I think the tradition of the Church is rather more inclusive than we give it credit for

04 July 2019, The Tablet

Instinctively, I’m with the authors of the recent Vatican document on sex and gender, Male and Female He Created Them when they declare (quoting an earlier document): “… our sexuality plays an integral part in the development of our personality and in the process of its education ...

Instinctively, I’m with the authors of the recent Vatican document on sex and gender, Male and Female He Created Them when they declare (quoting an earlier document): “… our sexuality plays an integral part in the development of our personality and in the process of its education: ‘In fact, it is from [their] sex that the human person receives the characteristics which, on the biological, psychological and spiritual levels, make that person a man or a woman, and thereby largely condition his or her progress towards maturity and insertion into society’.”

So far, so self-evident, we might have thought until about five minutes ago. But now, when I get emails from the Tate galleries some have a note to indicate the author’s preferred gender designation and pronoun. And my first thought is: have they got nothing better to do?

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