To be Or Not to be: A Catholic Transsexual Speaks (Special Section‪)‬

"BLESSED" BY OUR CREATOR with male genitalia and a female brain I struggled to relate to a society that saw me as male until age 40 when I transitioned to live as a woman. It was an authentic mid-life transition to integrate my mind and body that many who knew me supported and even called courageous, inspiring and ethical. But this uniquely personal act though the eyes of the 99-5 percent of people who are blessed to have their gender and sex match has been seen as a political act, a psychological disorder, a character flaw, a weakness, a perversion and a sin. In the Catholic church, as a transsexual woman, I don't exist officially. Officially the Catholic church does not have a policy on the range of gender expression and considering its teachings on gay men, lesbian women, divorced women, women priests and women who abort I should count myself as lucky. But the popular assumption that I will be treated poorly by the institutional church hierarchy is born out in news reports of a secret document to bishops, and the pope's own words. As Jeff Israely reports in Time magazine, "The Pope's Christmas Condemnation of Transsexuals" (December 23, 2008):