Call it the one social issue the Vatican is still willing to stand strong on.

Crux reports that Rome released a new set of guidelines on June 10 regarding Catholic education, called "Male and Female He Created Them."  The big takeaway is a doubling down on the basic truth that there are only two sexes, which is what children should be taught.

The document, signed by Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi on Feb. 2, says that "it is becoming increasingly clear that we are now facing what might accurately be called an educational crisis, especially in the field of affectivity and sexuality." Quoting [Pope] Benedict [XVI], it claims that in many places, educational curricula are being planned and implemented which "allegedly convey a neutral conception of the person and of life, yet in fact reflect an anthropology opposed to faith and to right reason."

The document is somewhat confused in its treatment of "sex" and "gender," granting "gender" as a sex-related concept some legitimacy but later condemning the idea of people being "gender-neutral" or "third gender" — both of which "fictitious constructs" defy the fact that "a person's sex is a structural determinant of male or female identity."

Pro-homosexual Catholic priest (AKA what the Faith refers to as a "heretic") Fr. James Martin predictably complained about the new guidelines: "The real-life experiences of LGBT people seem entirely absent from this document[.]"  Including the "real-life experiences" of these groups, like vicious, rampant sexually transmitted diseases or a surgically imposed false vagina that the male body will regard "as a wound," constantly trying to heal it, would only bolster the Vatican's arguments.  But that's probably not what Fr. Martin had in mind.

That there are only two sexes, and that this is what children should be taught, is not a revolutionary concept.  It says a lot about our society that a document asserting this truth would garner so much attention from a whining and hand-wringing press.

While mainstream Catholic commentators will likely sing the praises of Pope Francis for defending the low-bar, no-kidding concept of sexual complementarity, it's worth noting that the Vatican appears on the same track with social issues as the mainstream conservative establishment.  While the political right "stood strong" against redefining marriage as early as five years ago, once Obergefell v. Hodges spewed forth from the Supreme Court, conservatives rolled over — to the point where Donald Trump now waltzes into campaign rallies with a rainbow flag and CPAC deep-sixes pro-marriage groups while keeping pro-sodomy ones.  Pope Francis's administration, meanwhile, has been scandalously supportive of homosexuality, with high-ranking cardinals agitating to "bless" same-sex pairings.  Likewise on abortion: Conservatives chide Georgia and Alabama for outlawing broader categories of child-killing, while Pope Francis meets with a notorious Italian abortionist and categorizes her "among the great ones of today's Italy" for working with refugees (presumably not by killing them).

It'll happen here, too.  In fact, both the mainstream conservative movement and the Vatican are already faltering on the transgender issue, with conservatives adopting the talking point that people should have their delusions ratified by their neighbors (except when it comes to sports) and Pope Francis giving an interview in 2016 in which he credulously called a deluded woman "he that was her but is he."

In that same interview, the pope said, "It is one thing for a person who has this tendency ... and also changes their [sic] sex[.] ... It is another thing to teach in schools along this line."  The moment one claims it's "one thing" and not insane for a person to mutilate his genitals and take sterilizing hormone drugs to pretend to be the opposite sex, and that society should respect his "right" to do that (except in sports!), the poison is in the wound.  Even in this otherwise rational piece, where David French refuses to call a man "she," French can't help proclaiming he's fine with calling a man by a woman's name.

With "Male and Female He Created Them," the Vatican is holding fast on this one narrow subset of one social issue, but how long until "teaching in schools along this line" is reinterpreted as "accompaniment" and "encounter"?  Give it ten years.  Maybe less.