Catholics should not use preferred gender pronouns and names

It's not "sinful" to refuse to lie—quite the opposite, in fact.

In the digital pages of National Catholic Reporter, Fr. Daniel P. Horan, OFM—Director of the Center for Spirituality and Professor of Philosophy, Religious Studies, and Theology at Saint Mary’s College—has argued that Catholics should use people’s preferred gender pronouns and names. In Fr. Horan’s telling, “Calling individuals by the names and pronouns they prefer” not only “follows from the ‘golden rule’ of doing unto others what you would like others to do unto you (see Matthew 7:12), but it also aligns well with the important role names have throughout Christian Scripture and tradition.” Indeed, “insisting on calling individuals by a name not of their choosing, let alone intentionally refusing to reference or address them by their preferred name or pronoun” is not only “rude and hostile” but “unchristian and sinful.”

Those are strong words. Especially for someone breathlessly concerned with “human rights violations”—what of the human rights violation of inflicting verbal-based trauma, Father? Have you no shame?

Sarcasm aside, Fr. Horan is deeply mistaken about what it takes to heed the two greatest commandments—“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength” and “your neighbor as yourself” (Mk. 12:30-31).

To correctly navigate the issue, we must begin with first principles. Jesus tells us that in “the beginning,” God “made them male and female” (Mt. 19:4). Inscribed in the very order of Creation, then, is the basic truth that men are not women, and women are not men; they are different. Because “[a]ll things came into being through [the Word of God], and without him not one thing came into being” (Jn. 1:3), there is an inner unity to the cosmos. Which is why it’s not surprising that the lofty realm of scriptural theology flows neatly into the down-to-earth discipline of human biology.

In humans, “reproductive sex is a strict binary. Males and females produce different gametes, i.e., special cells designed to meet in reproduction”—namely, the sperm and the ovum. Importantly, “[s]ex is defined with explicit reference to having the reproductive structures in place to produce either gamete.” Thus, who we are, at a biological level, is not up to us. Our nature is not something we choose; rather, it’s a “very good” gift from our Creator (Gen. 1:31).

Fr. Horan doesn’t say this, but it’s clear that he begins from somewhere very different. For him, people are, at least as to certain things, self-creating. In Fr. Horan’s view, nature is not fixed but, rather, malleable according to human desire, molded by human will, and cemented by social validation. On that shaky foundation, he proceeds to argue for his conclusion by way of an inapt analogy and a misunderstanding of Scripture.

What’s in a name?

Fr. Horan’s legal name is “Daniel,” though he generally goes by “Dan.” And just as it would be disrespectful for someone to insist on and persist in calling him “Daniel” when he didn’t want them to, so, too, would it be disrespectful for someone to fail to use another’s preferred name or gender pronouns. However, the strength of this comparison is superficial; the critical difference is that the former action is not a lie, whereas the latter is.

Simply put, to use language that rejects reality is to lie, and nobody, Catholics included, is morally obligated to lie in order to affirm someone else’s unreality.

Suppose Patrick wants others to call him “Patricia” and use female pronouns when referring to him because Patrick believes he is a woman and wants everyone else to agree. That is a lie, and someone who went along with it would be complicit in perpetuating a falsehood about the nature of reality itself, supposedly in the name of “respect” and “tolerance.”

Fr. Horan tries, but fails, to draw a convincing equivalence between that just-described, commonsense position—which is rooted in charity and obedience to truth—and the ugliness of chattel slavery in antebellum America and the contemporary oppression of China’s Uyghur population by the Chinese Communist Party. But there is nothing at all “dehumanizing” about firmly insisting (charitably, of course) that every cell of Patrick’s body is male, and that it benefits nobody, least of all Patrick himself, to overhaul language itself so that he can better avoid that truth about himself.

Sloppy and shameful misuse of sacred Scripture

Fr. Horan also invokes Scripture to support his argument:

the long-standing history of name changes within the Catholic tradition . . . are associated with one’s religious discernment and deepening sense of identity before God and others. The significance of names, the changing of names and the importance of being identified by a preferred name is also present throughout the entirety of the Bible. From Abram to Abraham and Sara to Sarah, to the angelic revelations about the names John and Jesus in the Gospels and the change from Saul to Paul in the Acts of the Apostles, embracing a new identity tied to a new nominal expression is commonplace and rooted in our faith tradition.

But such name changes are just that: the grace-filled fruit of a person’s deepening transparency and authenticity before God (and instigated by God Himself, it’s important to note), not repudiations of basic biological facts. It’s terribly hubristic, not to mention a big-time category error, to compare someone’s act of “personal agency and self-identification,” which obscures the truth about them, with the sovereign acts of God, which more fully reveal the truth about them.

Cardinal Robert Sarah puts the problem strikingly: “Gender ideology is a Luciferian refusal to receive a sexual nature from God.” It is a dishonest rebellion against the structure of reality itself, and our place in it, as creatures. It is a lie. And without fail, lies great and small stack up and destroy lives, communities, and nations.

To refuse to participate in their spread is an act of heroism, precisely in line with authentic Catholicism. Study up, Fr. Horan. Or didn’t you learn all this at Boston College, where you got your PhD?

Since publication, this post has been updated to correct some spelling errors, as well as add a missing citation to the Gospel of John. —DAK