A Catholic women’s college that sought to dabble in transgender admissions announced Thursday that the only women it will admit will be those born that way.
In November, St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana, said that men who believe they are women would be admitted beginning with the 2024-2025 school year.
President Katie Conboy this week said that the decision has been scrapped, according to The Daily Signal.
“We have listened closely, and we have heard each of you,” she wrote in a message to the college community.
She added that it became “increasingly clear” that “the position we took is not shared by all members of our community.”
“Some worried that this was much more than a policy decision: they felt it was a dilution of our mission or even a threat to our Catholic identity,” she wrote.
Many received the news with joy.
Catholic women’s college St Mary’s U-turns on allowing transgender applicants https://t.co/KxuKab4JMS pic.twitter.com/jQTj1QTTEc
— Daily Mail US (@DailyMail) December 22, 2023
Should men who identify as women be admitted to all-girls schools?
“I’m so proud of the women at Saint Mary’s who were willing to stand up against this anti-women, anti-Catholic policy,” said Claire Bettag, a junior at Saint Mary’s. “God’s truth will always win.”
Bettag told WSBT-TV that she had felt betrayed, and fought back.
“I felt like I was kind of, you know, essentially screwed over and I was stuck because I didn’t really have a chance or an option to transfer out, you know, because I’m almost done with college. So I kind of feel like it was a stab in the back for sure,” she said.
Bettag said she and classmate Macy Gunnell believed their meetings with administrators were in vain.
“We’ve had to do a lot of steps in fighting the administration in this and we’ve had to come out and be brave, we’ve had to put our names out there. So we’re definitely very, very happy to see that the college is steering back towards its direction and its mission,” Gunnell said.
Clare Ath, a 2018 graduate of St. Mary’s said the power of unity won.
“When this admissions decision became public hundreds of alumni banded together to stand for the Church and her teachings,” she said, according to the Daily Signal.
“While I would hope the reversal is because administrators realized we must teach the truth with love, my guess is the reversal is because alumni banded together, pulled their donations, notified their diocese and media, and said we will not let Our Lady’s college be corrupted by secular gender ideology,” she said.
Patrick Reilly, president and founder of The Cardinal Newman Society, said: ‘This is such welcome news in this season when we celebrate Christ, Wisdom become true man, and Mary, true woman and true Mother of the Son of God. This is the truth which is the foundation of Catholic education and not ‘the complexity of living our Catholic values in a changing world,” according to the Daily Mail.
In a post on X, the social justice group Faithful America criticized the decision.
“In a cruel and heartbreaking turn of events, St. Mary’s College has reversed its Christ-like position of love to admit trans women as students. Faithful America has issued the following statement from executive director, the Rev. Nathan Empsall: ‘We are extremely disappointed to see the leadership of St. Mary’s College turn their backs on Christ’s transgender children who — like Mary and Joseph knocking on the doors of Bethlehem inns — are only looking for a welcoming community, only to be turned away yet again.’”
