Transgender

Listening to transgender Catholics requires listening to learn what they want us to understand about their lives.

Michael Sean Winters: If last year began with the hope that normalcy might return, this year U.S. politics are marked by a fear that the signs of decline in the very fabric of our democracy might become dominant.

Faith Seeking Understanding: What is starkly missing from these bishops' statements and similar transphobic remarks by church leaders in recent years is any encounter with transgender persons themselves.

Michael Sean Winters rounds up political news and commentary: The president welcomes George Floyd's family; a Republican officeholder with a conscience; Working-Class Bill of Rights; Lesley Stahl's journalistic ethics.

Michael Sean Winters rounds up political news and commentary: Lt. Caron Nazario sues police officers; conundrums of the Olympics; Democratic and Republican dictionaries; animals and pronouns; St. Joseph as a model.

Commentary: Transgender and intersex persons are not sinners, but they are lost sheep in the wilderness of the church, which continues to affirm only the female-male binary to which it attaches unchangeable gender.

Dominican Sr. Luisa Derouen, one of the speakers in the three-part series, said she believes most priests don't intend to harm trans people. She wants to be a resource for any priests — or other Catholics — who want to learn to support their trans community members.

Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is asking a popular Irish priest suspended from public ministry in 2012, primarily over his support for women's ordination, to sign four strict oaths of fidelity to Catholic teachings.