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ABSTRACT
The Vatican’s Commission on Spirituality Sub-Group’s 2022 document, Towards a Spirituality for Synodality, offers a vision of a synodal ecclesial life. Central to this vision is the conviction that marginalised groups need to play an equal and active part in that life. This paper reflects on how this inclusion might extend to trans people. It argues that the synodal life of the Church, as envisioned by the CCSG, can include providing a space for the creative overcoming of historical dynamics that alienate trans people from the truths of our own lives, and that the Church fulfils its vocation to synodality in doing so. It concludes by suggesting a model of accompaniment in ‘synodal solidarity’ to facilitate this.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 This paper is adapted from a talk originally given at QUEST’s annual conference 2002 (Burbach, Trans truth and the synodal process).
2 Commission on Spirituality Sub-Group (CSSG), Spirituality for Synodality.
3 International Theological Commission, For a Synodal Church, no. 6.
4 CSSG, Spirituality for Synodality, 12–13.
5 CSSG, Spirituality for Synodality, 13.
6 CSSG, Spirituality for Synodality, 14–16.
7 CSSG, Spirituality for Synodality, 18.
8 Lumen Gentium, no. 11; as translated in The Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1324.
9 CSSG, Spirituality for Synodality, 27.
10 CSSG, Spirituality for Synodality, 35.
11 CSSG, Spirituality for Synodality, 31.
12 CSSG, Spirituality for Synodality, 32.
13 CSSG, Spirituality for Synodality, 26.
14 CSSG, Spirituality for Synodality, 26.
15 CSSG, Spirituality for Synodality, 40.
16 CSSG, Spirituality for Synodality, 42.
17 For a critique of harmonized difference, see Rose, A Theology of Failure, 43, 49. However, the document’s embrace of ‘counter-intuitive’ and ‘challenging’ voices potentially suggests a reading that avoids it.
18 Scannone, ‘Theology, Popular Culture, and Discernment’, 217, 222–225; see also Scannone, ‘Pope Francis and the Theology of the People’.
19 Most famously, Spivak, ‘“Can the Subaltern Speak?”’.
20 See Kristeva, Powers of Horror, 1–2; Stryker, ‘My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix’.
21 Bettcher, ‘Trapped in the Wrong Theory’, 384–385.
22 I take my lead from Stryker, Transgender History, 24.
23 Christus Vivit, no. 200.
24 Amoris Laetitia, no. 194.
25 Fratelli Tutti, no. 143.
26 Fratelli Tutti, no. 19; Querida Amazonia, no. 30.
27 See Paternotte and Kuhar, ‘The anti-gender movement in comparative perspective’; Case, ‘Trans-Formations in the Vatican’s War on Gender Ideology’; Faúndes, ‘The Geopolitics of Moral Panic’; Ivereigh, The Great Reformer, 113.
28 E.g. see Evangelii Gaudium, no. 234–235; Fratelli Tutti, no. 146–150, although Dhawan, ‘The Empire Prays Back’ may qualify the latter.
29 For an overview of the concept, see Morland, ‘Intersex’.
30 Gill-Peterson, Histories of the Transgender Child, 99.
31 Gill-Peterson Histories of the Transgender Child, 98–99; see Money, ‘Hermaphroditism, Gender and Precocity in Hyperadrenocorticism’.
32 Hirschfield, ‘Die intersexuelle Konstitution’, 3–27. For a shorts history of “transsexualism” as a diagnostic category, see Vincent, Transgender Health, 47–48.
33 Benjamin, The Transsexual Phenomenon.
34 Vincent, Transgender Health, 49; Stone, The “Empire” Strikes Back, no. 33; see Benjamin, The Transsexual Phenomenon, 15–16, 19.
35 Stone, The “Empire” Strikes Back, no. 34, 42.
36 Latham, ‘Axiomatic’, 17–18.
37 E.g. The National Catholic Bioethics Centre, ‘Brief Statement on Transgenderism’, 182. Ford similarly pushes back on essentialising narratives in affirming Catholic approaches to transness. He argues that these approaches are often deployed to justify transness, often against condemnatory positions which themselves emerge from a failure to listen, citing the Congregation for Catholic Education’s Male and Female He Created Them as an example (Ford, ‘Born That Way?’, 93. I also discuss this document in relation to listening in Burbach, The Vatican’s New Document on Transgender Issues, arguing that it is opposed to listening to trans people in a profound way). We might also take the USCCB’s more recent statement on Catholic healthcare as an example of these trends (Committee on Doctrine, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Doctrinal Note; see DeBernardo, New Ways Ministry Criticizes New USCCB Guidance). However, Ford argues, they can instead simply play into wider pathologisation of transness by associating ‘legitimacy’ with ‘unchosenness’; something that is at odds with the decisional aspects of transition, which I would argue are thereby also consigned to this silence (Ford, ‘Born That Way?’, 92).
38 E.g. Stone, The “Empire” Strikes Back; Stryker, ‘My Words to Victor Frankenstein’; Feinberg, Transgender Liberation.
39 Gossett and Huxtable, ‘Existing in the World’, 46.
40 See Faye, The Transgender Issue, 1–16.
41 E.g. see Kennedy, ‘Becoming’, 55–56.
42 Latham, Axiomatic, 23–25.
43 Stone, The “Empire” Strikes Back, 24–25.
44 See Ashley, “A Critical Commentary on ‘Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria’”; Serano, ‘Autogynephilia’.
45 See Althaus-Reid, Indecent Theology, 74–83.
46 This raises a number of issues for academic trans studies. See Valentine, Imagining Transgender, 4–5, 11, 14; Namaste, Invisible Lives, 21–22.
47 Gossett and Huxtable, ‘Existing in the World’, 48.
48 Culman, Christ and Time, xx.
49 Matt 27: 12; Mark 15: 3; Luke 23: 3 (RNJB).
50 John 18: 34.
51 John 18: 36.
52 John 18: 37.
53 John 19: 15.
54 John 18: 38.
55 John 19: 10.
56 John 19: 11.
57 Luke 23: 8.
58 Luke 23: 11.
59 Matt 27:26.
60 Matt 27: 30.
61 Mark 15: 17.
62 Matt 27: 37; Mark 15: 27; Luke 23: 38; John 19: 19.
63 John 19: 14.
64 Wansbrough, Holy Bible, 2053, fn. c.
65 Luke 24: 39; John 20: 20, 25; the paradigmatic exploration of this is Eiesland, The Disabled God, 99–100.
66 Francis never gives a straightforward definition of accompaniment, but gestures towards one along these lines in Amoris Laetitia, no. 291.
67 CSSG, Spirituality for Synodality, 40.
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Nicolete Burbach
Nicolete Burbach is Social and Environmental Justice Lead at the London Jesuit Centre. Her research focuses on resourcing the teachings of Pope Francis to inform the Church's response to transness. She is also a member of LGBT Catholics Westminster Pastoral Council.