Repeat after me ... I am NOT a Catholic

I was raised Catholic.  My father was Catholic; his family is Irish and he was raised Catholic and took us to church every Sunday and required that we attend cathecism every Saturday.  I rejected that religion for many reasons once I reached my teens.  But, I've always tried to avoid being judgmental about either the religion or the people who practice it. 

So it really irks me when they judge me.  I was emailed an article from the CatholicHerald.com about the morality of transsexual surgery and I probably should have just ignored it (by prejudging its content and deleting it, I could have avoided this irritation), but I didn't.  I read it.  And, I'm annoyed.

I think the thing that annoys me the most is that the author reaches his conclusion that transsexual surgery is morally wrong ("Obviously, such procedures involve a radical and grotesque mutilation of the body.") through what I believe to be mis-application even of the Church's own words.  For example, quoting Vatican II's "Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World", he says:

Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity. Through his very bodily condition he sums up in himself the elements of the material world. Through him they are thus brought to their highest perfection and can raise their voice in praise freely given to the Creator. For this reason man may not despise his bodily life. Rather he is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in honor since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day.

OK.  Cool.  Now, I don't subscribe to that belief set, but let's take it as it is.  I've never said that I despise my bodily life.  On the contrary, I revel in it, I love my life and am happy as a clam that I was born and have this body.  Using this as foundation seems, therefore, flawed, at least to me.

Then, he goes on to define transsexualism and draws from materials that are 30 years old (Meyer, "Psychiatric Consideration in the Sexual Reassignment of Non-Intersex Individuals" in Clinics in Plastic Surgery, 1974 and Colin Markland, "Transsexual Surgery" in Obstetrics & Gynecology Annual, 1975)!  Excuse me?  Much, very much has been learned about transsexualism in the past 30 years. 

He then develops his own definition of man and woman, relying exclusively on the ability to reproduce.  This ignores the vast numbers of people who cannot reproduce for any number of reasons, or the thousands of non-transsexual people who "need to use synthetic hormones":

No transsexual surgery will ever be able to duplicate completely the anatomy or the functioning of the opposite sex. A male transsexual will never be able to ovulate or conceive; and a female transsexual will never be able to germinate sperm. Transsexuals will need to use synthetic hormones continuously to sustain their change, which in turn runs the risk of cancer.

Perhaps hearkening back to his outdated research, he then decides that transsexualism is grounded in psychiatry and not physiology:

Another moral consideration is whether the condition of transsexualism justifies surgery. No biological cause of transsexualism has been identified. Rather, the cause appears to stem from psychological development, and thereby transsexualism should be treated with psychotherapy. Interestingly, even after surgery, transsexuals need at least some psychotherapeutic support.

I know dozens of post-operative transsexuals, including myself, who do not need any psychotherapeutic support, but even if they did -- so what?  How does that implicate the "morality" of surgery?  Most (perhaps all?) of such need derives not from a need to adjust oneself to one's body so much as the need to adjust oneself to a society (or a subset thereof) that still regards them as immoral.

The author then concludes with an anecdote about a post-op MTF physician and closes with this:

When examining this moral issue, once must not simply focus on the gravity of the physical mutilation. Rather, one must also focus on the devastating impact this act has on loved ones — parents, spouses, children — as well as friends and the community at large. Couldn’t a child say in this story, "My father killed himself to be someone else?" Therein lies the tragedy of this heinous act.

It does not follow that the impact on loved ones is necessarily devastating.  It certainly can be -- but so are lots of other things (say, for example, an actual suicide when the parent is no longer able to maintain the facade). In fact, it may be that the impact is exactly the opposite and that such loved ones see a re-birth of a spirit that glorifies God and exalts the gifts he/she has given us to be able to recognize and correct certain physical ailments (I continue to use the example of a hair-lip or a cleft palate where the only "defect" is arguably psychological -- the desire of a person afflicted to have it "corrected" so that they better fit in society).

Religion is used to put me down -- often.  Forgive me if I occasionally stoop to their level.

[UPDATE] My youngest daughter, Amanda, reponds here.