Defending the Communion of Saints Against the Heresy of Transgenderism

Dialogue

Aug 28

By Abigail Bargender

Nothing gives me greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth. 3 John 1:4

For many, many years, a complaint against the Church has been that She is not inclusive and is too judgemental and condemning of people who embrace modern society’s radically fluctuating teachings and acceptance of issues on identity and sexuality. However, the Church has stood firm in Hers since Her very founding, despite more and more recent sacrilegious activities directed towards religious women–as we have seen with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence–as well as the crucifix and the Eucharist.

Lately, there’s a trend of transgenderism supporters claiming the Church’s saints as their own, celebrating their belief in certain saints’ “trans” identity. I first saw this in an article from the National Review back in 2022, regarding Bernardo Cavallino’s portrait of St. Agatha. The painting depicts St. Agatha covering her chest and looking up towards heaven. The trans movement has interpreted this painting as St. Agatha embracing gender transition after the removal of her breasts. According to the article, one activist said, “This reminds me of the gender euphoria I felt the first time I, a transmasculine person, wore a chest binder. It hurt my ribs, but I finally saw myself the way I wanted to be…Artwork of saints like this speaks to the queer experience of pushing against social norms to live euphorically as ourselves.” Yet, despite however much this individual claims to relate to this portrait, this painting has been egregiously misinterpreted, which can be understood by the saint’s story.

St. Agatha is one of the Church’s most well-known virgin martyrs with a shocking story of persecution. She had professed her faith and dedicated herself to God during the persecution of Christians under the rule of Emperor Decius. She was beautiful and many a suitor sought her hand in marriage, but she refused according to her consecration to our Lord. One man, who had tried multiple times to force her, scare her into marrying him or accept his sexual advances, grew so angry and vengeful that he ordered her breasts to be cut off as the ultimate form of torture for her faithfulness to God. The National Review article explains further, “Saint Agatha was a woman and a Catholic, tormented for her commitment to Jesus Christ and for the lengths she was prepared to go to protect the virtue of chastity. Her ability to transcend suffering, even the brutal torture of having one’s breasts sliced off — which she was subjected to for refusing her tormentor’s sexual advances — speaks to the strength of her faith. It does not speak to her being ‘profoundly trans.’” Saint Agatha was persecuted and martyred for her virginity, purity, and faith, not due to any sort of desire to become what she was not.

The other more recent instance of this issue was a T-shirt listed on Etsy. The shirt depicts St. Marina of Bithynia, otherwise known as St. Marinos the Monk of Alexandria, and says, “Trans Saints Exist,” “Created in the image of God,” and, “Trans people are beloved by God. God resides in all queer people too.” I’m not writing to argue against God loving people caught in the ideology of transgenderism. Neither will I say they are not created in His image–we all are–or that we shouldn’t approach them as if Christ were within them. He loved them so much He died for them. He died for them so that each of them could be granted the strength to turn from the falsity of an identity that rejects His intentional creation of their bodies–to be reassured in being a much, much loved son or daughter of God. But by my faith, I can never say trans saints exist. St. Marina was very much a woman. However, transgenderism distorts her story simply because she spent the majority of her life under the guise of a monk, which, of course, is a position assumed only by men.

St. Marina’s story, in fact, is very complicated. Upon her mother’s death, her father desired monastic life and decided to marry off his daughter to do so. One source relates, “She said to him, “O my Father, why would you save your own soul, and destroy mine?" He answered saying, "What shall I do with you? You are a woman." She told him, "I will take off my woman's dress and will put on the garb of a man.” Likely called to consecrated virginity, she was willing to go to the lengths of disguising who she truly was–be known to all as Marinos–as to remain with her father and not be forced into a marriage and risk her virginity. After her father’s death, she stayed at the monastery and did as the abbot commanded her, including going out to villages. Following one such visit, a villager’s daughter became pregnant, and Marina was accused of being the father. She took the blame, and eventually the child, and lived outside the monastery raising the child herself. Upon her death, however, it was discovered she was a woman, and the villager, his daughter, the abbot, and the other monks all knew her true purity and holiness and cried out for forgiveness.

Even knowing the full story, it is still curious of Marina to not beg to enter into a convent instead, yet, out of her great love for her father and the extent that she modeled sanctity to her brother monks, she achieved holiness in a rather controversial and untraditional way. Does that make her transgender? St. Marina herself would disagree, for she was confident in the sexuality God had intentionally made a part of her. It is said, knowing what the monks’ actions would be upon her death, she wrote them a note: “I am a woman and not a man. I embraced the monastic life with my father. I was falsely accused. I have raised this child with my care. I beg of you not to remove my habit, my brothers.”

As St. Agatha, St. Marina was persecuted for her virginity, purity, and faithfulness to God, yet, in a much different way by the enemy. And, whether intentionally or unwittingly, transgenderism is persecuting both saints again in the same ways by associating the unique and shocking details of their lives as equal to transgender ideology. Furthermore, this assault on the holiness of Sts. Marina and Agatha is an attack on the entirety of Church teaching–from Her stance on creation of humanity as either man or woman, and all it entails, to the very nature of a sin as truly sin. For the rejection and distortion of biological nature, as well as how connected the body and soul are, and pursuing any means necessary to adopt a gender that is unnatural to one’s very being is a sin. It’s the rejection of God as Creator, absolute Creator, of God as Author, the Author of all life, and of God as God, the One and Only.

We must speak on behalf of these saints in order to protect the souls and legacies of future female saints. For the brutal removal of St. Agatha’s breasts among many other tortures–all attempts to steal her purity, faithfulness, love and fear of God, and virginity– her suffering and offering to God was misrepresented as equal to the intentional self-harm it takes to attempt an impossible transition to a completely and biologically different bodily nature. St. Marina’s dressing as a monk to preserve her virginity–and the resulting accusation of fathering a child–was mistaken by transgender activists as the saint believing herself and wishing to be accepted as a man, and not simply by other people but also by God.

If we do not speak, today’s women, who’ve had to endure and offer up the suffering and trials of breast cancer, single or double mastectomies, ovarian cancer, hysterectomies, and infertility, may have their God-given identity and purpose as women of God altered for the sake of a secular ideology. The female saints of today who have undergone these tribulations may too have, or already have had, their uniquely female experiences dishonored as if these trials make them women no longer–especially in a world where men claim to breastfeed and experience infertility despite the biological reality of their inability to conceive children and nurse them. Girls and young women, by the misrepresentation of these saints stories, may be misled into believing God made a mistake or that God actually meant for them to be boys and men, especially in a world where young boys playing with dolls and young girls playing with cars, or preferring generally “masculine” things or entering a tomboy phase, is now seen as the behavior which constitutes gender transition.

I do not say this is to condemn or alienate. It is true that all are welcome in the Church of Christ. We, the Church, are thought of as being not inclusive–exclusive. Yet, we long to include every soul, and Jesus wishes all the more that all would embrace His Mercy. If we are exclusive, it is because it’s necessary to repent, and want to repent, and be disgusted with our own sin in order to be a member of Christ’s body and walk with Him. The Catholic Church requires it. Repentance is a prerequisite to heaven that every servant of Christ must retake, and must desire to retake, over and over again. We each have a distortion, disordered acts of worship, keeping us from Christ that needs to be cast off. Those believing the theory of trans identity have their crosses, as each member of the Church family as his or her own, and we all must be willing to take up His yoke before we can join Him in His kingdom. It doesn’t change the fact that every sexual sin is the result of God’s good plan for sex and gender having been manhandled and distorted by satan.

Neither do I write to say that the men and women who have been manipulated by the trans ideology shouldn’t be allowed to relate to these saints at all. Trans identity is yet another attack on the body and soul of the human person by satan because of his hatred for us and that we all are made in the image of God. There are cases of detransition, when a person beloved by God realizes the error and the sin, and he or she has every right to find a part of St. Agatha and St. Marina in themselves. Perhaps a woman consented to a double mastectomy to transition but realized how transition wasn’t the truth all along, satan would want her to be perpetually in despair over her decision. Yet, as when St. Agatha continued to offer her life–all the persecution by the enemy that happened to her, including the torture of her breasts cut off by enemies of the faith–to the God who created her, a woman who desires redemption after experiencing the harms of transition can offer that suffering to God, for she too was attacked by satan because he hated her God-given gender identity as he had hated Agatha’s chastity. Or perhaps a young adult had spent years of life dressed as the opposite of her gender and went by a male name, similar as St. Marina had, yet the motivation to do so was led by a disordered desire to transition. Her very dignity as created as a woman by God was attacked by satan in the same way as he had attacked Marina’s purity and holiness by inspiring accusations of unchaste acts because he hates both for their womanhood and the potential to serve God through it. The same goes for manhood and service of God through it.

The worst part of it all is satan will continue to aim to convince God's creation that there is no hope for the soul after transition or detransition (or, frankly, any sin and any attempt to atone for it) because he hates God's pure purpose for man and woman–the embodiment of manhood and womanhood as He intended. He persuades us we'd rather be someone else and not follow God's rules for sex, but St. Marina, though accepted and then accused of great sin as a man in life, was greatly venerated as a woman–her true identity–and saint upon her death, and St. Agatha is honored for her chastity when the world told her to abandon God and give her body to those who ultimately wished to destroy it. It was St. Paul who earnestly reminded early Christians in 1 Corinthians 6:19 that the body is a sacred temple–holy and meant to glorify our God. It is satan’s pleasure to ravage the temples of our bodies, and again is he more than pleased to make us believe this temple cannot be rebuilt. Do not believe him, for it was also St. Paul who wrote in Romans 8:12: “Consequently, brothers, we are not debtors to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.” None of us need to think we cannot change after what sins of the flesh we have committed, we don’t have to be enslaved to sin. Remember this always: satan lies–Jesus truly is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Though we may have overwhelming doubts, injury, loss, and longing, satan’s brand of comfort will make us doubt endlessly, irritate our wounds, darken our paths, and make ever wider and deeper the hole of longing in our hearts–satan is never an ally, a lover, or a friend. He desires to claw each of us down to misery with him, because as the adage says, misery loves company. Christ calls us to rise above the lies of the evil one, the enemy of every soul. He calls us to be satisfied through Him, with Him, and in Him–Him Who we find true rest from our doubts, a healing balm for our injuries, a knowledge of being found, wanted, and loved, and a satisfaction to our longing–because He, our God, Creator, Author, is Who we have been longing for all along. In John 2:19, Christ vowed that once it was torn down, He would rebuild the temple. He spoke of His body. He was torn, bruised, bloodied, pierced, crucified…yet He rose again on the third day as He'd promised. By the Faith, we believe we are also His Body–that each and every member of the Church is a member of the Body of Christ. And He died so that we can win our individual battles with satan and be raised up by Him. He will heal. Perhaps not always physically, and we'll surely still suffer because of sin, but He will heal our souls and guide us to spiritual rest after the battle. We must have faith and trust and leave everything in His hands–because by His Passion, Cross, and Resurrection, He has already won the war.

Saint Agatha, pray for us!

Saint Marina, pray for us!

Mary, Mother of God, pray for us!

Soul of Christ, sanctify me.

Body of Christ, save me.

Blood of Christ, inebriate me.

Water from the side of Christ, wash me.

Passion of Christ, strengthen me.

O good Jesus, hear me.

Within your wounds, conceal me.

Do not permit me to be parted from you.

From the evil foe, protect me.