Book Review: Gender Ideology and Pastoral Practice. A Handbook for Catholic Clergy, Counsellors, and Ministerial Leaders (2024)

Review2025Dominik Tylka
Citation

Tylka, Dominik. “Book Review: Gender Ideology and Pastoral Practice. A Handbook for Catholic Clergy, Counsellors, and Ministerial Leaders (2024).” Chrześcijaństwo-Świat-Polityka, no. 29 (2025): 263–267. https://doi.org/10.21697/CSP.2025.29.1.13.

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Abstract

This review examines the volume Gender Ideology and Pastoral Practice: A Handbook for Catholic Clergy, Counsellors, and Ministerial Leaders (2024). It presents the book’s treatment of sexual identity, ideological colonisation, pastoral principles, care for transitioners and detransitioners, legal questions and language. The review considers the volume as a comprehensive Catholic response to contemporary disputes concerning gender, identity and Christian anthropology.

Author's summary

The review is useful as an entry point into a broader question that interests me: how competing anthropological assumptions shape public institutions, political language and practical responses to social change. I focus especially on the book’s attempt to connect Christian anthropology with concrete pastoral, legal and cultural challenges rather than treating the debate solely as an abstract ideological dispute.

Keywords

Gender ideology, pastoral practice, Catholic clergy, sexual identity, ideological colonisation, transitioners, detransitioners, cultural landscape, Christian anthropology

About the author

Dominik Tylka

Institute of Political Science and Public Administration, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw

Dominik Tylka is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Political Science and Public Administration, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw. His research focuses on social and political power, individual agency, and the conditions under which asymmetries of resources become effective and relatively durable relations of compliance. He is particularly interested in the interaction between social structures and individual responses, including obedience, adaptation, circumvention and resistance.

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