The Church and “Gender Theory”: Theory, Rhetoric and Practice

“Gender theory”, and the more hostile “gender ideology”, are prominent terms in Catholic rhetoric around transness, feminism and queerness. They encompass a broad range of theoretical and political developments that stake out a social transformation that many Catholic commentators see as incompatible with Catholicism – not to mention a threat to institutions such as the family and traditional sexual values.

While this rhetoric has received a great deal of attention in secular scholarship, often focusing on its wider context as part of national and international anti-gender movements, it has been given relatively little attention in Catholic academic inquiry. The upshot is that the prominence of the term within Catholic discourse outstrips the extent to which the Church itself has carefully reflected upon it, as both an analytical category and a rhetorical device.

A further implication of this unexamined rhetoric is that the Church’s stance towards various social and political phenomena, along with trans people themselves, remains shaped by the “gender theory”/“gender ideology” frame – while the implications of this framing have gone mostly unexamined.

This poses a problem for a Church that wishes to engage reflectively and reflexively with the challenging and contentious questions that arise around sex, gender, and the other issues that are folded under concerns around ‘gender theory’. In turn, this has broader implications for the practice of Catholic organisations that may find themselves asking these questions in the course of their activities, as well as for pastoral workers who need to engage with the presence of trans people in the Church and the society in an informed and reflective manner.

This online conference aims to address this deficit, featuring a range of papers exploring Catholic ‘gender theory’ discourse from a range of disciplinary perspectives. Click here to download the brochure.