The National Eucharistic Pilgrimage enters St. Josephine Bakhita Parish in St. Louis in July 2024. / Credit: Jonah McKeown/CNA
St. Louis, Mo., Feb 5, 2025 / 17:00 pm (CNA).
The Archdiocese of St. Louis this week distanced itself from comments a local pastor made in opposition to proposed legislation that would extend the state’s ban on transgender procedures for minors.
Missouri bans the provision of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries to minors for purposes of “gender transitions.” The law took effect last summer and was subsequently upheld in court in the fall, but the law is currently due to expire in August 2027. Missouri lawmakers, amid a contentious debate, are currently considering bills that if passed would make the law permanent.
Father Mitchell Doyen, pastor at St. Josephine Bakhita Parish in north St. Louis City, testified during a Missouri House committee hearing Feb. 3 that the “bills which you contemplate today are dehumanizing our brothers and sisters.”
“I have had the privilege of knowing and befriending transgender youth and adults and their parents and their friends and their brothers and sisters. I have listened to their stories and the stories of their doctors and their counselors. Their desire to live fully human, authentic, grace-filled and gifted lives in our community is a profound blessing for us,” Doyen said.
“I believe in a loving God who has fashioned each human person as a unique reflection of God’s love in the world. I am not afraid to imagine a world more profound than male and female. And I trust the parents, the families, the doctors, the counselors — all who love our trangender youth — to make these decisions more than [I trust] you.”
In a statement shared with CNA Wednesday, the Archdiocese of St. Louis said Doyen “was speaking on his own behalf, and his comments did not accurately reflect Church teaching.”
The Catholic Church teaches that the human person is an intrinsic unity of body and soul, and that the body is a gift to be received, respected, and cared for. The U.S. bishops reiterated in 2023 that surgical or chemical interventions that aim to transform the sexual characteristics of the body into those of the opposite sex represent a rejection of the “fundamental order of the human body” as being “sexually differentiated.”
“The Catholic Church consistently reaffirms the compassion and inherent dignity of all men and women, including those who experience gender dysphoria. We do not discriminate against anyone based on how they identify or what they believe,” the statement from the archdiocese reads.
“However, our pastoral care and support of individuals who identify as transgender does not mean that we condone chemical treatment or surgical procedures that are designed to alter the appearance of one’s gender. The Church has been consistent on this issue, and any suggestion to the contrary is a misrepresentation.”
St. Josephine Bakhita Parish, which is historically African American, was formed from a merger of three former parishes that came into effect in October 2023. The parish played a prominent role last summer as an official stop for the National Eucharistic Pilgrimages as part of the National Eucharistic Revival.
‘I don’t think the Church has anything to say’
Speaking prior to Doyen at the hearing on Monday was Guillermo Villa Trueba, a lobbyist with the Missouri Catholic Conference, which represents the state’s bishops. He said the Church supports the bills because they would continue to protect minors from procedures that “based on a false understanding of human nature” are designed to attempt to change a child’s sex.
Minors are not capable of giving true informed consent to procedures that can lead to infertility and lifelong dependence on transgender medications, Villa Trueba noted, quoting Pope Francis in Laudato Si’ on the importance of “learning to accept our body, to care for it and to respect its fullest meaning.”
“Young people struggling with gender dysphoria are loved by God and possess the same inherent dignity that all persons do. They deserve help that heals rather than harms. Using puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones for the purpose of gender transition can and will only inflict harm and cause suffering,” Villa Trueba said.
During the hearing, Republican State Rep. Brad Christ, a fellow Catholic, probed Doyen about what he described as a “disconnect” between Doyen’s testimony and Villa Trueba’s.
“I’m not saying ‘change Church teaching.’ But I don’t think the Church has anything to say about these bills. It’s too intimate among the lives of families,” Doyen replied.
“[The] Church teaches chastity. [The] Church teaches the dignity of the human person. The Church teaches the value of the sacrament of marriage and the beauty of a love between man and woman that reveals God’s love in the world. All of that is true. But why then, because all of that is true, do we have to say that nothing else can be true? It’s a lack of imagination, and it’s really a failure to trust God’s promises to us,” the priest continued.
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