Transsexual People

[Byzantine]

I'm just wondering, does the Church consider transsexual people to be their original gender or the one the operators gave them? Does this affect stuff like ordinations? Just curious.

[CatherineM]

The church considers someone to be the gender they are born with when it comes to ordinations. A woman who has had gender reassignment surgery to take on the outward physical appearance of a male is not eligible for ordination. A man who has had surgery to become a woman who might later wish to be ordained as a man would also be ineligible but for different reasons. Those seeking ordination are put through a variety of medical and psychological tests that would exclude them. A castrated man can not be ordained unless it was due to an accident or disease, and gender reassignment is neither.

As to how we deal with transsexuals in our parishes, that is a different matter. No one is turned away from our doors. A transsexual who is post-op would need to live a chaste life in the same manner that an individual with same sex attraction would in order to remain in communion with the Church.

I have known of a church who raised money for an individual who later repented of their self mutilation to have corrective surgery. Some churches make a ministry of raising money for people to have their vasectomies or tubal ligations reversed, and this is similar if much more complicated medically.

Another issue are those who have been born with indeterminant sex, or aspects of both genders. This may be one of the most heavy crosses a human can be born with. I have never known of an individual born thus who approached ordination, but it isn't beyond possibility. If their gender is in fact male, they are capable of receiving ordination, but their cross may have damaged them in a manner that would make them psychologically so damaged that ordination might not be an option.

Bottom line is that our genders are so deeply a part of our internal selves that those who are damaged in their gender or their perception of their genders should be handled with the greatest compassion. These issues are normally dealt with in a parish privately and pastorally.