Local bishop urges Saint Mary's College to reverse policy allowing trans women to enroll

SOUTH BEND — The head of the area's Catholic diocese is calling on Saint Mary's College to reverse its decision to consider accepting transgender women into its historically all-female undergraduate student body.

Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades, who oversees all Catholic churches in the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, said in a statement that the college's board of trustees deviated from Catholic doctrine by passing a non-discrimination policy this June to consider undergraduate applicants "whose sex is female or who consistently live and identify as women."

Rhoades rejected a rationale for the change shared last week by Saint Mary's College President Kate Conboy, who entered her role in 2020. In a letter to students, Conboy quoted Pope Francis in saying that Catholics should love and recognize the innate worth of all others. She wrote that the new policy ensures Saint Mary's is "an inclusive community leader."

While Rhoades agreed that Catholics must stand "in loving solidarity" with people who identify as transgender, he said that doesn't mean affirming a gender identity contrary to one's sex.

"The desire of Saint Mary’s College to show hospitality to people who identify as transgender is not the problem," Rhoades wrote in his statement. "The problem is a Catholic woman’s college embracing a definition of woman that is not Catholic."

A spokeswoman for the university said Conboy would not comment on the bishop's statement. A spokeswoman for the University of Notre Dame, the largest of the tri-campus that includes Saint Mary's and Holy Cross College, declined to make university leaders available to comment.

Saint Mary's is the 23rd all-woman campus in the U.S. to open itself to transgender students, according to a list from the national nonprofit Campus Pride. It's among fewer than 40 active women’s colleges in the country.

Rhoades said the Church has long rejected gender ideology suggesting that sexual identity is based on an individual's subjective experience.

The bishop quotes Pope Francis writing in 2016 that "biological sex and the socio-cultural role of sex (gender) can be distinguished but not separated." The pope agreed that gender is in part a social construct, but argued against a world where people can choose gender identities contrary to their sex.

"Let us not fall into the sin of trying to replace the Creator," Pope Francis wrote in his exhortation Amoris Laetitia. "We are creatures, and not omnipotent. Creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift."

Email South Bend Tribune city reporter Jordan Smith at JTsmith@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Bishop criticizes Saint Mary's College transgender admissions policy