LA CROSSE, Wisconsin (LifeSiteNews) — A Catholic university in Wisconsin has directed employees to include their preferred gender pronouns in email signatures, in defiance of natural law, Scripture, and Catholic teaching.
A September 2 memo sent to Viterbo University’s employees by Erin Edlund, the vice president for marketing, communications, and enrollment, offers a template for email signatures that includes a place for preferred gender pronouns.
“ACTION REQUESTED: Updating email signatures and profile photos,” read the email’s subject line.
The memo, obtained by The College Fix, outlines the template as follows:
First Last Name (pronouns: list yours here)
Viterbo University
Title | Department
555-555-5555
Office Room Number
The memo announces that the university is making “a few small but important changes” to its email signature guidelines “to improve consistency, professionalism, and alignment with our updated university brand.”
Edlund included “she/her/hers” as her gender pronouns in her own email signature.
The template has also been published, via a file attached to Viterbo University’s website page “Branded Signature for Outlook/Zoom Pronouns.” The page also includes specific instructions to add preferred pronouns to one’s Zoom display name.
The pronouns request has reportedly sparked controversy among a local Catholic community. The College Fix has referred to an email chain that highlights Viterbo’s email signature policy but has not revealed the contents of the email.
The university claims in its “brand guidelines” to have a “Catholic, Franciscan identity,” but it does not actually reference Catholic beliefs or values in its stated “mission,” “identity,” “core values,” or “vision” as described on its “About” page.
The embrace of gender pronouns is doubly egregious for a Catholic university. It first entails a denial of biological reality in favor of one’s “preferences,” thus rejecting the very foundation of a true education: taking objective truth seriously.
It is egregious also because it rejects God’s created order and will, as made clearly known in Scripture (“Male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:127)) as well as through reason. Gender ideology, the idea that one’s “gender identity” can be distinct from one’s biological sex, is contrary to Catholicism.
Tom Nash, a Catholic Answers apologist, told The College Fix that Viterbo’s decision “is another bowing to the zeitgeist, i.e., the spirit of the age, which says we can determine who we are, not our Creator.”
“It seems like a misguided attempt at solidarity with students—and perhaps faculty and staff as well at Viterbo University—who are experiencing gender-identity disorder (GID),” Nash said.
Viterbo University also sponsors a “Pride Club,” which began in 2011 as the “Gay Straight Alliance.” The club has attended local drag shows and has previously set up “areas around campus for students to stop and learn about different identities.”
Nash told the Fix the university should instead support efforts to help students embrace their God-given sex and sexuality.
“Students who experience same-sex attraction (SSA) should benefit from a Courage group established on campus, and the school’s related counseling should also conform with the Church’s teaching,” he said. “Similarly, the university should reverse its policy on permitting students to choose pronouns at odds with their God-given biological sex.”
The promotion of preferred gender pronouns has occurred at other so-called Catholic universities, such as Loyola Marymount University, a Jesuit institution in Los Angeles, where a few years ago a professor mandated the use of gender pronouns in students’ required blog posts.
