October 4-5, 2025
Dear parishioners,
On August 15, the solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Bishop Thomas published a pastoral document titled “The Body Reveals The Person: a Catholic response to the challenges of gender ideology.” The document is meant to be utilized by anyone within the Diocese of Toledo and can easily be found online at: https://issuu.com/gracefulliving/docs/bishop_thomas_response_on_gender_2025. On this same website, there is also a printable version of the document. While I encourage everyone to read the document, I would like to provide an overview here. All citations below are from the document.
To start, the gender ideology that has become pervasive in our culture seeks to convince many people, especially young people, that feelings and desires dictate the reality of human identity. As such, those who claim to be “transgender,” “non-binary,” or something similar actually reject their God-given sexual identity as male or female. The American Psychological Association diagnoses this reality as “gender dysphoria.” Those who experience this condition are often encouraged by many voices in popular culture and, sadly, even by healthcare professionals to consume hormone blocking drugs and to undergo operations which mutilate or remove their genitals.
I doubt that anyone reading this article needs to be convinced as to why the gender ideology mentioned above is gravely contrary to the Church’s consistent teaching on human sexuality and the human body. But, it is worth noting that the Church has always taught that the human person exists as a unity of body and soul. As Bishop Thomas explains, “According to this unitive anthropology, the body is not a mere tool or instrument of the person, nor is it other than the person. Rather, both body and soul are integral to the very constitution of the person. The
body animated by the soul is a living human being.” As such, “The human body in its sexed nature—in its maleness and femaleness—is the visible and tangible revelation of the whole human person, of the unified body-soul reality made in God’s image. Indeed, because body and soul are not two natures but form a single human nature, the body necessarily reveals the person as a boy or a girl, a man or a woman. God did not add the body after creating the soul; rather, as Genesis 1:27 tells us, in creating Man, ‘male and female he made them.’” Therefore, any attempt by gender ideology to separate body and soul must be rejected. No one was created “with the wrong body,” as those with gender dysphoria claim. In fact, it is impossible for God to make a mistake; the very claim from gender ideology is an affront to God himself!
Essentially, gender ideology proposes a dualism, which separates body and soul, and treats the body as something to be manipulated as one wishes. Bishop Thomas explains that, “it would be a mistake to view people’s feelings about their bodies as reliable indicators of what is true or to let those feelings dictate the therapeutic response…. Sex is determined at conception, observed in utero or at birth, and cannot be changed. A person’s sex marks every cell of the person’s body—up to 30 trillion cells. Every person is either male or female, and this fact never changes, despite an individual’s conflicting feelings or experiences.”
How are we to respond to the challenges proposed by gender ideology? Bishop Thomas expresses that, “The answer is surely not to water down Catholic teachings, which are meant to clarify and defend, in the light of faith, the truth and value of God’s great gift of our engendered bodily life. For, as Pope Saint John Paul II taught, it is in and through our bodies that our distinct personhood is expressed: the body reveals the person. And our personhood is beloved by God. It is sacred. Indeed, it is created in His image. For the Church to fail to defend and proclaim these truths would be a great disservice to all the faithful, but especially to those who struggle with gender confusion, for today’s noxious ideologies make these persons particularly vulnerable to grave and irreversible harm.”
Blessings,
Fr. Ammanniti
