Transubstantiation may be a dogma of faith, but research suggests that a majority of Catholics believe it to be a merely symbolic ritual. There are parallels to be drawn here with the debate over gender identity ideology. For believers, a man can become a woman – or, in some cases, has always been a woman – by simply declaring it to be so, even without undertaking any cosmetic changes. The individual retains the ‘accidents’ of maleness – the anatomy, the XY chromosomes, the ability to produce spermatozoa – but the ‘substance’ is female.
