America’s Catholic bishops have passed a measure formally barring Catholic hospitals from conducting gender transition procedures. Members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) voted on Wednesday to approve updates to the “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services,” the formal set of moral guidelines governing the Catholic practice of health care, in accord with the moral teachings of the Catholic Church. One of the updates included formally creating a policy forbidding Catholic hospitals and health care providers to conduct gender transition procedures.

“Health care in the United States is marked by extraordinary change. Not only is there continuing change in clinical practice due to technological advances, but the health care system in the United States is being challenged by both institutional and social factors as well,” the USCCB’s revised guidelines state. “Now, with American health care facing even more dramatic changes, we reaffirm the Church’s commitment to health care ministry and the distinctive Catholic identity of the Church’s institutional health care services.”

“Since ‘creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift,’ we have a duty ‘to protect our humanity,’ which means first of all, ‘accepting it and respecting it as it was created,’” the bishops wrote, highlighting the connection between human sexuality and human dignity. “In order to respect the nature of the human person as a unity of body and soul, Catholic health care services must not provide or permit medical interventions, whether surgical, hormonal, or genetic, that aim not to restore but rather to alter the fundamental order of the human body in its form or function,” the USCCB’s medical guidelines continued. “This includes, for example, some forms of genetic engineering whose purpose is not medical treatment, as well as interventions that aim to transform sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex (or to nullify sexual characteristics of a human body).”

“In accord with the mission of Catholic health care, which includes serving those who are vulnerable, Catholic health care services and providers ‘must employ all appropriate resources to mitigate the suffering of those who experience gender incongruence or gender dysphoria’ and to provide for the full range of their health care needs, employing only those means that respect the fundamental order of the human body,” the USCCB stipulated. “Since the human person is a unity of body and soul, Catholic health care professionals and their patients have the duty and the right to preserve the integrity of the human body.”

The new guidance builds on a doctrinal note published by the USCCB in March of 2023, which clarified that gender transition procedures cannot be considered morally licit or permissible. “What is true of creation as a whole is true of human nature in particular: there is an order in human nature that we are called to respect. In fact, human nature deserves utmost respect since humanity occupies a singular place in the created order, being created in the image of God,” the USCCB wrote at the time. “To find fulfillment as human persons, to find true happiness, we must respect that order. We did not create human nature; it is a gift from a loving Creator. Nor do we ‘own’ our human nature, as if it were something that we are free to make use of in any way we please.”

“In opposition to dualisms both ancient and modern, the Church has always maintained that, while there is a distinction between the soul and the body, both are constitutive of what it means to be human, since spirit and matter, in human beings, ‘are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature,’” the bishops explained, citing the Catechism of the Catholic Church. “The soul does not come into existence on its own and somehow happen to be in this body, as if it could just as well be in a different body. A soul can never be in another body, much less be in the wrong body. This soul only comes into existence together with this body. What it means to be a human person necessarily includes bodiliness.”

“Human bodiliness is, in turn, intrinsically connected with human sexual differentiation. Just as every human person necessarily has a body, so also human bodies, like those of other mammals, are sexually differentiated as male or female,” the USCCB clarified. “The human person, body and soul, man or woman, has a fundamental order and finality whose integrity must be respected. Because of this order and finality, neither patients nor physicians nor researchers nor any other persons have unlimited rights over the body; they must respect the order and finality inscribed in the embodied person.”

“What is widely in practice today, however, and what is of great concern, is the range of technological interventions advocated by many in our society as treatments for what is termed ‘gender dysphoria’ or ‘gender incongruence,’” the bishops noted. “These technological interventions are not morally justified either as attempts to repair a defect in the body or as attempts to sacrifice a part of the body for the sake of the whole. First, they do not repair a defect in the body: there is no disorder in the body that needs to be addressed; the bodily organs are normal and healthy,” they continued. “Instead, rather than to repair some defect in the body or to sacrifice a part for the sake of the whole, these interventions are intended to transform the body so as to make it take on as much as possible the form of the opposite sex, contrary to the natural form of the body. They are attempts to alter the fundamental order and finality of the body and to replace it with something else.”

“Such interventions, thus, do not respect the fundamental order of the human person as an intrinsic unity of body and soul, with a body that is sexually differentiated. Bodiliness is a fundamental aspect of human existence, and so is the sexual differentiation of the body,” the USCCB declared. “Catholic health care services must not perform interventions, whether surgical or chemical, that aim to transform the sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex or take part in the development of such procedures.”

The updated guidelines for Catholic medical practitioners are also based on the Vatican’s 2024 doctrinal declaration Dignitas Infinita, which observed that “humans are inseparably composed of both body and soul. In this, the body serves as the living context in which the interiority of the soul unfolds and manifests itself, as it does also through the network of human relationships.” Therefore, the Vatican declared that “any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.”

The Catholic Health Association lauded the new guidelines in a statement published just a few hours after the USCCB’s vote. “Regarding the new directives for the care of transgender persons, these changes are consistent with Catholic health care practice that does not allow for medical interventions that alter sexual characteristics absent an underlying condition,” the organization said. “Catholic providers will continue to welcome those who seek medical care from us and identify as transgender. We will continue to treat these individuals with dignity and respect, which is consistent with Catholic social teaching and our moral obligation to serve everyone, particularly those who are marginalized.”

Family Research Council’s Mary Szoch applauded the announcement. “I am especially grateful for USCCB’s decision to update the ethical and religious directives that govern Catholic hospitals to include a protection against hormonal or surgical transgender procedures,” she told The Washington Stand. “While the Catholic Church has always stood firmly against transgender ideology and certainly against any sort of medical interventions that violate the dignity of the human person, it is very helpful to see this position enshrined in Catholic hospitals’ governing documents. There are always people who seek to confuse the Church’s teachings on human dignity. This USCCB decision provides a clear response to any questions that should arise — and hopefully, it will prevent any Catholic hospitals from participating in the evil lie that a person’s God-given sex is changeable.”