Recent headlines celebrated the “collapse” of gender ideology, the “fizzling out” of “transgender contagion,” and a “free fall” in number of students identifying as other than male or female.

Wonderful news, if only it were true. Reality, however, is more complicated—and less rosy. Gender ideology still represents a serious threat to children and families and should be firmly rejected by Catholic families and educators.

Remember that evil always masquerades as good, because human beings are hard-wired to search for truth and seek “the good” (God). Eve never would have reached for an obviously rotten apple. Decades ago, when gender ideology began seeping into our language, norms, and institutions, no sirens blared, no lights flashed, and few warnings were heard. Many families were blindsided, as children were seduced by gender ideology’s lies, seemingly overnight.

Gender ideology wears many masks:

• On a philosophical level, it masquerades as a progressive, tolerant, and egalitarian belief system that deconstructs oppressive norms and upholds “identity” as “the choice of the individual.”
• On a psychological level, the desire to reject one’s body or given sexual identity is packaged as perfectly “normal”—but paradoxically so compelling that others must affirm the chosen “identity,” lest denial drive the person to suicide.
• On a political level, gender ideology purports to stand on the “right side of history,” honoring self-determination, diversity, equality, and “freedom” for “LGBTQ+ Americans.”
• On a religious level, gender ideology presents as a “search for existential dignity,” a discovery of “authentic selves,” a Gospel mandate of “radical inclusion,” and a “celebration of belonging” for self-styled “LGBTQ Catholics.”

Don’t be fooled. Gender ideology is premised on a lie. It corrupts the good and devastates families.

In 2012, Pope Benedict XVI described gender ideology as an “anthropological revolution” built on “profound falsehood[s]” that reject human nature, sexual difference, and God as Creator. He warned of the consequences, particularly for human dignity and the family:

But if there is no pre-ordained duality of man and woman in creation, then neither is the family any longer a reality established by creation. Likewise, the child has lost the place he had occupied hitherto and the dignity pertaining to him…. the child has become an object to which people have a right and which they have a right to obtain. When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker Himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being. The defense of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears. (Address to the Roman Curia, December 21, 2012)

Targeting Youth

Although gender ideology is a set of false beliefs, it is not just a set of false beliefs. Gender ideology is a belief system meant to be lived out. The ripple effects are enormous. Research from the Institute for Family Studies, for example, shows that ideological beliefs are strongly linked to “cratering” rates of marriage and childbearing among young adults, women in particular. Three in four young adults (age 18-34) support same-sex “marriage” and endorse same-sex sexual relationships as moral (Gallup, 2025). Most Catholics (65 percent in 2023) agree.

“LGBTQ” identification has tripled in just over a decade, while “trans” identification has increased exponentially. In 2025, 23 percent of Gen Z self-identified as “LGBTQ+” (Gallup), and 4.7-6.7 percent of U.S. college students identified as “transgender” or “non-binary” (Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine). These unprecedented numbers tell a sad story: so many young people—the future of our country and our Church—reject the truth that the body is a gift and that it reveals something true about who they are. Some reject their sexual identity as male or female, but many more fail to recognize the truth, written into the body’s design, that male and female are created one for another, and sexual complementarity is God’s design for the human family.

There is nothing organic about the unprecedented increase in youth “LGBTQ” self-identification. It is driven by culture. Despite some recent victories on the side of truth, gender ideology’s erroneous premises and ideological demands have become part of our cultural fabric. “Gender identity” laws and language mandates coerce compliance, while “LGBTQ” activism in corporate, educational, medical, media, judicial, and religious spheres intimidates and persuades, normalizing “emerging” sexual and “gender identities.”

The primary targets of gender ideology are children, adolescents, and young adults. Indoctrinating a substantial portion of America’s youth has proven to be shockingly easy and rapid, utilizing four primary channels: pornography, social media/gaming, healthcare, and schools.

Pornography

A 2025 report from the Institute for Family Studies found that rising:

…underage pornography use has been paralleled by a shift to more extreme and harmful types of pornography being available online. A growing body of research has consistently shown that a large portion of the sexual media available online is not only sexually explicit, but also regularly depicts rape, violence against women, [and] deviant sexual behaviors.

Nearly all boys and three in four girls have viewed pornography, and roughly half of all minors who have viewed pornography have watched “same-sex intercourse” and “group sex,” according to the report. (A popular saying—“If you can see it, you can be it”—delivers an ominous warning in this context.) Although it is unclear whether pornography exposure precedes or follows “LGBTQ” identification, a recent study (Thorn 2023) found that minors (age 13-17) who identify as “LGBTQ+” are twice as likely as “non-LGBTQ+ peers” to visit pornographic websites or to engage with “sexually explicit content or pornography.”

Social media

A 2025 study published by the American Psychological Association found that social media reflects the “explosion of diversity in gender and sexuality in America.” The study identified four dominant narratives in “social technologies,” including “gender as self-constructed,” “sexuality as plural, playful, flexible, and fluid,” “sexuality and monogamy as cultural compulsions,” and the centrality of “intersectionality.” These narratives reflect core beliefs of gender ideology. The APA study identified a fifth, less prominent narrative that they labeled “resurgent cisheteropatriarchal masculinity,” a likely online backlash to the dominant gender ideology.

ChatGPT and AI hold new dangers, exposing youth not only to gender ideology and sexual exploitation, but also to digital emotional manipulation that encourages self-harm and suicidality.

Given that 95 percent of teens have access to smart phones, and most use social media about five hours a day (sometimes “constantly”), parents and educators would do well to consider a “tech exit” and Wi-Fi filters. Catholic schools and colleges might reconsider procedures that require students to use social media or AI for class assignments, school announcements, and forms and registrations.

Healthcare

Every family needs healthcare for their children, and most schools and colleges provide medical services and counseling. But what happens when most pediatricians and counselors, and healthcare providers more broadly, promote gender ideology? Trustworthy, competent physicians in sync with Catholic teaching—or at least respectful of family religious beliefs—are hard to find. Most U.S. medical and psychological associations embrace gender ideology and endorse sex-rejecting procedures for minors (euphemistically known as “gender-affirming care” or “transgender” medicine)—despite medical ethics concerns, opposition from “rank and file” physicians, and “weak evidence” to support those procedures.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), for example, endorsed unproven, sex-rejecting interventions for minors in a 2018 policy riddled with errors.  Then, ignoring mounting evidence that these procedures cause irreparable harm, the AAP reaffirmed its support in 2023. Perhaps worse, the AAP’s “Bright Futures” clinical guidelines (Promoting Healthy Development of Sexuality and Gender Identity) explicitly endorse gender ideology and set expectations for all U.S. pediatricians to fuel the “transgender” pipeline by screening for “sexuality and gender identity” issues, from toddlers to teens. The “Bright Futures” guidelines instruct pediatricians to tell parents, before their child is a year old, about “assigned gender at birth and gender identity development.” Physicians should then “discuss and explore gender identity in a developmentally appropriate way with all children beginning at ages 4 to 5 years.” With children from 5 to 10 years, physicians are directed to “affirm the spectrum of gender identities” and to refer children to gender “specialists,” as “appropriate.”

The primary medical conduits for promoting gender ideology and facilitating sex-rejecting procedures are not only private physicians and counselors but also school-based health and counseling centers, where immigrant and low-income children are particularly vulnerable. What are Catholic educators doing to ensure they provide and refer only to professionals who uphold Catholic teaching?

Public schools and universities

For over a decade, gender ideology has saturated most public school and university environments, thanks to progressive government policies, “woke” curriculum producers, “LGBTQ” non-profits, activist teachers and professional organizations (including teacher unions and school counselor organizations), and school policies permitting gender ideology indoctrination from kindergarten on and permitting schools to secretly facilitate a child’s chosen (sex-rejecting) identity.

The Supreme Court has yet to review cases where schools “transitioned” a child without parental consent, but several petitions are pending. In a welcome development, the Supreme Court in 2025 upheld religious parents’ rights to opt their children out of compelled, “LGBTQ” curricula in public schools and considered two cases involving women’s sports and male athletes (decisions are pending).

Despite prohibitions on federal funding for gender ideology and numerous state laws limiting “LGBTQ” content in schools, the National Education Association and activist teachers and administrators openly flout these limits. In addition, school and college counselors face ethical obligations from their professional associations that require them to “affirm” “LGBTQ” identification.

Parents rightly worry about woke curriculum, but scrutinizing the culture of a school or college is also essential, as language, celebrations, artwork, social expectations, role models, and disciplinary rules prove formative over time. For example, a teacher or professor who describes students as “cisgender” normalizes a new binary—cisgender or transgender—instead of male or female. A homeroom teacher who habituates students into declaring their pronouns during daily social-emotional learning sessions teaches kids that identity is chosen and changeable. An annual events calendar that features monthly “LGBTQ”-themed celebrations (and zero religious holidays) conveys to students that “LGBTQ” beliefs enjoy privileged status.

Public schools and universities are unlikely to be free of gender ideology anytime soon, because the educational pipeline (including schools of education, unions, and professional development for teachers, staff, counselors, and administrators) remains committed to gender ideology.

Catholic schools: A haven?

Catholic education should be a safe haven from gender ideology. After all, Catholic teaching is clear: see Male and Female He Created Them, a 2019 Congregation for Catholic Education document on gender ideology; Dignitas Infinita, a 2024 document from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith; and “Doctrinal Note on the Moral Limits to Technological Manipulation of the Human Body,” a 2023 document from the U.S. Bishops’ Doctrine Committee.

Many U.S. dioceses do provide clear pastoral guidance, upholding Catholic teaching on the human person and opposing gender ideology. Bishop Thomas of Toledo, Ohio, for example, recently released an excellent pastoral letter, The Body Reveals the Person: A Catholic Response to the Challenges of Gender Ideology.

Even so, not all Catholic educators, and not all Catholic schools, oppose gender ideology. Some dioceses have given no guidance or encouragement to families (or their Catholic schools) on this issue—despite the devastating effects on a child, and the whole family, when a child is wooed and won by the lies of gender ideology. Worse, too many Catholic families I have met in my work have felt betrayed by Catholic schools that affirmed and encouraged their child’s newfound “LGBTQ” identification, often behind parents’ backs.

It is scandalous for Catholic formation events—like the annual Religious Education Congress in Los Angeles, which reaches thousands of educators—to platform speakers like Fr. James Martin who countenance “LGBTQ” self-identification, mischaracterize the medical facts of “gender transition,” and pretend that “welcome and inclusion” is the essence of pastoral care for persons experiencing same-sex attraction or identity issues. Catholic families deserve better.

Gender ideology will not be victorious. But we must respond to this challenging moment with truth and love, faithful to Jesus Christ and the teachings of the Catholic Church, for the sake of our children.

Mary Rice Hasson, J.D., is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Person and Identity Project at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. She is co-author with Theresa Farnan of Get Out Now: Why You Should Pull Your Child from Public School Before It’s Too Late.

CNS Fights for Access to Faithful Education

New Accrediting Program for Newman Guide Recommended Schools

To help ensure Catholic families’ access to quality, faithful Catholic education, The Cardinal Newman Society has acquired a formal accrediting program for Newman Guide Recommended schools.

Every Catholic family deserves opportunities for Catholic education. The formation of the human person to know, love, and serve God is central to a Christian life.

Cost, however, is often a barrier to Catholic education. So is the lack of supply: many families today have difficulty finding quality education that serves their particular needs and is faithful to its Catholic mission.

The Cardinal Newman Society has long helped families find faithful schools and colleges. Now CNS will provide formal accreditation, giving families assurance of a Newman Guide Recommended school’s viability and quality while opening the door to school choice funding in many states.

CNS has acquired the National Association of Private Catholic and Independent Schools (NAPCIS), which for 30 years has served the growing number of independent, lay-run schools devoted to Catholic formation. NAPCIS has been a key leader in the renewal of Catholic education, contributing to the growing diversity of options for Catholic families.

Now, as a Cardinal Newman Society subsidiary, NAPCIS continues to provide low-cost, non-intrusive accreditation that is newly integrated with our Newman Guide review process. The 87 NAPCIS member schools, serving 12,800 students, will achieve both Newman Guide Recommended status and NAPCIS accreditation. Soon, all other Newman Guide Recommended schools will also have the option of NAPCIS accreditation, and any other school seeking accreditation will be required to also achieve Newman Guide recognition.

NAPCIS accreditation assures the general public, and Catholic families in particular, of the faithful Catholic formation, academic quality, and operational health of Newman Guide Recommended schools. While Newman Guide standards emphasize what is most important about Catholic education, accreditation also considers the practical aspects of a school’s operation and academic quality.

School choice opportunities

But how will NAPCIS improve families’ access to faithful education?

With regard to cost, 36 states now have some form of school choice program, and the Trump administration has championed a federal tax credit to support student scholarships. At least 14 states require accreditation for a school to receive school choice funds, and experts predict the accreditation mandate will soon spread to most states.

NAPCIS accreditation, then, will help ensure that families choosing faithful Newman Guide education will be able to afford it.

Moreover, NAPCIS accreditation will help strengthen Newman Guide Recommended schools, ensuring that faithful schools are available to Catholic families. Our unique program will never waver from The Cardinal Newman Society’s focus on Catholic formation.

Finally, NAPCIS accreditation will be a great benefit to faithful schools and an incentive to achieve Newman Guide recognition, thus helping CNS increase the number of faithful schools recommended to families in The Newman Guide. Usually, accreditation is an expensive, intrusive, and bureaucratic process, and it has prevented some schools from applying for Newman Guide recognition. Our low-cost, streamlined accreditation will be integrated with the Newman Guide evaluation.

Dr. Dan Guernsey, senior fellow of The Cardinal Newman Society for more than a decade and director of Ave Maria University’s Master’s in Catholic Educational Leadership, is the new executive director of NAPCIS. Dr. Denise Donohue, our vice president of educator resources and evaluation and also an 11-year employee of CNS, chairs the new NAPCIS board, which also includes attorney Quentin Fairchild and expert Catholic educator Michael Van Hecke.

“Our goal is to make faithful accreditation simpler, more affordable, and more impactful—helping schools live out their Catholic mission with confidence and joy,” Guernsey said in a press release announcing the program.

Trump Scholarship Tax Credits

The Cardinal Newman Society is also fighting to ensure that Catholic families have full access to school choice programs like the federal tax credits for scholarships included in President Trump’s One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA).

In the final law, the Senate removed language explicitly protecting the religious freedom of schools receiving scholarship funds. So when the Internal Revenue Service invited comments to help it develop regulations implementing the program, The Cardinal Newman Society responded strongly.

Bob Laird, senior counselor to the president of CNS and editor of our Newman Guide Defender e-newsletter on religious freedom matters, studied the new federal program, consulted with attorneys at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and allied organizations, and submitted the comment to the IRS just before Christmas.

“School choice is especially important to Catholic families and Catholic education,” we reminded the Administration. “…Public policy has effectively coerced Catholic families into public schools that reject truths of God and the Catholic faith.  This is not the religious freedom promised by the First Amendment.”

We urged the IRS to explicitly state in the regulations that scholarships must be available for religious education and must accommodate religious schools if any scholarship requirement conflicts with a school’s “religious beliefs, morals, practices, or heritage.” In addition, we urged the IRS to prevent States from imposing laws or regulations that interfere with the religious mission of schools receiving scholarship funds.

Moreover, we noted that the OBBBA does not define what it means by an eligible “public, private, or religious school.” This is a problem because many states refuse to include homeschooling and other options within their definition of “school.” We urged the IRS to clearly define “school” to include “any program of formal education that is legally permitted in the State in which it occurs.”

At the OBBBA signing ceremony, President Trump said, “This is about educational freedom. The money should follow the child—not be trapped in failing government schools.” CNS is fighting to ensure this principle is upheld for all Catholic families.

Parents are the primary educators of their children, as is repeatedly asserted in Vatican documents. Parents are not only the first educators in a child’s lifetime, but they are also most important at every stage of a child’s formation.

Everything in Catholic education, then, depends on the health of the family. But tragically, the American family is not well, and Catholic children are suffering the consequences.

Restoring the family and rebuilding a culture that properly nurtures children requires at least a kernel of faithful Catholic education. Our patron, St. John Henry Newman, knew the importance of forming faithful, rational, and virtuous laypeople.

For this, we have the example of Newman Guide Recommended schools, homeschool programs, colleges, and graduate programs. Their leaders exhibit the dogged determination and faithful trust in Providence that sustained the 19^th-century founders of parochial schools—St. John Neumann, St. Katharine Drexel, and many other heroes of Catholic education.

Family in crisis

One recent sign of trouble in the family is the plummeting number of Catholic baptisms of children. From 2010 to 2023, child baptisms dropped 37 percent, according to the Official Catholic Directory. Since 1970, when 1.09 million children were cleansed of original sin and welcomed into the Church, the number of baptisms has dropped by half.

This is a natural consequence of the marriage decline that likewise began in the 1970s. Catholic marriages declined 74 percent from 1970 to 2023.

Consider that for a moment! Only about one-fourth as many Catholics get married in the Church today, relative to 1970. To call it a “marriage crisis” seems an understatement.

Did you know that, without immigration, the Church in the U.S. would be disappearing quickly? It may seem a consolation that the number of adult Catholics in America has increased more than 40 percent since 1970 because of new immigrants, but it only puts the family crisis in a worse light. Adjusted for the total number of Catholics in 1970, the marriage rate has actually declined 82 percent and the baptism rate 64 percent in a little more than five decades.

Another factor is the shrinking size of those Catholic families that remain intact. In the 1970s, fewer than a third of Catholic women who had ever been married had one or two children, and 21 percent had five or more (General Social Survey). But in the last decade (2010-2019), only 6 percent of ever-married Catholic women had five or more children, and fully half had just one or two. There are many factors impacting this, including higher costs of child rearing, but surely contraceptive use, abortion, divorce, and cultural biases against large families are also to blame.

The total fertility rate for U.S. Catholics in 2024 was about 2.2, according to Pew Research—just under the rate for Evangelical Protestants and far below the rate needed for the Catholic Church to grow, given massive numbers of young Catholics leaving the Church every year.

Education of children

Amid fewer marriages, fewer children, and fewer baptisms, we also see fewer Catholics educated in the Faith.

More than half of Catholics born in the 1940s attended Catholic schools, The Pillar reports. But as of 2021, only 29 percent of Catholics born in the 2010s had ever enrolled in a Catholic school.

It’s astonishing: in the 40 years leading up to 1960, Catholic school enrollment nearly tripled to more than 5 million students (NCEA). Now, 65 years later, enrollment has dropped more than two-thirds to well below the count in 1920. All that work, all those prayers and donations have been erased, and young Catholics are further separated from the Church than they were before the rise of parochial education.

Fewer than 10 percent of Millennials (born 1982-2005) attend weekly Mass, compared to more than 55 percent of the Silent Generation (born 1925-1942), according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. Mass attendance declines to about 4 percent for Millennials who have never attended a Catholic school.

If there’s a lesson to learn from all this, it’s that the Church had it right all along. Yet today, few parents realize and even fewer pastors remind them that it’s their solemn duty to provide a truly Catholic education to their children.

“Parents are to entrust their children to those schools which provide a Catholic education. If they are unable to do this, they are obliged to take care that suitable Catholic education is provided for their children outside the schools” (Canon 798).

Clergy “have the duty of arranging everything so that all the faithful have a Catholic education” (Canon 794).

How, then, is it that the vast majority of Catholic children and young adults today attend secular schools and universities?

In 2024, 81 percent of Catholic families with children said they chose public schools, and another 5.4 percent had kids in secular private schools, according to the American National Election Studies. Just 18.4 percent chose private religious schools—hopefully, most of them Catholic schools. (School Choice Chart with this note: The portions add up to more than 100 percent, because some families have children in two or more types of schooling.)

On the other hand, how is it that many parents who are serious about Catholic education have difficulty finding schools and colleges that are both academically strong and faithful to their mission?

Increasingly, Catholic parents are finding their own solutions when Catholic schools don’t measure up. In 2024, 3.6 percent of Catholic families chose to homeschool—not nearly the rate of Protestants who homeschool (7.8 percent), but still a growing sector.

The Newman Guide Solution

Catholic homeschoolers and Catholic school students make up an outsized portion of students attending Newman Guide Recommended colleges. That’s good news! Amid the Church’s decline, The Newman Guide offers hope for a better future.

Even as parochial school enrollment slides, there is a revival of faithful Catholic education among many Mass-attending, traditional Catholic families. And even though many Catholic schools and colleges still strive to attract a population that has little interest in authentic Catholic formation, others are succeeding and growing by doubling down on their mission.

In 2024, The Cardinal Newman Society reported impressive rates of married alumni who met their spouses while attending Newman Guide institutions, including 30 percent at Wyoming Catholic College, 29 percent at Thomas Aquinas College, 28 percent at Christendom College, 25 percent at Our Lady Seat of Wisdom College in Canada, and 25 percent at ITI Catholic University in Austria.

“Attending a Newman Guide Recommended college—with its promotion of the sacramental life, faithfulness to the Magisterium, and flowering of Catholic culture—increases grace in one’s soul but also increases one’s odds to find a holy spouse,” argued Patrick O’Hearn, author of Courtship of the Saints: How the Saints Met their Spouses.

As we celebrated last month on the Feast of the Holy Family, even Jesus Christ was born of a mother and raised by a foster father. He was educated in the home and, probably, by a nearby rabbi, sanctifying the family and formation by an education deeply rooted in the truths of God.

Newman Guide education is a return to what is natural and right. May God continue to bless it for the good of the Church, of families, and of young Catholics who deserve faithful Catholic education.