“Gender Ideology’s” Alleged Threat to Humanity: A Critical Sociological-Synodal Analysis

This chapter sociologically unpacks the Catholic Church’s concept of “gender ideology” and its alleged imminent threat to humanity’s survival in light of Pope Francis’s latest ecclesiastical reform project, the Synod on Synodality, and his inductive synodal theology. It argues that the concept of gender as espoused by sociologists, feminists, LGBTQI leaders, and gender activists does not inflict actual and imminent harm on humanity, but poses a serious epistemological challenge to the Church’s traditional, metaphysical, and philosophical view of sex, gender, and gender complementarity, which is based on the Thomistic natural law theory, resulting in strong moral panic among members of the Catholic hierarchy against sociological and feminist gender perspectives and their labelling of gender theory as “gender ideology.”