Seems to me like a lot of dancing around the questions in an attempt not to offend anyone, and mainly just restating general guidelines and canon laws. The answer to question 2 is the most concerning to me, even though I could envision some narrow circumstances where a transgender person could be a godparent. There could be a possible si…
Seems to me like a lot of dancing around the questions in an attempt not to offend anyone, and mainly just restating general guidelines and canon laws. The answer to question 2 is the most concerning to me, even though I could envision some narrow circumstances where a transgender person could be a godparent. There could be a possible situation such as someone who had surgery and later regrets it and reverts back to identifying as their biological sex...but then they wouldn't really be identifying as transgender, would they? I suspect the DDF was referring to people who identify as "transgender" and all that entails, so I'm not sure this kind of situation is what they had in mind. This is not even taking into account the requirement that two godparents have to be of the opposite sex, which is a whole other can of worms when you have a godparent who "identifies" as the opposite sex.
Overall the vagueness and imprecision in these answers is going to lead some priests to take advantage of the apparent permission of transgender people to fill these roles "under certain conditions" and it will be interpreted very liberally. And then on the other side there will be priests who will turn down some transgender person's request to be a sponsor and be vilified for a lack of "mercy" and for "discriminating", or whatever.
I immediately felt compassion for the priests who have to apply this, especially for the priests who turn down a request and are compared to the liberal minded priest in another Diocese. It will make the altar boy/girl allowance seem like old old school.
Yep, it seems mostly like the DDF is pushing this off on priests to figure out for themselves because they can't bring themselves to provide clear yes/no answers, much like the previous dubia submitted by the Cardinals. And the priests who actually have to deal with these situations are the ones who are going to suffer for it - mostly the ones who try to remain faithful to Church teaching and turn down prospective sponsors. I can definitely see situations in the future (and some have happened in the past already) where someone gets denied and they go running off to the local media, or the bishop and he disciplines the priest, etc. It's going to be a mess.
There is not a requirement that there are 2 godparents, 1 is sufficient, and they can also be called a baptismal sponsor. If the sponsor is transgender, and lives in a state incongruent with their natal sex, then it would be necessary to call them a baptismal sponsor in order to avoid causing scandal.
Seems to me like a lot of dancing around the questions in an attempt not to offend anyone, and mainly just restating general guidelines and canon laws. The answer to question 2 is the most concerning to me, even though I could envision some narrow circumstances where a transgender person could be a godparent. There could be a possible situation such as someone who had surgery and later regrets it and reverts back to identifying as their biological sex...but then they wouldn't really be identifying as transgender, would they? I suspect the DDF was referring to people who identify as "transgender" and all that entails, so I'm not sure this kind of situation is what they had in mind. This is not even taking into account the requirement that two godparents have to be of the opposite sex, which is a whole other can of worms when you have a godparent who "identifies" as the opposite sex.
Overall the vagueness and imprecision in these answers is going to lead some priests to take advantage of the apparent permission of transgender people to fill these roles "under certain conditions" and it will be interpreted very liberally. And then on the other side there will be priests who will turn down some transgender person's request to be a sponsor and be vilified for a lack of "mercy" and for "discriminating", or whatever.
I immediately felt compassion for the priests who have to apply this, especially for the priests who turn down a request and are compared to the liberal minded priest in another Diocese. It will make the altar boy/girl allowance seem like old old school.
Yep, it seems mostly like the DDF is pushing this off on priests to figure out for themselves because they can't bring themselves to provide clear yes/no answers, much like the previous dubia submitted by the Cardinals. And the priests who actually have to deal with these situations are the ones who are going to suffer for it - mostly the ones who try to remain faithful to Church teaching and turn down prospective sponsors. I can definitely see situations in the future (and some have happened in the past already) where someone gets denied and they go running off to the local media, or the bishop and he disciplines the priest, etc. It's going to be a mess.
There is not a requirement that there are 2 godparents, 1 is sufficient, and they can also be called a baptismal sponsor. If the sponsor is transgender, and lives in a state incongruent with their natal sex, then it would be necessary to call them a baptismal sponsor in order to avoid causing scandal.
It wouldn't scandalize me.