Some Catholic Schools Deny the Truth When It Comes to Human Sexuality 

During my 40-year career as a Catholic school educator, with 34 of those years being a Catholic school principal, I witnessed a growing number of adults in Catholic school communities who were lukewarm or ignorant in their Faith. Most alarming is how many of the school faculty, including fellow principals, were not simply lukewarm or ignorant, they were downright heretical in how obstinate they acted in denying the truths of Catholicism. No more is this heretical posture evident than when the topic involves human sexuality.

There are Catholic schools throughout the country that care more about the world than the Church. Their administrators and teachers don’t dare speak up about the dangers of homosexuality or the mental illness called transgenderism. Due to ignorance, apathy, cowardice, or irreverence, the educators in these faux-Catholic schools refrain from teaching their students biblical truths about sex and marriage and about morality and immortality. These types of administrators and teachers are indeed true believers – but not in the Lord. Their allegiance is to secular humanism, relativism, and/or immoral sexual ideologies. 

What Happened in Des Moines and Portland

Even before the recent rise in violence against Christians from so-called trans people, two U.S. bishops spoke up regarding this immoral ideology. Knowing that to love someone means to tell them the truth and not encourage their delusions, both the bishop in Des Moines, Iowa and the archbishop in Portland, Oregon two years ago publicly upheld the Church’s teachings that we were created in God’s image and He created just two sexes. These sexes are not “assigned at birth” as the lie goes, but God decides on one’s sex at conception. 

The bishops called on their flocks to faithfully adhere to the Church’s position on sexuality and to firmly resist the growing scandal of so-called transgenderism. They were seeing this confusion and heresy in some of their Catholic schools, so they each published a document – “Gender Identity Guide and Polices” and “A Catholic Response to Gender Identity Theory”. They were hoping to provide clarity on the Catholic Church’s stance on human sexuality while also informing their Catholic schools they have a duty to teach these truths.

Unfortunately, a number of the members of these dioceses’ Catholic school communities were appalled and angered by these documents. Some educators resigned and many school parents protested. By resigning and protesting, they were signaling their opposition to the truths of human sexuality and disagreement not only with the Church but with Jesus and Scripture. 

These parents and educators opposed the guidelines in the documents even though their bishops were simply listing facts and realities. No authentic Catholic should have had trouble endorsing statements that explain how believing in so-called gender identity theory in in conflict with the Faith and how it is immoral to provide so-called gender affirming care in the form of drugs and mutilation. But as I’m pointing out in this article, many Catholic schools employ inauthentic Catholics.

Not just in Iowa and Oregon, but throughout America, there are Catholic school parents, teachers, and principals who are at best ignorant about the Church’s teachings on human sexuality topics or are at worst knowledgeable yet openly defiant against the Church’s stance.

My Own Case in the Seattle Archdiocese

This brings me to my own case of being a principal in a Seattle Archdiocesan school. Three years prior to the Des Moines and Portland bishops coming forward, I too feared how progressive sexual beliefs were infiltrating Catholic schools with the probability of harming children. I saw the infiltration due in part to many of the newer generations of parents and teachers being ignorant of Catholic doctrine and/or reluctant to say anything against the culture.  Distressingly, I also realized some adults in our school community were “woke.”  They had proudly joined the culture in supporting liberal, anti-Catholic principles regarding sexuality.

Knowing that Catholic schools’ policies and curricula regarding sexuality needed to be heightened and made clearer to both the ignorant and the intransigent not only in my school but throughout the archdiocese, I approached the Seattle Archdiocese’s office for Catholic schools in 2019. I asked if the archdiocese was going to create written guidelines for our schools that clearly defined policies and procedures connected with human sexuality. Specifically, I noted three growing concerns that needed attention. These were the controversies found in most public school systems and now appearing nationwide in many Catholic schools:

• The hiring/supporting of school personnel who are in so-called same-sex marriages;
• Allowing students to use the opposite sex’s restrooms, play on the opposite sex’s sports teams, and/or wear the opposite sex’s uniforms;
• Requiring teachers to address students by their so-called preferred pronouns.

The archdiocese rebuffed me. Their office for Catholic schools wanted to leave the development of any policies up to individual schools. They admitted there were numerous Catholic communities in Western Washington who would not want to support, let alone publicly proclaim, the Church’s stance on homosexuality and gender identity. 

I should have guessed this would be their answer. After all, this was the archdiocese where in virtual meetings of Catholic school principals some of my fellow principals had their “preferred pronouns” labeled on-screen under their names. This was the archdiocese where some of my fellow principals allowed boys to wear girls’ uniform skirts if they so-called identified as girls. This was the Archdiocese where not just one, but two Catholic high school presidents were both forced out from their schools because they tried to stand up for authentic Catholic ethics by not allowing “gay married” teachers. 

   

Since my archdiocese washed their hands of the idea of unity and clarity on established Catholic principles, and since the Seattle archbishop was considered way left of the Des Moines and Portland bishops on social issues and theology, it became obvious it was going to be up to solitary principals to act.  

Creating School Policies That Are Truly Catholic

With the assistance of a committee of Catholic school parents and my school commission (board), in 2019-20 we worked at more clearly and thoroughly expressing our school’s human sexuality-associated policies. These policies were written after much consultation with legitimate Catholic sources such as:

• “Male and Female He Created Them: Towards a Path of Dialogue on the Question of Gender Theory in Education” (The Congregation for Catholic Education)
• “Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination” (The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops)
• “Protecting the Human Person: Gender Issues in Catholic School and College Sports” (The Cardinal Newman Society)
• “Human Sexuality Policies for Catholic Schools” (The Cardinal Newman Society)
• “The Catechism of the Catholic Church” (The Vatican)

We wrote out precise guidelines and regulations with two audiences in mind: our non-Catholic parents or casual-Catholic parents and teachers who were ignorant about the Church’s directives regarding homosexuality and gender ideology; and our woke, faltering Catholic parents and teachers who opposed the Church in this and many other issues. Some of our updated policies included:

• “The school faculty insist on the fundamental norm that God created humanity as male and female and that according to God’s plan a man and a woman come together and ‘the two of them become one body.’”
• “The Catechism of the Catholic Church asserts, and our school teaches at appropriate grade levels that homosexual acts are ‘intrinsically disordered’ and cannot be open to life and thus ‘are contrary to the natural law’ and ‘under no circumstances can they be approved’ (Catechism #2357).”
• “At our school, our programs, policies, and actions always relate to students, parents, and staff in a way that is respectful of and consistent with each person’s God-given sexual identity and biological sex. The term ‘sex’ means the biological condition of being male or female as determined at birth based on physical differences, or, when necessary, at the chromosomal level.”
• “At our school, people are addressed and referred to with pronouns that are consistent with their biological sex in all school communication and programs. Students, staff, and visitors are to use bathrooms that correspond with their biological sex while on school property or at school-sponsored events.”

The Results of Standing Firm and Proclaiming the Truth

After publishing to our community our school’s updated, faithful commitment to Church teachings on sexuality, we received some pushback from parents and faculty members who rejected hearing truths. A handful of our school families informed me they would not be reenrolling for the coming school year.

A couple of our teachers told me they disagreed with the harshness of our statements by using terms like “homosexuality” instead of “gay” and describing these acts as “disordered.” Even when I pointed out these terms came directly from the Catechism, they would not budge in their opposition. So, I suggested they might want to find work at a school that was a better fit. In lieu of being terminated, they offered their resignations effective at the end of that school year.

Losing teachers who are popular, effective educators when it comes to teaching math or science may seem like a big blow to a school. But it is actually a fortunate thing if these teachers don’t believe in the school’s mission. It is beneficial to students’ souls to remove negative adult influencers. Students’ souls should be the number one concern of Catholic schools, not students’ test scores.

Where Did Those Policies Go?

I would have loved for my story to have a happy ending. The school promotes strong moral principles…the woke, disobedient people are exposed and leave…the school’s Catholic identity intensifies. But that is not what transpired.

Less than two years later, at the start of my 34^th year as principal of the school, I would be fired. Soon thereafter, the authentic Catholic policies I had promulgated would disappear.

I was forced out in 2021 for refusing to take an archdiocesan-mandated covid “vaccine.” (You can read the specifics about that story here).  In the four years since, my former school has gone through three different principals. Sometime between 2022 and 2025, either one of those principals, or others in school administration who had access to edit school documents, sneakily removed all of the human sexuality policies I helped created in an effort to block the infiltration of immorality into our school.

These policies that were broadcast and publicly accessible to all in the school community when I was last in charge in the fall of 2021 were nowhere to be seen when I searched online in the fall of 2025.

I asked some current teachers at the school with whom I have kept in contact. None of them had any idea about this. They do not recall over this four-year span any faculty discussion, public input, or school commission consultation regarding the school’s decision to remove multiple paragraphs of school policy associated with sexual morals.

They also were not aware of something else different about my former school’s current school policies. Newly added to the admissions policy – again sometime in the past four years – is the statement: “we do not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, color, national or ethnic origin.” The phrase “sexual orientation” was not in our policies when I was principal. Although public schools all love to include this phrase in their policies, a private school  – especially a Catholic one – has no requirement to include this. It was added purposely by either an ignorant or a woke member of the administration at my former school. 

I tell my story so to give another example of how there are lukewarm, spineless, or downright heretical Catholics who continue to infiltrate many Catholic school faculties. While we are fortunate to have some Catholic educators and schools who faithfully do not waver when it comes to upholding Church doctrine and God’s truths, sadly we do not have enough of them. 

What Should Parents Do?

Catholics should be able to expect 100 percent of Catholic school faculty and diocesan leadership to uphold Church principles via school policies, curriculum choices, and hiring practices. Catholics should also be able to have confidence that their parish elementary schools and diocesan high schools both outwardly and internally affirm a strong Catholic identity. 

Unlike during their grandparents or great-grandparents’ generations, today’s Catholic school parents can no longer assume the following:

• That the school’s principal and teachers hold authentic Catholic beliefs just because crucifixes adorn classroom walls and students attend school Masses;
• That human sexuality principles taught by Catholic school teachers extremely differ from their secular, public school counterparts;
• That a Catholic school’s policies firmly and shamelessly endorse Church stances against disorders such as homosexuality and so-called gender identity.

School parents must be vigilant in verifying the school is authentic and not just “public school light.”  If it is not authentically Catholic, parents have only three choices: confront the administration, find another school, or homeschool. Catholic parents should never settle for enrolling at a faux-Catholic school that is unwilling to share traditional beliefs of how God intended sexuality to be.

Nothing is more paramount than sustaining our children’s souls. A Catholic educator’s huge responsibility is to teach their students God’s commandments and biblical truths, and publicly back Church doctrine. Likewise, a parent’s primary responsibility is to model to their kids what a true follower of Jesus looks and acts like and to impart the rewards of walking faithfully on the narrow path with their Lord.

As the primary educators of their children, moms and dads have a difficult task in this era of anything-goes, unbiblical sexuality and the culture’s endorsement of nonsense phrases like “love is love” and “live one’s truths.“ Parents must be willing to act counter-culturally in how they educate their children regarding the topics of sexual activity, reproduction, masculinity, and femininity.