The College Fix

Campus ministry leader says young Catholics want colleges ‘where Church teaching is followed, loved, and faithfully articulated’

St. Norbert College in Wisconsin changed a policy this fall to state that the private Catholic institution will only recognize two sexes.

The college agrees with the Catholic Church that “[a]mong a variety of other offenses to dignity, this reaffirmed the church’s opposition to gender fluidity and gender-affirming surgery, and bases gender on biological sex,” according to a report by the Green Bay Press Gazette.

The change aligns with Pope Francis’ declaration “Dignitas Infinita,” or “On Human Dignity,” which was published in August, according to the report. In it, the pope warned about the dangers of secular gender theory.

“Desiring a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes, apart from this fundamental truth that human life is a gift, amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God, entering into competition with the true God of love revealed to us in the Gospel,” it states.

Some students at St. Norbert disagreed heartily with the decision, expressing concerns about how it will affect the LGBTQIA+ community.

One student, Kayla Clark, told the Sentinel Journal, “They’re completely erasing the human dignity of the person by not giving them the freedom to express who they are.”

Another, Gracelyn Giese, who is minoring in women’s and gender studies, told the newspaper: “What’s going to happen to this entire department if the school is saying that they’re following the new Catholic interpretation and belief system of there’s only two, there’s only two genders? That goes against what some of my classes for the past 3½ years have been teaching and have been discussing.”

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Joe Webb, the college’s vice president for student affairs, told the Press Gazette in a statement that St. Norbert is still dedicated to inclusion.

“This is simply the college aligning its gender identity language and policies with the principles recently set forth by the Catholic church. All services and benefits for all students, faculty and staff remain intact,” Webb stated.

“There are no plans to change any curriculum or teaching practices based on this alignment. This alignment in no way changes the college’s ongoing commitment to creating a safe and supportive community where every individual is deeply respected,” he stated.

The Fix reached out twice to Webb, the college media team, and the board of trustees via email, asking for a copy of the policy changes and the campus’s response to the change. None responded.

But TFP Student Action leader John Ritchie told The College Fix he was glad to hear about the new policy. TFP, which stands for tradition, family, and property, is a student action group that advocates for traditional Catholic values on college campuses.

“Education divorced from truth is worthless,” the student action director said in a recent email.

“Higher learning aims to transmit truth, which includes the self-evident fact that God created us male and female,” Ritchie told The Fix.

“There are only two sexes. Every cell in the human body is stamped with fixed chromosomes: females have XX, and males have XY. Therefore, it’s good to hear that St. Norbert College might be finally stepping away from radical gender ideology,” he said.

Ritchie told The Fix his group also is seeing a growing yearning among young Catholics to attend colleges “where Church teaching is followed, loved, and faithfully articulated.”

“Students want authenticity, not woke policies that distort reality,” Ritchie said. “There is no right to affirm a lie and claim that a man can be a woman or a woman can be a man. I hope St. Norbert will return to its Catholic roots and pause ‘Gender Studies’ altogether.”

Two other Christian colleges have made similar decisions over the past year.

Last fall, St. Mary’s College, a Catholic women’s school in Indiana, tried to change its admissions policy to allow for transgender students, but quickly reversed its decision following backlash, The College Fix reported at the time.

In August, Sweet Briar College, a Protestant all-women’s school in rural Virginia, also stated that it would only accept biological female students as per its new admissions policy.

MORE: College affirms women-only admissions despite ‘transphobic’ accusations

IMAGE: St. Norbert College/Facebook

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