:
“There are absolutely no grounds [!] for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.’ Nevertheless, men and women with a homosexual tendency ought to be received with respect and sensitivity.’ Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided'” (citing: Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Considerations Regarding Proposals to give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons,” 2003, n.4; and the Catechism 1992/1994, n. 2357).
Before the session adjourned, all sixteen roundtables made the successful “demand” that the term be removed. Very synodal, that!
SUMMARY: But the termites infest nearly every corner of the Barque of Peter…
And they ASS-U-ME that the “walking together” Catholic laity are just like goldfish with a measured memory of only eight seconds…as we circle round-and-round and year-after-year in the Synod-on-Synodality fishbowl.
To avoid death by these punishments from God floods tornadoes lightnings hailstorm heatwave wildfires strong earthquakes more mag 7 earthquake tsunami volcano meteor in Europe in Asia in Africa in Pacific Ocean in North and South America non-Muslims to convert to Islam and Muslims to apply the Quran 100% August 29,2026 and to avoid hell if the end of the world September 4,2026.
“trangendered Saints”
Did you mean to say “transvestite”?
A person’s clothes are interchangeable but their sex never is. You can inject all the hormones you want and cut off parts of your body but all you’ve done is self-mutilation. You sex is constant. Any one with half a brain knows this.
Don’t lie in order to appear politically “correct.”
Many thanks to the authors for this informative piece for those of us who otherwise happily avoid the National [so called] “Catholic” Reporter.
While Catholics face persecution and even slaughter in various places throughout the world, the Lavender Mafia within the institutional church remain completely focused on the LGBT et al. subject. By their fruits (fixations), you shall know them.
I may have missed it, but I see NO real plan to “recover” the “dammed”. Also, I don’t see any mention of the TG’s family and the pain they may be experiencing having to deal with a potential conflict between church and child.
Does the dialog here imply “inclusion, not exclusion”? A bridge too far?
We must continue to pray to the Saints and never compromise our Sacred Matrimony, which is viewed as a covenant, a deeper commitment than a mere contract. “Do you take this woman/man for your lawfully wedded wife?”