In the hoity-toity area of Washington D.C. is a community known as Georgetown, along with the famous Jesuit university which bears its name. The area is so exclusive and affluent, the D.C. Metrorail doesn’t have a stop there and it can only be accessed publicly by bus – which stops not at the campus, but close by. Many future doctors who will be caring for your children are being trained there annually. How they are being trained at this prestigious Catholic university will shock you and is an embarrassment to Catholics and Christians who still believe in moral doctrines.
To no one’s complete surprise, Georgetown University is in full compliance with the LGBTQ agenda and even finances a LGBTQ resource center. The present environment of sexual inclusivity created by the university and all that agenda entails is already dishonoring Catholic moral ethics. Add to that scandal is the latest news about the medical school now promoting puberty blockers, hormone therapy and genital mutilation in a required first-year medical class.
Amber Athey, writing for Spectator Magazine, reported that a Georgetown University Medical School lecturer, Dr. David S. Reitman, teaches a mandatory course entitled, “Transgender Health Care”. According to the PowerPoint slides used as a reference during the lectures, Reitman makes claims which are in direct opposition to Catholic faith and teaching.
Reitman asserts that patients suffering from gender dysphoria are prone to commit suicide if they are not treated with puberty blockers and hormone therapy. He further contends that from infancy, a child is aware of gender differences and is adamant that such procedures are reversible.
But even the liberal New York Times has trouble with Reitman’s assertions. A piece published in May 2021 commented “that more research is needed to fully understand the impact [puberty blockers] may have on certain patients’ fertility. There is also little known about the drugs’ lasting effects on brain development and bone mineral density.”
Catholic citizens of Illinois concurred with the New York Times. “But doctors have no way of knowing whether these treatments truly are reversible, because very few people have ever sought to have them reversed: ‘There are virtually no published reports, even case studies, of adolescents withdrawing from puberty-suppressing drugs, and then resuming the normal pubertal development typical for their sex.’”
When Athey reached out for an expert opinion, she called on John E. Brahany, the executive vice president and director of institutional relations at the National Catholic Bioethics Center. Brehany is quoted as saying: “While you can’t point to one specific Catholic teaching that condemns the practice, if you apply traditional moral principles about respect for the human body, both of protecting and taking good care of the body and of not destroying, damaging or sacrificing a part of one’s body except for a very good, well-founded reason, then it would certainly be the position of the National Catholic Bioethics Center that this is unethical.”
With all due respect to Dr. Brehany, moral teaching in regards to the topic of child mutilation is specific and is well- defined because it is at the heart of Catholic teaching and belief. Every Catholic believes that God is the creator of all things, visible and invisible. Our belief is further strengthened by his Word given through Scripture explaining the creative process of God: “God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female- he created them.”
To hold to a position espousing the fluidness of creation, as does the Georgetown professor, is to doubt each individual was created either a man or a woman. But notice that men and women were the only creatures created that share a likeness with God. Since God is spiritual, the image the ancient authors are describing is spiritual as well. The spiritual likeness has been known for millennia as a person ‘s immortal soul. So when God created men and women, and every one of their offspring thereafter, God created them with souls; not generically speaking, but souls which were either masculine or feminine depending on the outward characteristics of the body. No matter how much you want to change the outward appearance of a person, you can never change that person’s masculine or feminine soul.
Secondly, to infer a perfectly formed boy or girl was created by mistake is to insinuate that God is not all powerful and good. And if God is not all powerful and good, then he is not God, but some kind of super creature, anathema to Catholic doctrine.
Finally, God tells our first parents, “Be fertile and multiply”. By willfully changing the outward appearance of patients for some kind of psychological placebo outwardly disobeys the will of God because none of those patients will ever follow the command of being fruitful. Simply put, sin is the willful denial of God’s commands. Sinning is obviously not acceptable in Catholic teaching.
What Georgetown University is trying to do is to split the baby and still retain the affiliation they choose to be–Catholic. You can’t have it both ways. Either Georgetown is a Catholic university or it is not. If they choose to remain Catholic, they must stop immediately teaching future doctors to abuse children by promoting puberty blockers, hormone therapy and genital mutilation.