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16 The Splendor of the Human Person: A Catholic Vision of the Person and Sexuality a "right" to transition to the other sex or to a non-binary "identity" without necessarily claiming to be psychologically distressed. Gender transitioning through behavioral, hormonal, or surgical treatments, is now widely accepted as a form of "therapy." However, the concept of gender transitioning stands in contradiction to the proper understanding of the nature of the human person. It assumes there is "self" that is separate from the body and which might be in the wrong body. This contradicts the Church's central teach- ing that the human person is a body-soul unity and that the integral unity of the body and soul is fundamental to identity of the human person. The body cannot exist separately from the soul and the soul and body together constitute the self. A human person does not just have a body -- he or she is that body. We express this idea when we ask a child, "Did you hurt yourself?" or when someone says, "Don't touch me!" There is no "true self" apart from the body or "true sexual identity" separable from the sex of the body. God created each person body and soul, and God uses the body to reveal to each person his or her sexual identity as male or female 14 . A person's embrace of his or her God-given sexual identity is an essential part of living a fulfilled relationship with God, with oneself, and with each other (Laudato Si', §155). The integral unity of body and soul is a foundational anthropological truth central to Christianity. The psychological experience of a disconnect with one's bodily sex is not to be minimized; it calls for appropriate psychotherapy, but it can in no way affirm an "incorrect" sex. Given this understanding of what it means to be a human person, a body-soul unity whose sexual identity is reflected in the person's biology, it should be clear that no surgical, hormonal, or other intervention directed toward the body is capable of altering that innate sexual identity. Behavior stereotypically asso- ciated with one sex or the other, including mannerisms, social cues, clothing, or modes of speaking, does not alter the innate sexual identity of the embodied spirit which is the human person. Hormonal interventions to block the body's sex-specific hormones or provide the sex-specific hormones of the opposite sex likewise do not change a person's innate sexual identity. The use of puberty blocking hormones in children with gender dysphoria is particularly dangerous since this intervention radically disrupts the normal sequence of physical and 14 See Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, §224.

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