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EDMONTON, Alberta, May 25, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) — The dust has settled but the wounds have not healed from an internal battle at Edmonton’s Catholic school board over a seven-year-old boy who wants to attend school as a girl.

For now at least the school board will let the student wear girl’s clothes and use the girls’ washroom but the mother, whose anonymity the news media have protected, is not withdrawing her human rights complaint against the board.

The board’s only official statement on the issue was a very noncommittal one. “In keeping with Catholic theology and philosophy,” it read in part, “the Board considers that this individual circumstance is best addressed on an interim basis at the school level.  The Board will continue to discuss policy with respect to this issue in consultation with the Archdiocese of Edmonton, medical specialists, parents and educational experts.”

As for the mother, while she got what she wanted for her child, she says she won’t withdraw the complaint till the Catholic school board comes up with a satisfactory policy for all transgendered students.  “I’m torn,” she told reporters last week.

The board thought it had a policy, says media relations officer Lori Nagy, which was to put gender-neutral washrooms in every school, starting with those now undergoing renovations, then all new schools, then gradually working through the rest.

But this didn’t satisfy the child in question, who said the treatment made him feel like “a disgrace to God, ” said his mother. But being able to use the girls’ room, starting last week, left the child “feeling wonderful.”

The mother said her child identified himself as a girl at 18 months of age. “It wasn't until September of last year that she actually articulated to me, ‘I have a girl heart and a girl brain but I'm stuck in a boy body,’” her mother told reporters. A psychiatrist soon diagnosed a case of gender dysphoria—the belief that one’s gender does not match one’s body.

The issue has harshly divided the board, with some resolved to contest the complaint before the Alberta Human Rights Commission. On the other side of the debate is trustee Patricia Grell, who breached the board’s rule on in camera decisions to go public with her view that the board should do everything it could to accommodate the child. “Should we be like the Pharisees and use the laws of the Church to judge and shame?” she asked LifeSiteNews. “Or do what Jesus did, when he did not judge the woman at the well?”

For Grell, it is a matter of “welcoming the marginalized.” But she added, “This doesn’t mean we are condoning transgenderism.” She blamed the board’s initial refusal to let the student use the girls’ washroom in his school on Edmonton Archbishop Richard Smith. “Our archbishop doesn’t have a pastoral bone in his body,” she told LifeSiteNews.

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The Archdiocese of Edmonton declined to respond. The board’s Lori Nagy told LifeSiteNews it had heard from plenty of parents who were unhappy that their children might have to share bathrooms with transgendered children. On the other hand, trustee Grell said she had spoken with parents whose children were classmates of the child in question. “They told me they were fine with it.”

The Vancouver Catholic school system went through the same furore last year, also in response to a complaint to the provincial human rights tribunal from parents of a transgendered student. In the end, the school system paid the family an unspecified amount of damages and produced a policy requiring consultation with parents, pastor, school personnel, and lay experts to develop an individual plan for each transgendered student. Gender neutral washrooms will be built when needed and transgendered students will wear gender neutral clothing, such as gym tights.

Archdiocesan spokesman Paul Schratz explained that while the policy meant the school system accepted transgendered students, this did not mean acceptance of transgenderism. “The thinking behind gender transition is contrary to the faith. God created us male and female and any suggestion you can change that would be contrary to Catholic teaching.”

Since the development of the policy, only one student has come forward seeking transgender treatment, but without his parents’ support. “Our policy requires parental support,” said Schratz, so nothing was done. The student whose transgenderism provoked the new policy last year did not return to the Catholic system.