Religious Extremist Paul Hruz Wraps His Catholicism in Pseudoscience

The Catholic physician and proponent of conversion therapy once told the mother of a trans child “some children are born in this world to suffer and die.”

by Evan Urquhart

An article in the Catholic press by Paul Hruz that was published this morning provides a good jumping off point into the work of Paul Hruz, a Catholic physician and one of a small group of professionals willing to abandon professional credibility to give anti-trans legislation a veneer of credibility. The piece, titled “Towards a Scientifically Sound Analysis of the Problem of Gender Dysphoria” is typical of Hruz’s work. It includes dense paragraphs laden with medical and scientific terminology, and footnotes to further the legitimate and serious air. However, when you read closer, you observe Hruz quickly away from the realm of science in favor of Catholic teleology, a core religious belief of that faith which states that everything in the universe was created with a purpose, and that the purpose of human beings is to procreate. This, rather than science, is the basis for Catholic’s objections to transgender people, and to homosexuality. Catholic literature, today just as much as it has done since the time of Galileo, ignores any scientific findings that are not religiously sound.

Hruz quite specifically demonstrates the way his views on homosexuality and gender identity are based in Catholic morality, “societal roles that encompass gender expression are integral to the process of bringing males and females together in sexual union and raising children.”

He expounds on this point in the subsequent paragraph, explaining that he believes the widespread use of birth control has led to what he considers a “distorted” portrayal of sexual identity, one not always being about procreation. He raises the existence of people with intersex conditions in order to explain that they don’t really count, in his view, because he believes science can usually determine which of the two sexes an intersex person was intended to be (presumably by God).

screenshot from Church Life Journal

In private, Hruz is less circumspect. Recent work by trans researcher Zinnia Jones uncovered court filings where the mother of a trans child described Hruz’s intense opposition to allowing pediatric treatment for gender dysphoria at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. In the course of his conversations with this parent Hruz allegedly said that her trans child was not normal and would never be normal, and that “some children are born in this world to suffer and die.”

Hruz’s work is often presented in the place of expert opinions on gender affirming care. In Florida, for example, a paper of his in a Catholic medical journal was described as a “systemic review” of the literature on the use of hormone therapy in gender dysphoric youth. It was not, in fact, a systemic review.

Hruz is a member of the American College of Pediatricians, a fringe right wing alternative to the American Medical Association, and of the Catholic Bioethics Center, a group which opposes all medical transition on religions grounds.