Dear Anon:

Thank you for your kind words. I do hope this ministry helps people.

I did not know the answer to this question, so I had to do some research. What I found was not what I expected.

Apparently there is a lot of controversy in the scientific community over the issue of transgender persons. I guess the studies show that those people who have had sex-change operations have not faired as well as it has been presumed.

It also appears that the genetic sex of these people is either male or female, and thus gender reassignment is, in effect, only cosmetic physically, and psychological, and not actual. The person is the gender his genetics says he is.

I found this summary of the issue from a Catholic perspective from the Conference of Catholic Bishops of England and Wales, Department for Christian Responsibility and Citizenship:

What is Transsexualism?

With an issue of this kind, the church's moral reflection proceeds from an understanding of the nature of the condition. Transsexualism is described as a condition involving the following five criteria:

•  sense of discomfort and inappropriateness about one's anatomical sex

•  wish to be rid of one's own genitals and to live as a member of the other sex

•  the disturbance has been continuous (not limited to periods of stress) for at least two years

•  absence of physical intersex or genetic abnormality; and

•  not caused by another mental disorder such as schizophrenia

There is at present only limited knowledge and understanding of the causes of transsexualism.   In particular, it is as yet unproven whether it has a physiological basis; rather research suggests it is psychological and sociological elements that are the key factors.  Transsexual persons suffer from "gender dysphoria syndrome, that is, an anxiety, sometimes reaching suicidal depression, as the result of an obsessive feeling" that the opposite sex is their true sex.  But unlike hermaphrodites transsexual persons do not have physical ambiguities; their tension stems from believing that they ought to have bodies with sexual characteristics of the opposite sex from those they were born with.

 A Catholic Perspective

Transsexual people are fully entitled to help and support from the community, and as people suffering and in need have a special claim to help from the Christian community.  In their interests and the promotion of the common good of society, there is a natural response to ease their suffering by providing appropriate medical and psychological help and support, and for those who choose to do so, to ease their life in society when they choose to live permanently as a member of the opposite sex.  There is, however, a distinction between easing the social life of transsexual people so they can live as belonging to their acquired gender, and full legal recognition with the right to marry in that gender.  The Home Office report of an Interdepartmental Working Group on Transsexual People in April 2000 discussed these two options at length.  Although it is clear that the recent court judgements have forced the UK government to act, and recognising too that we are dealing here with a relatively small number of people with an unusual condition, it must nonetheless be doubtful whether the radical step proposed by this Bill will serve the common good.

From the perspective of Catholic teaching, marriage can only be between a man and a woman.   And in the present state of uncertain knowledge in which there is no clear biological basis for saying otherwise, the gender of a transsexual person is that which they have when they are born, and gender reassignment surgery must therefore be seen as morally questionable.  There is no convincing evidence that a gender can really be changed or aquired, much less chosen.  Furthermore, many Christians would hold on theological grounds that gender is given before birth and cannot be changed.  For both these reasons those who receive gender recognition certificates from the state under this Bill would not be able to marry in a Catholic church in their acquired gender.  For the same reason, a transsexual person who came forward in their acquired gender for ordination to the Catholic priesthood would not be able to be ordained.

This document was in response to specific legislation being proposed in England concerning certain rights under law for those who have undergone gender reassignment. The Bishops are saying that regardless of surgical reassignment and psychological self-identification, a person is still ontologically male or female according to their genetics and thus cannot be married in the Church under a different gender, or be ordained.

The Bishops are correct in the lack of evidence of the idea that a person can be in the wrong "body."

For more information on this I refer to the following:

"Surgical Sex," by Paul McHugh, University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University: First Things: Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life.

"The Desire For A Sex Change," by Richard Fitzgibbons, M.D.: National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (first published in Ethics & Medics, October 2005, Volume 30, 10,  National Catholic Bioethics Center) 
 
It would appear that this condition is a mental disorder. As for a spiritual warfare connection, it is possible. Demons like to attach themselves to problems that already exist. I do not see any evidence that demons are "causing" this condition, but as with any other disordered condition of human experience, they may attach themselves to this problem to make things worse than they have to be.

I hope this helps.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary