EWTN News portal reports that Washington state has settled a federal lawsuit brought by Shane and Jenn DeGross, a Christian couple who had their foster license denied for refusing to affirm gender ideology. The state agreed to a permanent injunction, policy changes, and $250,000 in legal fees. While the world celebrates this as a “religious freedom” victory, the very framing exposes the bankruptcy of modern “religious liberty” discourse: it seeks tolerance from a secular state rather than the recognition of Christ’s absolute kingship over every nation, law, and public policy. The world calls this a win; the Faith calls it the barest minimum owed to Christians by even pagan governments.
The World’s “Religious Freedom” Is Not Catholic Liberty
The EWTN News article presents the DeGross settlement as a triumph for “religious freedom” and “constitutional rights.” These are the categories of the American founding — a Protestant, Enlightenment-era framework that the Church has consistently condemned as insufficient and dangerous. Pope Pius IX, in the Syllabus of Errors (1864), condemned the proposition that “in the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to exclusion of all other forms of worship” (Error 77), and further condemned the claim that “the civil liberty of every form of worship… conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people” (Error 79). The very notion that a Christian family must negotiate with a secular state for the right to practice its faith is an admission that the reign of Christ the King has been publicly repudiated.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas (1925), taught with unmistakable clarity: “His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ” and “rulers of states… if they wish to maintain their authority inviolate… let them fulfill this duty themselves and with their people.” The Washington settlement does not restore Christ’s kingship over Washington state. It merely carves out a private exemption — a “viewpoint-based restriction” lifted — within a legal order that remains fundamentally secularist and naturalist. The state concedes nothing about the truth of Catholic teaching on the human person; it merely agrees to stop actively punishing one family for holding it. This is not the peace of Christ; it is the truce of a state that has expelled God from its public life, as Pius XI lamented: “When God and Jesus Christ — as we lamented — were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed.”
The Article’s Silence on the Supernatural Order
The article, while commendably reporting on the persecution of Christians, operates entirely within a naturalistic, legalistic framework. There is no mention of the state of grace, no mention of sin, no mention of the supernatural destiny of the children placed in foster care, and no mention of the Church’s authoritative teaching on the nature of the human person as created male and female for the glory of God. The DeGrosses’ defense is framed in terms of “sincerely held Christian beliefs” and “First Amendment claims” — language of American constitutional law, not of Catholic theology.
The article quotes ADF counsel Johannes Widmalm-Delphonse saying, “When children are sleeping on cots in child-welfare offices for lack of loving homes, states like Washington should be doing everything they can to bring in more qualified foster parents.” This is a humanitarian argument, not a theological one. Where is the recognition that every child has an immortal soul, that the purpose of education is to “contribute to the inner sanctification of souls” (Pius XI, Quas Primas), and that placing a child in a home that denies the truth about the human body is not merely “unloving” but spiritually lethal? The silence about supernatural matters is the gravest accusation that can be leveled against any purportedly Catholic publication.
Gender Ideology as a Fruit of Condemned Errors
The article describes the DeGrosses’ objection to “social or medical transitioning” and their belief that “God created the human body as either male and female, and that this biological sex is immutable.” It presents this as a matter of “religious belief” rather than as objective truth. But gender ideology is not merely a policy disagreement; it is a direct consequence of the errors condemned in the Syllabus of Errors: rationalism (Errors 1–7), the denial of divine authority over human society (Errors 39–55), and the moral relativism that flows from them (Errors 56–64).
The claim that a human being can “transition” to a sex other than the one created by God is a form of pantheism and naturalism — it makes the self, not God, the author of human nature. Pius IX condemned the proposition that “there exists no Supreme, all-wise, all-provident Divine Being, distinct from the universe” (Error 1). Gender ideology is the practical application of this error: if there is no Creator who determines the nature of things, then the self becomes its own creator. The article, by framing this as a “viewpoint” dispute rather than a question of divine law, implicitly adopts the very relativism it claims to oppose.
The Post-Conciliar Framework of “Religious Liberty”
The article’s reliance on “First Amendment claims” and “viewpoint discrimination” as the basis for the DeGrosses’ victory reveals the extent to which even self-identified Catholic media operate within the post-conciliar paradigm of religious liberty. The conciliar sect’s Dignitatis Humanae (1965) — a document issued by the usurper Paul VI — proclaimed a “right to religious freedom” grounded in the dignity of the human person, a teaching directly contradicted by the pre-conciliar Magisterium. Leo XIII, in Immortale Dei (1885), taught that “the state is bound to protect the true religion” and that “it is not lawful for the state either to adopt, or to propose as indifferent, all forms of worship.”
The EWTN News article does not challenge the secular framework; it merely seeks a more favorable position within it. This is the hallmark of the post-conciliar accommodation with modernity that Pius IX warned against when he condemned the error that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (Error 80). The DeGrosses’ settlement is a tactical retreat within a war that the Church, before 1958, understood must be fought on entirely different terrain — the terrain of Christ the King’s absolute sovereignty over all nations.
The Deeper Apostasy: A State Without God
The article notes that the DeGrosses “cared for multiple children and were described by their licensing agency as exemplary foster parents.” This detail, while sympathetic, underscores the deeper problem: a state that punishes exemplary parents for holding Catholic teaching on the human person is a state in mortal sin. Pius XI, in Quas Primas, taught that “the state is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men” and that Christ’s authority over the state is not optional but necessary for true happiness and peace.
The Washington settlement does not convert
Source:
Washington state settles foster care suit, stops imposing gender ideology on Christians (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 22.05.2026