Catholic News Agency reports that the Thomas More Society has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to halt California’s policy requiring schools to conceal students’ “gender transitions” from parents during ongoing litigation (Mirabelli v. Bonta). The policy was temporarily reinstated by the 9th Circuit Court after being struck down by District Judge Roger Benitez, who affirmed parents’ right to know about their children’s “gender information.” The legal group argues this secrecy causes “irreparable harm” by violating parental rights and religious freedom, with attorney Paul Jonna condemning the state’s “parental deception scheme.”
State Usurpation of the Divine Order of Authority
The policy constitutes a direct assault on the ius primarium parentum (primary right of parents) recognized in Catholic doctrine as inviolable and God-given. Pius XI’s encyclical Divini Illius Magistri (1929) explicitly states: “The family holds directly from the Creator the mission and hence the right to educate the offspring” (n. 33). California’s mandate violates the natural law principle that “parents are under a grave obligation to see to the religious and moral education of their children” (Code of Canon Law 1917, c. 1113). By concealing critical information, the state actively impedes parents from fulfilling their God-imposed duty to guard their children’s physical and spiritual welfare.
The 9th Circuit’s justification – “protecting students and avoiding confusion” – embodies the revolutionary error condemned in Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors: “The State, as being the origin and source of all rights, is endowed with a certain right not circumscribed by any limits” (Proposition 39). This totalitarian premise reduces children to state property, negating the divine injunction: “Honor thy father and thy mother” (Exodus 20:12). The court’s presumption to override parental authority for “student protection” constitutes what Leo XIII termed “a monstrous usurpation” (Rerum Novarum, 1891, n. 14).
Gender Ideology as Synthetic Heresy
The very concept of “gender transition” rests on the modernist heresy denounced in Pius X’s Lamentabili Sane (1907): “Truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him” (Proposition 58). Gender ideology represents the ultimate application of this condemned proposition, asserting that biological reality yields to subjective “identity.” St. Pius X exposed this as “the synthesis of all heresies” (Pascendi Dominici Gregis, 1907), creating a pseudo-religion where man’s will supersedes God’s creative act: “Male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).
California’s policy operationalizes the “cult of man” decried in Pius XI’s Quas Primas (1925). By elevating personal “identity” above objective truth, institutions teach children to worship their own disordered inclinations. This constitutes formal cooperation with what St. Paul condemns as exchanging “the truth of God for a lie” (Romans 1:25). Schools enforcing this policy become temples of the “religion of man” that Pius XI warned would lead society into “deplorable consequences” (n. 18).
The Anti-Supernatural Foundation of Secrecy Policies
The argument that secrecy “protects” children from non-affirming parents reveals a purely naturalistic worldview. This position implicitly denies the supernatural reality that parents are God’s designated shepherds of their children’s souls. The Syllabus of Errors condemned the notion that “the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (Proposition 55), yet California’s policy enforces precisely this schism between natural family bonds and state authority.
Moreover, the policy’s silence regarding spiritual consequences constitutes culpable negligence. No warning exists that gender dysphoria may indicate spiritual disorder requiring sacramental grace rather than medical mutilation. The policy ignores the Church’s teaching that “the flesh lusts against the spirit” (Galatians 5:17) and that true healing comes through sanctification, not surgical alteration. By concealing information, schools deny parents the ability to seek spiritual remedies through Confession, spiritual direction, or exorcism – the very means the Church provides for overcoming disordered inclinations.
Source:
Supreme Court asked to block California school gender secrecy rules amid ongoing lawsuit (catholicnewsagency.com)
Date: 09.01.2026