Cardinal Fernández Issues ‘Clarification’ to Vatican Document, Suggests Church Approval of Gender Mutilation in ‘Severe Dysphoria’ Cases

Another "pastoral approach" designed to undermine the infallible doctrine of the Church. "Male and female He created them." Genesis 1:27

From Catholic Vote

In a striking departure from established Church teaching, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández has signaled that sex “change” surgeries may be morally acceptable under certain conditions. 

Cardinal Fernández, the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) offered this perspective in a conference he delivered via video to a Theological congress organized by the Catholic University of Cologne (Germany) in mid January. But then in March, the Cardinal posted the conference as an official “clarification” of Dignitas infinita, the Church’s 2024 declaration on human dignity.

While Dignitas infinita firmly rejected gender ideology and condemned sex “change” procedures as incompatible with human dignity, Cardinal Fernández’s “clarification” — posted in the dicastery’s official website exclusively in German and Italian — introduces a reinterpretation that departs from the document’s original moral clarity.

Dignitas infinita states, “[A]ny sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.”

Rather than reiterate the document’s opposition to the legitimacy of gender mutilation surgery outright, the Prefect suggested that its morality depends on the severity of a person’s suffering. 

“When the document uses the expression ‘as a rule,’ it does not exclude the possibility that there are cases outside the norm,” Cardinal Fernández said. He referenced cases of “severe dysphoria” which might lead a person toward suicide. 

In those instances, he suggested, medical interventions that would otherwise be morally impermissible might need to be “assessed with great care.”

“We don’t want to be cruel and say that we don’t understand the conditioning of people and the deep suffering that exists in some cases of ‘dysphoria,’ which manifests itself even in childhood,” he said. 

This marks a noteworthy departure from the original Church stance. Dignitas infinita acknowledges only a narrow set of exceptions for surgery — specifically when correcting anatomical anomalies to align with genetic sex. 

In contrast, Cardinal Fernández has now suggested that procedures intended to “change” one’s biological sex could be considered morally acceptable if motivated by “severe dysphoria” or suicidal ideation.

The DDF has not provided a framework for when gender dysphoria can be considered “severe.” In a highly critical analysis of Cardinal Fernandez’s “clarification,” Italian moral theologian Tommaso Scandroglio wrote in a March 27 Daily Compass article that “for the Prefect, the ‘change’ of sex is morally acceptable when the dysphoria is severe.”

“But surgical interventions that contradict the genetic sex are intrinsically evil acts and remain so regardless of the conditions that motivate them,” Scandroglio wrote. “This is why Cardinal Fernández has accepted the principle of ‘yes to sex reassignment.’ Once the principle has been accepted, logical consistency will take us from borderline cases to common cases, from the exceptional to the normal.

Pictured: Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, Heretic-in-Chief of the DDF, formerly the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition