The EWTN News portal reports on a February 19, 2026, federal court settlement where Montgomery County, Maryland, agreed to pay $1.5 million to parents who sued over LGBTQ-themed instructional materials in public schools. The settlement, following a June 2025 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, requires the county to notify parents in advance of gender- or sexuality-related instruction and to allow opt-outs. The Supreme Court had stated the curriculum was “designed to present certain values and beliefs as things to be celebrated, and certain contrary values and beliefs as things to be rejected,” and that it “burdens the parents’ right to the free exercise of religion.” The article frames this as a victory for parental rights and religious liberty, quoting a Becket attorney that “public schools nationwide are on notice: Running roughshod over parental rights and religious freedom isn’t just illegal — it’s costly.”
This legal outcome, while presenting a tactical victory for certain parents, operates entirely within the bankrupt naturalistic and relativistic framework of modern secular jurisprudence. It accepts the false premise that the primary conflict is between “parental rights” and state overreach, rather than between the absolute, non-negotiable reign of Christ the King and the apostate, secularized “state.” The settlement’s language of “values and beliefs” and its reliance on the U.S. Constitution’s religion clauses epitomize the modernist error condemned by Pope Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors, which rejects the idea that “the civil authority… has a right to an indirect negative power over religious affairs” (Error 41) and that “it is lawful to refuse obedience to legitimate princes” (Error 63). More profoundly, it silences the supernatural foundation of all law and education: the Social Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ, whose reign encompasses “all men, families, and states” (Quas Primas, Pius XI). The article’s entire narrative, by focusing on procedural “rights” and “opt-outs,” implicitly accepts the secular state’s jurisdiction over the formation of youth—a jurisdiction the Church has always claimed exclusively. This is the essence of the apostasy: the removal of Christ and His law from “private, family, and public life,” which Pius XI identified as the cause of societal ruin. The settlement does not restore the rights of Christ; it merely negotiates the terms of His continued exile from the classroom, treating the sacred duty of forming consciences as a matter of parental discretion rather than divine obligation.
The Settlement’s Naturalistic Premise: A Modernist Compromise
The article presents the Supreme Court’s reasoning as a triumph: the curriculum “burdens the parents’ right to the free exercise of religion.” This framing is a capitulation to the very secularism the Syllabus condemns. Error 56 states: “Moral laws do not stand in need of the divine sanction, and it is not at all necessary that human laws should be made conformable to the laws of nature and receive their power of binding from God.” By arguing that the state’s imposition of gender ideology “burdens” a constitutional right, the plaintiffs accept the state’s authority to define the boundaries of religious exercise. They do not argue, as Catholic doctrine demands, that the state has no authority whatsoever to mandate instruction contrary to the natural and divine law, because its authority is derived from God and must be exercised in subordination to His law. Pius XI in Quas Primas declared that “the state must leave the same freedom to the members of Orders and Congregations… it cannot depend on anyone’s will.” The same applies to the education of the young: the state’s role is subsidiary and must serve the supernatural end of souls. The settlement’s mechanism—notification and opt-out—is a bureaucratic accommodation within a system that remains fundamentally hostile to the Faith. It treats Catholic education as a private, opt-in preference rather than the public, obligatory recognition of Christ’s sovereignty. This is the “moderate rationalism” of Error 8, where theology is subjected to the “same manner as philosophical sciences,” and the “right and duty of the philosopher to subject himself to the authority which he shall have proved to be true” is inverted so that the state’s “philosophy” (gender ideology) subjects religious authority to its approval.
Silence on the Supernatural: The Grave Omission
The most damning aspect of the article and the settlement it celebrates is the total, screaming silence on the supernatural. There is no mention of sin, of the state of grace, of the final judgment, of the soul’s eternal destiny. The conflict is reduced to “values and beliefs” and “parental rights.” This is the precise modernist error condemned in Lamentabili Sane Exitu. Proposition 25 states: “Faith, as assent of the mind, is ultimately based on a sum of probabilities.” The lawsuit’s legal strategy treats religious conviction as a protected “belief” among many, a subjective preference to be balanced against state interests. It does not assert the objective truth of the Catholic Faith regarding the immutability of sex (Genesis 1:27), the sin
Source:
Maryland county agrees to pay $1.5M after parents’ bid to exempt children from LGBTQ-themed books (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 20.02.2026