Catholic high school faces backlash for not admitting ‘transgender’ girl as a boy
Fourteen-year-old female student Madelyn Catrambone wants two things: to go to a Christian (Catholic) school and to be a boy. Camden Catholic High School told her she can't have it both ways. After talking at length with Madelyn’s parents, Principal Heather Crisci concluded that fidelity to the school's Catholic beliefs include not treating a girl as if she were a boy. Catholic diocesan spokesman Michael Walsh clarified that Camden Catholic High has not refused to admit Madelyn, but it cannot admit Madelyn as a boy because that would "contradict Catholic teaching on gender identity." "As a Catholic school , our principal mission is to form students in the faith and we must always be true to the teachings of that Faith, even — indeed especially — when those teachings are challenged by the secular world," Walsh stated, explaining that Catholicism and the Pope hold that biological sex and gender may be "distinguished but not se