German Catholic bishops’ new document on ‘sexual diversity’ in schools signals deep spiritual crisis

In a hard-hitting interview with Dr. Thomas Ward, President of the John Paul II Academy for Human Life and the Family (JAHLF), renowned German Catholic sociologist and author Gabriele Kuby denounced the German bishops’ conference’s recent document endorsing the “diversity of sexual identities” in Catholic schools.  In the interview, published in the latest issue of The Academy Review, Kuby called the document the latest and most alarming manifestation of the German hierarchy’s decades-long rebellion against the Church’s teaching on sexual morality.

The document itself, called “Created, Redeemed, and Loved: Visibility and Recognition of the Diversity of Sexual Identities in the School,” was published on 30 October 2025 by the German bishops’ conference under Archbishop Georg Bätsing.  It declares that “the diversity of sexual identities is a fact” and it instructs Catholic schools to accept pupils’ self-identification as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, or non-binary and, moreover, to use affirming language.  Teachers are told they must present the tenets of Catholic sexual morality as “disputed” questions that are open to debate, and that students should be left to form their own judgments.

Only three German bishops — Stefan Oster of Passau, Rudolf Voderholzer of Regensburg, and Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki of Cologne — publicly opposed this heretical text. And while the Vatican has, in the past, repeatedly condemned gender ideology as an attack on the God-given differences between men and women, as well as on the anthropological foundation of the family, it has taken no disciplinary action against the German episcopate for promoting it.

According to Kuby, the school document is only the latest manifestation of the 2019–2023 German Synodal Path, which she described as an attempt to impose a revolutionary change in Church teaching on sexuality, introduce liturgical blessings for same-sex couples, and normalize gender diversity at every level of Catholic life.

“The bishops promised at their ordination to protect the Faith, build up the Church, follow Peter, and lead souls to salvation,” Kuby said. “Instead, they are pulling the Church down and forcing Catholic schools to adopt the LGBTQ and gender ideology agenda.”

She accused the majority of the German episcopate of having abandoned the deposit of faith and of functioning as agents of “neopaganism in action points.” The Synodal Path’s four key “Action Texts,” she explained, explicitly call for the following:

• Reassessing homosexuality as innate and morally neutral,
• Recognizing any consensual sexual partnership as legitimate if labelled “love,”
• Introducing official blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples,
• Normalizing “gender diversity,” including the ordination of self-identified transgender individuals.

Kuby described the claim that homosexuality is inborn as “scientifically unsound,” and called the medical and surgical “transition” of minors “a historic crime” and predicted that history will judge it as such.  Catholic therapists are required to affirm any sexual or gender confusion in adolescents, rather than attempting to guide them back to a healthy understanding of their sexuality using “conversion therapy” — even though, she noted, such confusion often resolves naturally within two years.

The German sociologist reserved particular scorn for the Synodal Path’s argument that sexual abuse in the Church is caused by Catholic sexual teaching itself. “Eighty percent of clerical abuse is homosexual abuse of post-pubescent boys,” she pointed out. “If we kept the Church’s teaching — sexual activity only within marriage between a man and a woman — we would have neither the homosexuality problem nor the abuse problem.”

By Steven Mosher | 6 December 2025
Reprinted with kind permission of the author.