Gender Ideology’s Alleged Danger to the Family in Society: A Synodal-Sociological Appraisal

This chapter critically examines the alleged threat of the Roman Catholic Church’s concept of “gender ideology” to the family as the basic social unit in society, using sociological perspectives and Pope Francis’s inductive synodal approach. It argues that the Catholic Church has gravely misunderstood gender in the sociological and feminist research literature and that its allegation of a threat to the family is conceptual rather than actual, constituting a moral panic or exaggeration rather than a real danger. It contends that the real cause or “folk devil” is not gender but the epistemological threat posed by the sociological and feminist concept of gender and gender diversity to the natural law moral framework of the Catholic Church. It recommends inculturation and the adoption of a sociological moral framework to dissolve the alleged threat.