Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

In January, Shelray did a post about a San Francisco man suing a Catholic Hospital in Daly City for refusing to give him a sex change operation. Well apparently the hospital caved under the pressure of a court order according to an EWTN feed from CWN. This is most unfortunate but I suppose that it is encouraging that they resisted to start with. However, what is problematic is that the hospital is said to have released the following statement:

“We regret any confusion that may have come from this situation. We want this patient and her physician to know that they are welcome at Seton Medical Center.”

In doing so they not only have caved into the pressure but they also have abetted this suffering soul’s confusion by referring to him as a woman and seeming to imply that they were wrong to have refused the mutilating procedure (aka breast enhancement operation) in the first place.

Any way, it turns out that the man, “Charlene” Hastings will not have his mutilation done at the Catholic hospital, Seton Medical Center, because he would feel that the hospital “is doing it under duress.” Nevertheless, he is going forward with the civil suit for monetary damages according to his lawyer. That is a surprise.

The local CBS TV news station reports that “transgender Charlene Hastings has claimed moral victory against Catholics.” That after all is what “Charlene” is really after.  I suspect that even in his confusion he still senses that his interior conflict is not the fact that he is a woman in a man’s body but that he is in fact really a man who cannot come to terms with his sexual identity. Thus, he needs continual reaffirmation that he is correct in his desire to reconcile this conflict by mutilating his body such that it makes him look like he feels. Of course, the lawyer’s goal is just as pathological but has nothing to do with moral victories. Nevertheless, perhaps in order to satisfy his victim’s, errr, client’s need for affirmation, he provides the following:

The CBS 5 News station characterized the statement as a “veiled apology.” It said, “transgender Charlene Hastings has claimed moral victory against Catholics.” According to the California Catholic Daily, Hasting’s attorney, Chris Dolan, said that a lawsuit seeking monetary damages would proceed.

“Like any good religious experience, first you need enlightenment and then you need atonement,” said Dolan. “And what we have here perhaps is a glimpse of enlightenment. Has it changed their heart? I don’t think so. Will it change their practice? It better.”

Isaiah 5:20, from the book of judgment, comes to mind here: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” Dolan is right about Christian experience, though he forgets about repentance–not a surprise. However, to call what the hospital has “seen” as enlightenment is chillingly satanic. To trade the truth for an attempt at monetary preservation is exactly the opposite.  At best one can call their caving in, material cooperation with evil. If they did release the attributed statement, it becomes more likely formal cooperation with evil which a Catholic can never do, even if it means closing the doors of the hospital.

I hope that Dolan is right that those running the hospital’s hearts have not changed. It is the only chance that they will come to see that giving in to this coercion is harmful to those like “Charlene”, his lawyer, and in the long run to the hospital itself and larger society. If they were to act according to the truth, perhaps through their witness then those who authentically need it may eventually receive “enlightenment and then atonement.”