Michiana’s highest-ranking Catholic official is sharply criticizing Saint Mary’s College’s recent policy change to begin considering transgendered females for admission.
The Board of Trustees at the women’s college, which uses the marketing slogan, “Where You Belong,” in June adopted a new non-discrimination policy that states it will consider applicants “whose sex is female or who consistently live and identify as women.” The new policy came to light a week ago when The Observer, the Notre Dame student newspaper, reported on it.
In an editorial Monday in Today’s Catholic, a website published by the Fort Wayne-South Bend Catholic Diocese, Bishop Kevin Rhodes writes that he only learned of the move last week.
Rhodes writes, “It is disappointing that I, as bishop of the diocese in which Saint Mary’s College is located, was not included or consulted on a matter of important Catholic teaching.”
Rhodes writes that the new policy is “at odds with Catholic teaching…” He references a letter from college President Katie Conboy that mentions the sex that an applicant was assigned at birth. That didn’t sit well with the bishop. He writes, “The sex of a person is discovered, not assigned. It is God who creates human beings as male or female.”
Conboy did not immediately reply to WVPE’s interview request.
