Catholic Bishop speaks out against ‘tragic and sinful’ gender ideology in schools

Bishop Daly spoke with the National Catholic Register in November and said gender ideology has "no place" in classrooms and that it is "tragic and sinful" when it's allowed in Catholic schools.

Bishop Daly who is from Spokane, Washington spoke with the Register in November during the USCCB fall meeting. He focused his comments on the importance of protecting parental rights in both public and Catholic schools. He commented on radical gender ideology's "rampant" popularity among younger people and encouraged Catholic leadership to rebuke the trend and anchor their message in the truth about gender and sexuality.

He noted how some Catholic schools are allowing students to "pick your own pronouns" under the banner of "being affirming and welcoming."

He said bishops are the "successors to the apostles and that doesn't mean membership in a country club, it means that we have to protect our flock."

Bishop Daly cited "misplaced compassion" as a cause for Catholics to embrace radical gender ideology.

Pope St. John Paul II used the term to describe euthanasia.

Bishop Daly said if Catholics continue to embrace "misplaced compassion" on the issue of radical gender ideology then children will become "the modern orphans of society" as they get "experimented upon" by "adults who really do not have the best interests of young people at heart."

He referenced a 2021 pastoral letter from a Bishop from Arlington, Virginia, Michael Burbidge, who wrote, "A Catechesis on the Human Person and Gender Ideology" and a January guidance from Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki, the "Catechesis and Policy on Questions Concerning Gender Theory" as tools for guidance on the issue.

Bishop Burbidge wrote, "the claim to 'be transgender' or the desire to seek 'transition' rests on a mistaken view of the human person, rejects the body as a gift from God, and leads to grave harm. To affirm someone in an identity at odds with biological sex or to affirm a person's desired 'transition' is to mislead that person. It involves speaking and interacting with that person in an untruthful manner."

Archbishop Listecki wrote, "our biological sex, expressed by our body, is a gift from God and is unchangeable," and “a person’s 'gender' is inseparable from biological sex."

"Only by turning to Christ can one acknowledge and accept one’s sexual identity in every aspect — physical, moral, social, and spiritual — and only through such an acceptance can the human person in turn experience the freedom promised by Christ," Archbishop Listecki's document said.

The Vatican Congregation for Catholic Education's 2019 paper. "Male and Female He Created Them," was another reference. It stated the "need to reaffirm the metaphysical roots of sexual difference, as an anthropological refutation of attempts to negate the male-female duality of human nature, from which the family is generated."

Bishop Daly has also said that pro-abortion politicians would not receive communion in his diocese.