I. Introduction
In 2025, my wife and I began the most humbling vocation of our married life: becoming foster parents. Since then, our home has been blessed—and stretched—by the presence of five foster children. Each came with scars that no child should bear, yet each revealed a glimmer of grace and resilience. We learned quickly that the foster system isn’t just a bureaucracy—it’s a battlefield for the soul of a nation. The need for good foster parents is immense—children long for stability, moral clarity, and Love rooted in Truth.
But in a culture obsessed with ‘inclusion,’ that very truth is being outlawed. On October 13, 2025, LifeSiteNews reported that a Christian couple in Massachusetts lost their foster-care license for refusing to affirm gender ideology. Lydia and Heath Marvin had opened their hearts to vulnerable children, yet the state disqualified them because they would not sign a statement pledging to ‘support a child’s gender identity.’ It was a story that hit home—literally. My wife and I read it knowing that, under current trends, faithful Catholic foster parents like us could be next: No Catholic, faithful to the teaching of Christ and His Church, can in good conscience affirm, support, promote, or participate in gender ideology or its grave moral errors. To do so is to cooperate with a falsehood that wounds the human person and defies the Creator’s design.
You may have recognized that this is not a new persecution. It is the latest expression of one of the oldest prejudices in American history—anti-Catholic bigotry reborn under a new disguise. But precisely because Catholics know persecution, we must now rise in solidarity with every Christian who suffers for upholding the truth of Christ. The defense of conscience is not merely a Catholic cause—it is the cornerstone of all authentic freedom.
II. America’s Forgotten Hatred
From its earliest days, America has struggled to tolerate Catholics. The Puritans banned priests from their colonies; Maryland, founded as a refuge for Catholics, eventually outlawed the Mass. After independence, several states required citizens to deny ‘foreign allegiance’ before holding office—a thinly veiled jab at the Pope.
In the 19th century, the Know-Nothing movement warned that Catholic immigrants would destroy democracy. Rioters burned convents, desecrated churches, and murdered priests. Even in the 20th century, anti-Catholicism persisted in polite society. When New York Governor Al Smith ran for president in 1928, Protestant ministers warned that the Vatican would control the White House if he were to win.
The mobs eventually disappeared, but the prejudice never did. It simply became more refined.
III. From Firebrands to Bureaucrats
In earlier centuries, anti-Catholic prejudice in America was essentially a contest between Protestant and Catholic—an intra-Christian struggle over doctrine, authority, and the role of the Church. But today, the antagonists have changed. The new persecution is driven not by rival denominations but by a secular progressive ideology that has turned its hostility toward all who uphold Christian moral truth. The old nativists feared the Pope; the new revolutionaries fear the Natural Law. The modern state, armed with bureaucratic power and the rhetoric of “inclusion,” now seeks to silence faithful Catholics and other Christians alike who refuse to bow to the idols of gender ideology, relativism, and moral inversion. The target is no longer merely the Church of Rome—it is the entire Christian conscience that still dares to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Historically, by the late 20th century, overt bigotry had given way to subtle marginalization. The courts secularized public schools, effectively driving Catholic moral reasoning out of public education. Priests became Hollywood caricatures. Catholic hospitals and schools were pressured to compromise on contraception, abortion, and ‘gender affirmation’ policies. The new prejudice came in the language of rights, diversity, and non-discrimination—terms that, ironically, exclude Catholics from public service when they dare to remain Catholic.
Pope Pius XI once warned in his encyclical Quadragesimo Anno that ‘those who turn liberty against truth destroy both liberty and truth.’ The United States, having divorced freedom from moral order, now finds itself enslaved by relativism.
The most striking example is the closure of Catholic adoption and foster-care agencies across the United States. Beginning in Massachusetts in 2006 and spreading to Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C., Catholic Charities were forced to shut down because they refused to place children with same-sex couples. For decades, these institutions had served the poorest and most vulnerable with excellence and compassion. Their crime was fidelity to the Church’s teaching on marriage and the family.
The state demanded ideological conformity; the Church chose conscience.
IV. The Bureaucratic Inquisition
The Massachusetts case of the Marvins marks a new phase in the same old war. It is no longer just institutions, but more broadly, individual Christian families, being told that they must violate their conscience to serve the Common Good. The state now claims authority over not just our work, but our words and beliefs.
St. John Paul II warned in Veritatis Splendor that ‘the freedom of conscience is never freedom from the truth but always and only freedom in the truth.’ Yet, our culture has inverted that principle. Bureaucracies now wield the power once held by mobs, punishing fidelity to Divine Law under the guise of compassion.
V. Conscience: The Final Frontier of Freedom
At the heart of this persecution lies the battle for conscience. The Catholic tradition—from St. Thomas Aquinas to John Henry Newman—teaches that conscience is not a private whim but the echo of God’s Divine Law and the Natural Law written on the human heart. To act against it is to betray Truth himself.
Pope Benedict XVI warned that when conscience is reduced to personal opinion, freedom collapses into tyranny. In his 2010 address to British leaders, he said, ‘Religion … is not a problem for legislators to solve, but a vital contributor to the national conversation.’ He continued, ‘The role of religion in political debate is not so much to supply these norms … but rather to help purify and shed light upon the application of reason to the discovery of objective moral principles.’
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that ‘a human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience’ (CCC 1790). When the state compels citizens to act against conscience, it assaults the foundation of liberty and the dignity of the human person.
VI. Faithful Resistance
Catholics and other Christians have endured persecution before. The difference now is that the persecution is bloodless—and therefore easier to ignore. But make no mistake: it is real. The refusal to license Christian foster parents, the closure of adoption agencies, and the legal harassment of Catholic professionals are not random events. They are symptoms of a secular creed that will tolerate every belief except the one that claims to be true.
St. Peter reminds us: ‘If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you’ (1 Peter 4:14). Our response must be the same as it has always been—fidelity, prayer, and courage.
VII. Bearing the Cross
The Holy Cross stands as the eternal emblem of the Church, the sign by which she conquers and the path by which she suffers, and it remains so today. From American colonial persecution to modern cancel culture, Catholics have been called to suffer in fidelity to Christ. The LifeSiteNews story of the Massachusetts foster parents is not an isolated tragedy; it is a mirror held up to America’s soul.
Suppose we remain silent while faithful foster parents, teachers, and medical professionals are punished for living according to God’s Law. In that case, we become complicit in the dark forces of injustice that once sought to silence our own Holy Roman Catholic Church. Now is the hour for Catholics to stand shoulder to shoulder with our brothers and sisters in Christ, to speak boldly, act courageously, and defend the sacred right to follow conscience without coercion.
Christ promised, ‘If the world hates you, know that it hated Me before it hated you’ (John 15:18). This is our consolation and our commission—to bear witness to the truth no matter the cost, confident that beyond persecution lies resurrection.
VIII. Standing Firm in the Culture War
At this moment in history, Catholics and faithful Christians must not retreat from the sacred duty to serve, to love, and to stand in the public square as witnesses to truth. The foster care crisis in America is not merely a social issue—it is a battlefield of souls. If believers withdraw out of fear or fatigue, the field will be ceded entirely to those who reject the moral order and deny the image of God in man. The Church must not yield her place in this work of mercy; she must expand it, reclaiming the ground that has been stolen under the banner of false compassion.
Every faithful Catholic family that opens its home to a foster child bears silent testimony that Truth and Love are not opposites but a unified whole. By remaining steadfast, Catholics must affirm what the world has forgotten: that charity without Truth becomes sentimentality, and truth without Charity becomes hardness of heart. The future of the culture depends on those who refuse both errors.
Secular progressives, non-believers, and the haters of Christ will continue to seek to silence or exclude those who will not conform to their ideology. But as St. Paul wrote, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21). To surrender conscience is to surrender Christ Himself. The faithful must therefore stand unafraid, proclaiming with courage that God alone is Lord of conscience and that His moral law cannot be canceled or redefined by decree.
The time for retreat has passed. Catholic families must stand firm in love and truth, offering the tenderness of Christ’s Mercy and the unyielding clarity of His Holy Gospel. To serve children is to serve Christ. To defend conscience is to defend freedom itself. And to persevere in faith amid persecution is to share in His victory.
IV. Conclusion
No Catholic may lend assent or cooperation to the false anthropology of gender ideology, which rejects the Creator’s order inscribed in human nature. To affirm it is to betray both reason and Revelation, and to participate in a lie that harms souls and distorts the image of God in man. Yet Catholics and other faithful Christians are not thereby disqualified from being devoted, compassionate, and loving foster parents. Indeed, their fidelity to the Natural Law and to God’s design for the human person makes them uniquely capable of nurturing children in Truth, stability, and authentic love. To exclude such families from fostering because of their Faith is not justice; it is discrimination masquerading as progress.
Selected Sources and References
- LifeSiteNews. “Christian Foster Parents Lose License in Massachusetts for Refusing to Affirm Gender Ideology.” October 13, 2025.
- Pope Benedict XVI, Address to British Civil Leaders, Westminster Hall, September 17, 2010.
- Pope Pius XI, *Quadragesimo Anno* (1931).
- St. John Paul II, *Veritatis Splendor* (1993).
- St. Thomas Aquinas, *Summa Theologiae*, I-II, q.94, a.2.
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§1776–1790.
- Acts of the Apostles 5:29; 1 Peter 4:14; John 15:18.
Source Note: This editorial was developed with the assistance of ChatGPT (GPT-5) to support research, structure, and stylistic refinement from a traditional Catholic perspective.