An all-women Catholic college’s recent decision to allow men identifying as women to enroll has met with opposition, including from the bishop who has the authority to decide whether the school may continue identifying itself as Catholic.
Saint Mary’s College, located in Notre Dame, Indiana, announced last week that it has updated its “non-discriminative policy” and will begin admitting undergraduate applicants “whose sex is female or who consistently live and identify as women” in the fall of 2024. The school’s graduate programs have been open to men and women since 2015.
In a Nov. 21 letter to all students and staff members, Saint Mary’s President Katie Conboy said the admissions policy change has the full blessings of the Catholic institution’s board of trustees.
“This confidence from our Board underscores their commitment that as an employer, Saint Mary’s must stand firm in its position as an inclusive community leader and that as educators, we should continue to create an environment where all women belong and thrive,” Ms. Conboy wrote, reported student newspaper The Observer. He added that the college is still determining the “practices that will follow from the policy.”
Bishop Kevin Rhoades, who oversees the Catholic diocese that serves Notre Dame, said he wasn’t consulted on that decision.
“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,” Bishop Rhoades wrote in a statement published Nov. 27, noting that he has a duty to make sure that Catholic schools within his diocese operate in line with Catholic doctrines.
By adopting the new admissions policy, he argued, Saint Mary’s not only departed from “fundamental Catholic teaching on the nature of woman” but also compromised “its very identity as a Catholic woman’s college.”
“To call itself a ‘women’s college’ and to admit male students ... suggests that the college affirms an ideology of gender that separates sex from gender and claims that sexual identity is based on the subjective experience of the individual,” the church leader wrote. “This ideology is at odds with Catholic teaching.”
According to the bishop, the college’s desire to “stand in loving solidarity” with people identifying as transgender is acceptable, but that should not lead to the embracing of “an understanding of sexual identity that is not true.”
“Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality,” he wrote, quoting from the late Pope Benedict XVI, who retired in 2013 and died last December. “In a culture without truth ... the word ‘love’ is abused and distorted, to the point where it comes to mean the opposite.”
Bishop Rhoades did not threaten to strip Saint Mary’s of its official Catholic status. Instead, he urged the board of trustees to “correct” its admissions policy and “reject” sex and gender ideologies that “contradict the authoritative teachings of the Catholic Church.”
The bishop has also been an outspoken critic of the nearby University of Notre Dame. In March, he called out the “reproductive justice” lecture series sponsored by the university, saying they provided “a platform for unanswered pro-abortion activism” that explicitly disregards the “intrinsic equal dignity of the unborn, pregnant mothers, and families.”
Bishop Rhoades’ comments come as Saint Mary’s alumnae who oppose the admissions change voice their concerns on social media.
“Absolute pandering,” Saint Mary’s graduate Emily McNally wrote on Instagram, reported The Observer. “If SMC really believed that a man who says he is a woman is a woman, they would force incoming freshman to room with such a person.”
Saint Mary’s is not the first all-women’s college experiencing a push to expand admissions to more people identifying as transgender. In March, students at Wellesley College, a private liberal arts school whose alumnae include Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright, voted to allow applicants who identify as transgender men to enroll.
The student referendum is non-binding, and Wellesley College President Paula Johnson said there is no plan to revisit the Massachusetts school’s admissions policy.
“Wellesley admits eligible applicants who consistently identify and live as women, including cis, trans, and nonbinary students,” she said.
