Transgender people can be godparents at Roman Catholic baptisms, witnesses at religious weddings and receive baptism themselves, the Vatican's doctrinal office said on Wednesday.
  • Sneezycat
    26•1 year ago

    Am I missing something? I was baptized way before I had a gender identity, were they going to retroactively un-baptize me?

    It’s unfortunate they won’t, because I was too little to consent, but I definitely wouldn’t have.

      • frog 🐸English
        25•1 year ago

        There’s also a few denominations of Christianity (albeit protestant ones) who only baptise teens and adults, as they believe baptism has to be a conscious choice rather than something done to an infant in order for it to be valid.

        • alex [they, il]English
          10•1 year ago

          Yeah, almost mentioned them but they wouldn’t be covered by the Pope’s decisions, but you’re right - and I assume in some catholic communities they might have similar practices even though that’s a minority case.

          • Queen HawlSeraEnglish
            4•1 year ago

            Of course they wouldn’t be covered by the Pope’s decision. He isn’t the leader of christianity, he’s the leader of Catholicism.

            Honestly one thing I’m tired of is people blaming the Vatican for the insane shit that evangelicals and fundamentalists do.

            It’s like getting mad at Taco Bell because Hardee’s got your order wrong.

        • @Smoke@beehaw.orgEnglish
          1•1 year ago

          There’s a separate ceremony called Confirmation to let the person choose to believe when they’re older, in both Catholicism and Protestantism. Usually at the age of eight to twelve, so it’s not exactly a choice then either, but they could theoretically choose not to.

    • livEnglish
      5•1 year ago

      The being baptized part is relevant to converts, and the being a godparent part would have relevance for all transgender catholics.

  • Queen HawlSeraEnglish
    11•1 year ago

    Seriously, there are a lot of negative stereotypes about the Catholic church that I think Pope Francis is basically dunking pretty hard

    • interolivary
      5•1 year ago

      Yeah I have to say that I generally don’t know jack from shit when it comes to the Catholic church, living in an overwhelmingly Protestant country, and that’s if people can even be bothered with religion, so all I really had were negative stereotypes. Don’t often see the Catholic church in the news unless it’s about something bad.

      So this move definitely felt surprising to me, although eg. the part about baptizing transgender folks being OK as long as there’s “no risk of causing a public scandal or disorientation among the faithful” was a bit, well… I guess funny is the wrong word. How does one assess the risk of a transgender person’s baptism disorienting the faithful? What does thst even mean?

  • x-Cell
    3•1 year ago

    This doesn’t mean shit.

    I was raised catholic. It’s basically church doctrine that anyone is a child of God, and pretty much almost anyone can be baptized.

    It doesn’t mean you’re not a sinner who’s going to burn forever in hell. It’s just the famous anti-lgbt talking point “hate the sin, not the sinner”.

    This will lead LGBT people to a false sense of security before they go straight up to conversion therapy.