The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has released a doctrine explaining its stance against medical interventions, transgender surgery and genetic engineering.

“I applaud this clear statement by my brother bishops,” Tyler Bishop Joseph Strickland tweeted March 22 after learning about the doctrine. “Let us continue to teach with clarity and charity. The world is desperately in need of the truth found in our deposit of faith.” 

The USCCB’s Committee on Doctrine put out the statement to outline moral guidelines for Catholic health care institutions to differentiate between medical interventions that promote the well-being of individuals and those that are harmful. The statement was approved by the USCCB's Administrative Committee on March 15, according to the USCCB website.

The committee acknowledges that Catholic health care services should use appropriate resources to alleviate the suffering of individuals struggling with gender incongruence, but emphasizes that the methods used must align with the natural order of the human body to truly benefit individuals instead of causing harm.

The bishops have criticized transgender ideology, viewing it as a modern version of dualism, which denies the human body's fundamental role in defining a person's identity. They argued that this ideology, which asserts that individuals can be born into the wrong body and can change it to match their gender identity, fails to recognize the intrinsic relationship between the body and the soul, as well as the natural differences between male and female bodies, according to Life Site News. 

The bishops referred to the teachings of Pope Pius XII on how to determine the ethical validity of medical procedures that affect the natural order of the human body, including surgeries, amputations and genetic modifications. They asserted that such interventions must uphold the intended purpose and design of the human body.

"The body is not an object, a mere tool at the disposal of the soul, one that each person may dispose of according to his or her own will, but it is a constitutive part of the human subject, a gift to be received, respected, and cared for as something intrinsic to the person,” the Doctrinal Note on the Moral Limits to Technological Manipulation of the Human Body says. "As Pope Francis affirmed: 'The acceptance of our bodies as God’s gift is vital for welcoming and accepting the entire world as a gift from the Father and our common home, whereas thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation.’"