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Last week, the Catholic bishops of England and Wales issued a pastoral document on the question of gender identity in the light of biblical and theological understandings of what it means to be created male and female in the image of God. It is a fascinating, clear, refreshing and helpful statement, and like all Catholic statements is relatively concise (at 11 pages) but achieves a lot in that space. There have been some interesting reactions to it, and it tells us a lot about what it takes for a denomination to speak well into this complex and challenging issue.

The document is called Intricately Woven, a title which draws on Ps 139.13–15, which the document starts and ends with:

For you formed my inward parts; You knitted me together in my mother’s womb, I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

This is powerful language to draw on, since it combines the pastoral and theological issues which meet in this discussion—the truth that we are creatures, created by God in the image of God, so there is a givenness to who we are (note the passive tense of ‘woven’), and the reality of the experience that human life is complex and at times puzzling. Both these realities are attended to through the document.

It is striking that, in contrast to other statements (including those from the Church of England) in this area, the bishops are clear and unapologetic about their challenge to a major aspect of contemporary culture—an absence in other places that the Cass report lamented.

The document, titled Intricately woven by the Lord: A pastoral reflection on gender by the bishops of England and Wales, emphasises that all are welcome in the Church, but says that the sexual identity of an individual is not a purely “cultural or social construction.”

The document refutes the idea, proposed by Gender Identity Theory, that everyone has an ‘inner’ gender identity, which sometimes fails to match the biological sex of the individual. It upholds the value of the body and importance of sexual differentiation.

The bishops assert that we are all created in the image of God, with a dignity given to us by our creator and stresses that leading people to the fullness of life in Christ is a journey rooted in truth as well as compassion.

In relation to the content of the document, there are several important things to notice.

First, there is a direct commitment to the place of truth as central to good pastoral care of those facing challenging complexities of life. Truth is not set up over against a loving response, but as integral to it.