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In the second part of our discussion with Father Hugh Barbour about Catholic Faith and the transgender movement, he brings out a forgotten document from Pope John XXIII. The document was never promulgated by the Second Vatican Council, but it says a great deal about how the Church thinks about sex, and sex “reassignment.”
Listen to the first part here: Aquinas on Transgenderism
Cy Kellett:
What the Second Vatican Council almost said about sex changes. Father Hugh Barber next.
Cy Kellett:
Hello, and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers Podcast for Living, Understanding and Defending Your Catholic Faith. Last time we talked with Father Hugh Barber about transgenderism and what Thomas Aquinas might have to say about that. We’ll get into a little bit more of that with Father here, but he brought out a document from the 1960s that the church considered, but never promulgated, about our sex lives. And it’s something to look back and think what might have been if the church had said this before the deepest years of the sexual revolution later in the ’60s? Here’s what Father Hugh Barber had to say about all of that, and particularly about what the church held then, and has always held, about mutilation for the purpose of a sex change.
Cy Kellett:
Father Hugh Barber.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Hello.
Cy Kellett:
From St. Michael’s Abbey.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Yes.
Cy Kellett:
Thank you for being with us again.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Yeah, great.
Cy Kellett:
Since we last spoke, a lot of interest in, I don’t even know if we’ve told you this, but a lot of people have viewed the video we did on Thomas Aquinas and transgenderism.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Uh huh.
Cy Kellett:
And so that suggests a great deal of interest, but we weren’t exhaustive in that, and there’s more things to discuss.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Okay, yes.
Cy Kellett:
And you have a very interesting book there, and maybe we’ll start there.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Yeah, I do. I can start as a little show and tell, you know how that was when you were in kindergarten …
Cy Kellett:
Oh yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
… first grade, you had show and tell. This is a very interesting document here. Where … there’s the camera.
Cy Kellett:
I don’t know … right there. Yeah. You’re probably holding it in the camera. [Latin 00:01:38].
Father Hugh Barbour:
[Latin 00:01:39] Okay. Very good. It’s [Latin 00:01:42], but otherwise your Latin’s perfect. All right. The schemes, the [Latin 00:01:47], that is the first drafts of the constitutions and decrees, which will be discussed in the sessions of the Council. This is the first series, so it’s the very first set of conciliar decrees proposed to the fathers of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, convoked by St. John XXIII in 1962. And these documents represent all of that, right there, represents what John XXIII thought would be the Second Vatican Council. And we know very well that he appeared the night of the first session of the Council on October 11th, 1962 in the window there from his apartments, with people down below. And it was a full moon, so he talked about the full moon and all that. And then he said that he thought that, well, we’ll be finished with this in six months.
Cy Kellett:
Yes.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Of course, it lasted until 1965.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Because what happened was, with the exception of the decree on the liturgy, which was pretty much … that’s the first one they discussed, and that one stayed pretty much the same in the version they discussed, all the other documents prepared were radically reworked, or replaced, or eliminated by a big surge of movement on the part of the northern hierarchy of Europe, especially Germany and France, broadly speaking. And that led to the elimination of certain documents. So there was one which, even they, at that time, had they been able to foretell the future, would’ve wanted to keep.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. So this is a fascinating document.
Father Hugh Barbour:
And it’s one that people don’t talk about. It’s there for historians. And as I said, the Roman theologians that had committees and drew these documents up chosen by John XXIII were genuinely discounted by the Northern Europeans as not being as serious theologians because they weren’t in touch with modern theological currents, especially those based on modern philosophy.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Father Hugh Barbour:
They didn’t have theologies based on Heidegger, or various Catholic versions of Kant, or modern philosophy, and so they weren’t as chic, and they weren’t as in active engagement with modern culture. And that’s an important point, and that’s something John Paul II resolved because he was a sophisticated, modern philosopher, but he also was a completely Orthodox theologian.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
But there was that tension. But these old guys that put these things together, and among them was John XXIII, because he was an old guy of the Roman school. He was not a theological innovator at all, and he made it very clear the first day of the Council, this is to maintain and defend the deposit of the faith.
Cy Kellett:
Yes.
Father Hugh Barbour:
But he had a constitution, a dogmatic constitution … I’ll show you the first page of it here, and …
Cy Kellett:
This is show and tell.
Father Hugh Barbour:
It is show and tell, but it’s just nice to see history because this was almost a document magisterium, but it has a certain authority because it was composed under the direction of St. John XXIII, who we regard as sort of the guardian spirit and inspiration of the Council.
Cy Kellett:
Sure.
Father Hugh Barbour:
All right. So there’s a schema of the dogmatic constitution. Get that, dogmatic constitution on chastity, matrimony, the family, and virginity.
Cy Kellett:
Imagine that at the beginning of the ’60s [crosstalk 00:05:15] church had done that.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Well you think [crosstalk 00:05:16] Paul VI in 1968.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
If they already had this document, it would’ve been a lot more helpful to deal with all the different questions. He did [foreign language 00:05:26] the absolute ground zero of sexual morality that marital relations are for procreation. They can’t eliminate or deliberately oppose procreation, which means there is no sexuality which is legitimate, which is …
Cy Kellett:
Which is not procreative.
Father Hugh Barbour:
… which renders procreation impossible by a positive action.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
We’re not talking about a woman after menopause or something like that, where it’s just a natural cycle of things, because there are two ends there. There’s the end end of procreation the obvious one, the natural one. But there’s also the end of the union of the couple in love. Those two things go together.
Father Hugh Barbour:
But never may one do anything contrary to either of those ends and to do something contrary to the procreative end renders the act completely immoral. And so that was made clear by Paul VI regarding contraception, but in this document it begins with a discussion. It says, well, first of all, the Christian faithful established among themselves, or make up a family, a great family in the universe, both from the virginal and sponsal, or spousal, relation of the church with Jesus Christ, who continually renders them fruitful by the power of his spirit gained by his precious blood. And then also brings forth the married life and the heavenly fruit of married life, namely the children of the Christian family, and so on.
Father Hugh Barbour:
So it begins with considering chasity in relation to our relationship to Christ, that we all are the spouses of Christ by grace in one great family of the church. But that that grace, which comes from our heavenly bride groom, is given to the church for the sake of those who live virginity and not bound in marriage, and those who are bound in marriage. And it comes from Him. So they start with Jesus and then they immediately then define the virtue of chasity and then say, what about the sexes? What about male and female? Because they started at the beginning.
Cy Kellett:
And this is 1962, right?
Father Hugh Barbour:
Two.
Cy Kellett:
And you think that, really, the sexual revolution, we’re right on the cusp of the worst … I mean, what I would call the worst years of the sexual revolution, right?
Father Hugh Barbour:
Right. Right.
Cy Kellett:
Where all sanity goes out [crosstalk 00:07:48].
Father Hugh Barbour:
All hell broke loose.
Cy Kellett:
And there’s a large portion of the church that says, “Look, we really don’t need to talk about these issues. Let’s talk about the important stuff like liturgy.” Right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Right, because you often heard that, or you read that of what the Council Fathers said. Some of them said, “Well, no one questions these teachings anymore. So we don’t need to talk about them.”
Cy Kellett:
Yes. Yes.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Well, but that’s that, wasn’t the case.
Cy Kellett:
Oops.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Oops. Yes.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Father Hugh Barbour:
And so it begins by pointing out that God made man and woman from the beginning, made man male and female, and he blessed them and said increase and multiply. I’m just looking at the Latin, so it’s kind of by the seat of my pants.
Cy Kellett:
You’re translating while you’re …
Father Hugh Barbour:
Okay.
Cy Kellett:
Want me to just translate? I’ll do it.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Right. And then … that’s okay. And then having given a blessing, he saw all the things which he made and he declared them to be very good. Interesting enough, consider this, it’s only after God says of Adam it is not good for man to be alone. The one thing God says is not good in the original creation. He makes everything. He says, “Oh, it’s not good for man to be alone. I will make a help meet for him.” And then the whole story of Eve’s coming forth from Adam after Adam’s inquiry. And so it’s only after the creation of Eve, when Adam is no longer alone, that God calls everything very good.
Cy Kellett:
Yes.
Father Hugh Barbour:
It’s good, good, good, and then after Eve, it’s very good. The complete compliment of the creation is accomplished. So that particular truth is underlined, but then I’m just … I’ll zip forward. I mean, it talks about the sex is being rooted in human nature, not for the purposes of eternal life, where, as our Lord says, they’re neither married nor given in marriage in the Kingdom of Heaven, because that’s the full number the human race will be fulfilled, but rather for the promotion and procreation of the human race, and for the union of human society, and love, and married love, and family, and all of that.
Father Hugh Barbour:
But then it says, “It should be noted that God alone is the absolute Lord of the life of Man and of his integrity. Namely, what pertains to those things, which make man naturally apt and associate him with God in the propagation of human life.” That’s a fancy way of saying God is the absolute Lord of our life, including our ability to transmit new life, okay? And our cooperation with him.
Father Hugh Barbour:
And then it says right away, and this is just the second page, it’s the third paragraph of the whole thing, “Whence, unspeakably wrong …” [Latin 00:10:25] is a Latin term, which means something is so bad you barely can speak it, all right? “Unspeakably, wrong are those attempts to change one’s own sex already sufficiently determined.” Right there.
Cy Kellett:
Man.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Right there. 1962. Who was talking about that? A few people. The famous Christine Jorgenson, some doctors in Sweden. When we were kids, they would say, “Well, someone went to Sweden.” Meaning …
Cy Kellett:
But even the subtlety of that statement is impressive to me in that already established, meaning in a case where you cannot determine the sex, which we do have those cases.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Yeah. They have surgeries that …
Cy Kellett:
Right. Okay, so there, we’re not imposing on that a predetermined outcome. But in every other case, once you can determine the sex, you don’t have the right to …
Father Hugh Barbour:
Right, and they’re very careful. It’s just how carefully they thought about these things.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Because in the case of someone that has a real physical defect, they can go by the chromosomes. But sometimes the bodily organ is so indeterminable that they might have to make something.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
I mean, there is a purpose for that sort of thing, but that’s very different. That’s in order to render the life of a person who’s already handicapped in that way, or as they say nowadays, different in that way, more bearable.
Cy Kellett:
Sure.
Father Hugh Barbour:
And less troublesome.
Cy Kellett:
But it impresses me that in 1962, the clarity of that language would be perfectly appropriate for today.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Right. Exactly. And these were all old Roman theologians at the Lateran University.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Who had names ending with -ini, and -elo, and, -etto, and [crosstalk 00:12:04] something or other. All Italians.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
All right?
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
And they were old school seminary Italians that taught out a Latin manuals and were classic in their outlook. But they knew what was going on.
Cy Kellett:
[crosstalk 00:12:26] you have a certain equipment …
Father Hugh Barbour:
Right. Well, this is more than St. Alphonsus In the sense that it’s also the philosophy and anthropology behind it all. And they knew what was going on in the modern world.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
It wasn’t like they were out touch.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. These were wise men.
Father Hugh Barbour:
In fact, what actually happens is that the progressives who wanted not … they didn’t talk about sex at all in the Council, and it’s barely mentioned. Imagine, right when this is all starting, there’s nothing about sex in the Council, practically nothing.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
There’s something about chasity and celibacy and all that, and married people and whatnot, but about the real problems going on in society, almost nothing. They saw it.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
And they were much more are up-to-date and current with the current needs than the supposedly with-it, progressives who believed in the so-called signs of the times. They didn’t recognize the signs at the times, that’s why they didn’t publish this thing. And if John XXIII had been alive, he would’ve said, “Hey, wait a minute.”
Father Hugh Barbour:
So those are unspeakably wrong, the attempts to change one’s own sex already sufficiently determined. Nor is it allowed, is it permissible, to save the health of the whole man to mutilate his general organs, or render him infertile, if otherwise his health can be provided for. Meaning that you don’t [crosstalk 00:13:39].
Cy Kellett:
You don’t have cancer of the …
Father Hugh Barbour:
Right. You can’t cause sterility, infertility, you can’t mutilate something unless there’s no other way to provide for the person’s health.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
And our reproductive system is a major system in our body of organs, and it serves a purpose that God has established for it. And we’re not allowed to mutilate any part of our body.
Cy Kellett:
No.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Unless it is for the purpose of saving the whole body, and there’s no other way to do that.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
And that’s part of the Principle of Double Effect. You might have to remove very important parts of the body or organs, but you do so only when you can do nothing else.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
And that’s certain cancers and other … or injuries or so on. And …
Cy Kellett:
I do feel like there we should just pause for a quick second.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Sure.
Cy Kellett:
Because I think there will be the person who will say, “But Father, I am so, almost obsessed, or I don’t … but bothered, or tormented, by the idea that I’m not a man, but I’m a woman, that it would be for my health to do this kind of mutilation.”
Father Hugh Barbour:
Well, what one would say there is that I’m not aware of cases where they have the actual mutilation of the sexual organs and reconstitution in the form of the opposite sex, or whatever they will do, independently of the expectation that the person will still be able to function sexually.
Cy Kellett:
I see.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Not to be too graphic, but they remake a man’s member and turn it into a vagina.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
But with all of the pleasure …
Cy Kellett:
Well, they keep the nerves and everything.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Right. They keep it all in. But there, you simply have a fiction that will never lead to a conception.
Cy Kellett:
I see.
Father Hugh Barbour:
So it’s only in view of sexual activity which is not procreative.
Cy Kellett:
Yes.
Father Hugh Barbour:
And therefore is not …
Cy Kellett:
And is not healthy, then. It’s not healthy.
Father Hugh Barbour:
It’s not healthy, morally, for the human, and not good for the human race in general to destroy the properly functioning organs that we have in order to make them into something that they are not.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
And so that’s a very clear indication that the purpose of sex is viewed as simply the maintenance of tactile, sensible pleasure.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Father Hugh Barbour:
And that’s a gruesome example, but that’s what’s going on.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
And that’s what had already been done by the time of the Council. So they simply say, “No, you can only mutilate a person if there is a reason that requires it because otherwise the whole body cannot be saved.” And there are few diseases which require the removal or mutilation of sexual organs. I mean, you can have testicular cancer.
Cy Kellett:
Sure.
Father Hugh Barbour:
You need to have a hysterectomy, but those two things do not render the person impotent or incapable of sexual relations, and they can still have them. But when the procreative power is completely eliminated, and deliberately, then you have a different situation.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
And this was all there. And then they go on and say, “And also in no case is there a right to transfer into the human body the sexual organs of animals or their seminal cells according to their own nature or otherwise.” That is, mixing human beings with animals.
Cy Kellett:
Wow.
Father Hugh Barbour:
And that … in laboratories. And there you are, they eliminate that too, that you cannot experiment with the procreative powers of animals and human beings by mixing the two together.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Right? And even now, there’s still calls for universal conventions against that and it is still generally regarded at least as unethical, if not immoral, in the medical profession to do that.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
To try to create the hybrids of human beings.
Cy Kellett:
But it’s kind of winked that a little bit. I mean, it’s a lot of …
Father Hugh Barbour:
Yeah, of course it is, because anything you can do …
Cy Kellett:
They want to do.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Power is the justification. If you can do it, then it’s okay. That’s what they say. But in any case, that’s that’s the first page. Second page. They already eliminated these things, and the church already had a clear teaching on it. That’s what John XXIII thought, and that’s why I think it’s legitimate to go back to his original intention in calling the Council and say, “Well, now the church has to do this work now because this heavy lifting wasn’t so heavy back then, and now it is.”
Cy Kellett:
Yes.
Father Hugh Barbour:
And no one was minding the store. One of the things about our beloved magisterium of the Catholic church, when the magisterium functions, there is nothing more magnificent, coherent, helpful, enlightening. But when it doesn’t function, and the guarantees we have are about a magisterium that’s functioning, that it will not lead us into error and all of that. But we don’t have a promise from Christ that those who have the magisterium will always do their jobs.
Cy Kellett:
No.
Father Hugh Barbour:
They may … some popes just be … take a vacation for their whole pontificate. There’s one pope that’s disputed as which one it was, a Renaissance pope who, when he is elected, he said, “Well, now we’re a pope. We shall enjoy it.” No, but this …
Cy Kellett:
At least he used the royal we when he said it. He knew that it was an exalted position. Yeah. Right. Right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
[crosstalk 00:18:57].
Father Hugh Barbour:
So now the magisterium has to pick up on these things, or else. I mean, if it doesn’t then we’re in trouble.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
So you have local bishops who do have a genuine magisterium in their own jurisdiction.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. They’re beginning [crosstalk 00:19:12].
Father Hugh Barbour:
That’s clear that they have to speak themselves. And so, for example, the Bishop of Arlington, Virginia.
Cy Kellett:
Burbidge.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Bishop Burbidge. He’s had a statement on the whole gender issue.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
And other bishops have had statements on pornography. You can imagine the bishop’s conference doesn’t have a joint statement on pornography. Imagine.
Cy Kellett:
I didn’t know that.
Father Hugh Barbour:
No. It doesn’t have a whole document on it.
Cy Kellett:
Wow.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Individual bishops have. At least to my knowledge, correct me if I’m wrong. But I know of nothing like that. So individual bishops make these statements, and they should, and especially if on a higher level, or a more universal level, if not higher, the bishop’s conference is higher than a local bishop, but it is more universal in tone.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
So it has a certain force because it’s more of them together, but the bishop’s conferences decrees are promulgated in each diocese basically by the bishop’s acquiescence to it.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Even though they vote and all that, the bishop has his authority directly from Christ, having been designated legitimately by the pope or whatever processes.
Father Hugh Barbour:
And so they can, they can write letters and make statements, and they should. If any bishop is ever listening, I say just pick up the [foreign language 00:20:20] of the council, which are no longer, as the cover says here [foreign language 00:20:23]. They’re no longer secret.
Cy Kellett:
Oh.
Father Hugh Barbour:
When they gave these out to the bishops at first, this was not to be revealed to the press.
Cy Kellett:
[inaudible 00:20:28].
Father Hugh Barbour:
Right, because they’re supposed to discuss it. And you’ll see how magnificently these things are laid out. And also the footnotes for all of this, look at all that. Footnotes, just for those two pages right there.
Cy Kellett:
Wow.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Harken back to other things in the churches previous magisterium, especially Pius XII, who had a lot to say about sexuality, but also canons of [inaudible 00:20:57] and other [inaudible 00:21:00] and other decrees. So that it backs it up with previous teaching. But I would say that’s the sad thing is that the standard Catholic teaching regarding bodily mutilation has been forgotten because we focus entirely upon what we regard as the psychological needs of the person.
Cy Kellett:
Yes.
Father Hugh Barbour:
I would say one should never mutilate or destroy an entire system of our body. In the case of the others, you would die. If someone got rid of your [crosstalk 00:21:31] your respiratory system, or your digestive system or your skin, the major organ that protects your whole body.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
The thing about the procreation is procreation is not for the individual, it’s for the species. So there you’re actually signing a death warrant for human beings as such, and the act of going beyond the individual, into the relationship of marriage so as to bring forth new life. So it’s particularly grave because it affects the common good, more radically.
Cy Kellett:
But there’s a total reversal in the sense that after the panic about overpopulation in the sixties and seventies, people think the defense of the common good means fewer children, not plenty of children.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Well ask the government of China if they think that now.
Cy Kellett:
You’re right. I agree. Right. It is ,,,
Father Hugh Barbour:
The thing is they want to control it. That’s the thing is all these theories, it’s someone who wants to control people’s behavior and limit their freedom. And the fact is, once you get married you are free to have as many children as you want. Of course, you have to use that as legitimately and responsibly and prudently as you can, but the emphasis should not be on limiting the number of children. It should be on being generous and having as many children as you can legitimately care for. You have to bring them forth into life and be able to educate them.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
And educate doesn’t mean sending them to school. It means bring them up spiritually and morally, and that includes also education and school, so that they can be full members of the church, worshiping God and serving their neighbor. And that’s the purpose of marriage. Otherwise, the love of the two people become suspect because it’s not ordered towards fruitfulness. That doesn’t mean that you can accuse couples that decide only to have … as long as they decide so morally, only to have a set number of children. They can’t be accused of mortal sin. If a couple decides we are going to practice periodic continence and we only are going to have three kids, you can lament that, but you say, “But look, you make so much money, you could actually have more.” But you can’t say they’re committing a grave sin because they can choose to do that. They are free. And as long as they don’t use immoral means to limit the number of their children, we cannot stand in judgment of them.
Cy Kellett:
No.
Father Hugh Barbour:
And so you get that with some people among Catholics who were enthusiasts for large families, which is important. I’m all for it too, but they shouldn’t get to the point where they treat people that use periodic continence or other legitimate means of regulating conceptions …
Cy Kellett:
No, of course not.
Father Hugh Barbour:
… naturally as though they were doing something wrong, and that exists nowadays.
Cy Kellett:
But I do think you take a lot of the fun out of life when you don’t let us judge each other, Father.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Oh, well, you know …
Cy Kellett:
It’s one of the great pleasures of life is judging other people.
Father Hugh Barbour:
It’s true because it gives you something to do when you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing.
Cy Kellett:
Exactly.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Right. Right. Yeah. Minding somebody else’s …
Cy Kellett:
I want to go back to where you were heading, if I may.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Sure. Sure. Please.
Cy Kellett:
So, first of all, I’m fascinated by this document and I’m going to read this document now, and I’m very grateful to you for bringing it to the attention …
Father Hugh Barbour:
Well we can start. [Latin 00:24:30].
Cy Kellett:
I’m not reading it Latin. I’m going to find an English translation.
Father Hugh Barbour:
No, it doesn’t exist.
Cy Kellett:
There’s no English translation?
Father Hugh Barbour:
There’s no English translation. No.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, well fine then. All right, well, I’ll learn my Latin then.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Okay. Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
Finally I’ll learn my Latin.
Cy Kellett:
But after this consideration of the document, you were moving towards a conversation about the Catholic understanding of the mutilation of the body.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Okay. Yes. Right.
Cy Kellett:
And you had raised up this idea that we are so delicate about the psychology of the person now that we have forgotten the underlying moral understanding of the human body that the church holds.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Exactly. And to have a wholistic view towards psychology, and to tell someone, “You have intense feelings now, but feelings pass and rarely do particular dispositions remain exactly the same throughout life. And if you make a bodily change of a major sort in your body, a day will come when you will have buyer’s remorse. You will be sorry about it. You’ll be sorry you did it.” This happens over and over again. The news of that is suppressed by a media which is determined, doggedly determined, to promote this ideology.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
And so if you try, it’s the same with abortion, if you try to publicly announce or show that you regret that you had this done and you would undo it if you could, no one’s going to listen to you. You will not be asked to talk on a radio talk show at NPR.
Cy Kellett:
No.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Like women who are traumatized by their abortions. They have no voice.
Cy Kellett:
No. They don’t fit the narrative.
Father Hugh Barbour:
All you can get is … right. They don’t fit the narrative, and the narrative is really cruel, and it’s damaging to people, and they do it all in the name of liberty and individual freedom and all of that. And in point of fact, it’s a recipe for misery. People need to be told the whole truth. Yes, you feel like you’d like to be a person of the opposite sex, or no sex, but your body tells a different story, and throughout your life you’re going to have a struggle in this regard, but don’t do something to your body that will not be able to be changed in the future, especially as regards your very bodily nature as male and female. Just leave it because time will come that you will regret it. I’ve worked with people before and I just say, “Look, at least do this: don’t do any changes to your appearance that are immutable.”
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Right. So someone may determined to wear the clothes of the opposite sex. That’s a question about which I’m writing an article for the online magazine. But in that case, you just say, “But please don’t do anything to mutilate your body. If you can’t resist doing that, at least don’t do something that is irreparable.”
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
And that’s a key point. I don’t like to talk about these things insofar as they’re grave sins. They are, they can be, but in our current civilization, you have to convince people on the level of the heart that this is really bad for them. And because the world has so distorted the discourse that already, if you even oppose these things to a little degree, you are presented as a hateful person who’s trying to harm the person. That’s why they use this language. Someone will express a reservation about transgenderism, and then there’ll be an immediate, “I don’t feel safe with him in the classroom. He can’t be here.”
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
“I’m not safe.” Perceiving anyone that disagree is with you as a threat, and that shows the genuinely exaggerated, hysterical nature of these reactions.
Cy Kellett:
Sure.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Because they’re doing it deliberately in order to force an opinion and to shut down anyone that doesn’t agree.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
And so it doesn’t help, then, for the person who’s speaking the truth about this to then add in theological aspects. Which we may, please God, it may be true that people have been so confused by what’s been going on that they’re not culpable. They believe this is okay.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, I’m sure. [crosstalk 00:28:36].
Father Hugh Barbour:
If a kid is taught from kindergarten on that he can decide to whether to be a boy or a girl, that has an impact. St. Thomas Aquinas himself says that a certain bringing can make a person invincibly ignorant, not of the Catholic faith, but of the natural law.
Cy Kellett:
Right. If you’re raised in a criminal family, as we’ve seen many times across many cultures, if you’re raised in a criminal family who normalizes that and even says, it’s good to be the criminal, well, you’re much less culpable, maybe not culpable at all. But one of the thing we’re seeing, and I thought Bishop Burbidge made this point, at least began to explore this point in his letter, is that especially young people with already presenting conditions like major depression, psychosis, autism, are overrepresented among those who then go on to say, “I’m a transgender person.”
Cy Kellett:
It strikes me that … okay, well, this is something that should not be ignored, first of all, and act like, well, this is not the case. But secondly, it seems to me that there’s a kind of encouraging people to say, “well, maybe this is a cure for your autism.” So to speak. In a certain sense, they have a hope that, well, what’s really wrong with me is I’m a girl, not a boy. And I think that’s where much of the regret comes from, is there’s a certain … there really is a level of gross injustice done to many people who are vulnerable, who are encouraged to think, well just pursue this course, and this will be a cure for it.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Absolutely. Right. And if society were more broad minded about the limits of acquired conventional gender related behavior, and I use gender there positively meaning sex insofar as it is conventional.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
But always with the idea that sex is basic, but gender things are conventional, like the gender of nouns in certain languages, that if we were more broad minded about the comportments that are compatible with being of one sex or another, that would make it easier for people that genuinely do feel a certain affection for the activities or the behaviors of the opposite sex.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
That exists. It always has. It’s very interesting in our society, and it’s very clear, the feminists are right, it was okay for a girl to be a tomboy.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
But not for a boy to be a sissy.
Cy Kellett:
No.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Mm Mm.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
And that goes back to that [inaudible 00:31:01] affect, where they’re trying to … they basically make the same sex attraction out to be a pathology instead of as a temperamental aspect, which the child must be raised so is not to sexualize it when the child reaches puberty.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
That’s what needs to be done.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
They need to have happy relationships with their own sex that are peer relationships where they can see that what they need is not pseudo-procreative activity, but rather to have happy friendships and possibly a happy marriage, even. But in any case, that toleration of a wider range of behaviors, which sophisticated people always had. The overeducated and the wealthy were much more open-minded about the varieties of comportment a person was allowed to adopt.
Cy Kellett:
Sure.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Because they didn’t have to care what people thought of them.
Cy Kellett:
No, they had the money …
Father Hugh Barbour:
A man, rich man, can dress fantastically and have weird habits and whatnot, and people don’t say anything.
Cy Kellett:
That’s why I want to be rich.
Father Hugh Barbour:
But a man that’s under somebody’s authority and is just basically trying to survive, the same goes with women …
Cy Kellett:
Yes.
Father Hugh Barbour:
… then they have to be careful because people are judging them all the time. So if our culture were a little more open, that would also be a possibility apart from the question of autism.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Yeah. But that’s very interesting, that there’s a kind of Victorian categorizing that … it’s not Christian. And we confused those two things. A good Christian thinks that, “A man’s got to be this kind of man” or some … we got to separate that.
Father Hugh Barbour:
There are beautiful examples of middle American Evangelical Protestant masculinity. And that is a beautiful thing. And when you see it, it’s a lovely thing. The same goes with Catholics.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
But that is not the whole story …
Cy Kellett:
No.
Father Hugh Barbour:
… about how men can behave, or women can behave.
Cy Kellett:
Sure.
Father Hugh Barbour:
That’s why we have Christian or Catholic hipsters. We have hipsters going to [inaudible 00:32:53] mass and wearing piercings and being extremely odd and not Midwestern Evangelical mainstream.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
You know?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
But they’re still totally men or women.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
That is, the church doesn’t come down usually, or wisely, with strong opinions about these sorts of things, because there’s a certain level of freedom of self-expression, and cultural norms are important, but when you see people going outside of the norm in comportment proper, or customary for the sexes, one has to wait a little bit and not catastrophize it and make it out to be more than it is.
Cy Kellett:
Right. Yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
You know?
Cy Kellett:
Yes.
Father Hugh Barbour:
And certainly, there’s a certain point when you have, that … I mean, Mother Theresa called a Swiss Guard who was having a temper tantrum in the kitchen. He’d been punished and had to go work in the kitchen for the sisters in their soup kitchen in the Vatican. And he was having a fit, getting all upset and whatnot. And he didn’t notice the little nun next to him, and that was Mother Theresa washing the dishes. And so he had it and he just threw everything down to leave, and she turned to him and said, “Sissy.” Of course, she was calling a six foot five, strong Swiss Guard that.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Father Hugh Barbour:
And she left a miraculous medal for him, this was given after she’d left. He got it. This is a story. He got it and lost it. But he was very angry at her for calling him a sissy. And he says, “Next time I see her,” because there are papal ceremonies, “I’m going to tell her that she didn’t have the right to tell me that.” So he is all ready to do it, but he lost the medal. But he didn’t think anything of it at the time, and he saw her coming down from the platform of the square, where the mass was, towards his direction. So he turned to go over and speak to her. Well, she was coming over to him. She came over, she looked up at him, and she’s very tiny, and he was very tall, and she handed him another miraculous medal and said, “Don’t lose it this time, sissy.”
Cy Kellett:
No she did not.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Yes. She knew he’d lost it. He didn’t tell anybody. Now that kind of thing is not necessarily illegitimate when you know the person is perfectly self-possessed and confident and you’re just saying, “Come on.”
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, come on, get on over yourself a little bit.
Father Hugh Barbour:
But a little boy who’s tender and frightened and whatnot. When an older man … what older men say to younger men is extremely important. It’s much more important than what younger men say to each other. It’s what you hear from your elders, the message you get from them is all important, and has to be affirming, kind, encouraging, a positive, but also protective, and also admonitory, and …
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Father Hugh Barbour:
… prohibitive also, sometimes. But it has to be all those things. And just because the father has a weak grasp of his masculinity, so that he feels like if his son doesn’t reflect immediately qualities that he wants, and therefore says nasty things to his little child, because the kid’s not reacting the way he wants, he’s going to get the result that he doesn’t want.
Cy Kellett:
Yes.
Father Hugh Barbour:
He’s going to frighten the child away from masculinity because it’ll be viewed as something unreachable, unattainable.
Cy Kellett:
Right. He can’t be like his father.
Father Hugh Barbour:
Right. And he is hurt by it. So we have to be very careful, culturally, to be sensitive to those things while encouraging people to take on the proper role that goes with their sex: husband, wife, father, mother, or consecrated person. But there you are. Anyway.
Cy Kellett:
All right.
Cy Kellett:
Father, may we have your blessing?
Father Hugh Barbour:
Oh, yes. Right. [foreign language 00:36:34]. Amen.
Cy Kellett:
Amen. [crosstalk 00:36:37]
Father Hugh Barbour:
[crosstalk 00:36:35]
Cy Kellett:
Father, he was wrong. I looked it up online. You can get an English translation of that draft of the dogmatic constitution on chastity, marriage, the family, and virginity. So now I am going to read it. Hope you’ve enjoyed these. We appreciate your comments. If you want to maybe suggest another episode or something that we got wrong, that we could maybe explore more deeply, or something that’s unrelated to what we just did, you’d just like to suggest it for an episode of Focus, you can always contact us. Just send us an email: focus@catholic.com. Focus@catholic.com is our email address.
Cy Kellett:
We do need your financial support to continue to do what we here, and you can do that by going to givecatholic.com. Leave a little note that says it’s for Catholic Answer’s Focus. Givecatholic.com. You know what to do if you’re watching on YouTube: like and subscribe right down there, or over there. I actually don’t know where it is on your screen right now, but if you like and subscribe, it helps to grow the podcast on YouTube, and that helps Zach keep his job. If you’re listening on any of the podcast services, if you give us that five stars and maybe a few nice words, that will help to grow the podcast as well. I’m Cy Kellet, your host. So happy you were here with us this time. We’ll see you next time, God willing, right here on Catholic Answer’s Focus.