Sometimes it seems the march toward progressive enlightment hits a dead-end of absurdity. High school wrestling in Johnstown, Pa., presents the latest prime example.

Bishop McCort, a Catholic school in Johnstown, is beginning a varsity wrestling program this season — but not from scratch. The school hired a highly experienced varsity coach, and several wrestlers from neighboring school districts have transferred to Bishop McCort, including a pair of state finalists last season from the nearby Westmont Hilltop public school district.

Bishop McCort was supposed to host the Westmont Hilltop wrestlers in a dual meet on Thursday, but winter weather postponed it. Hilltop reportedly had added 12 girls to its varsity roster intending to field an all-girl — or mostly female — team against the Crimson Crushers. The clear intent was to take advantage of a 2014 edict by Pennsylvania’s Catcholic bishops forbidding any student enrolled in any Catholic program to wrestle against a child of the opposite sex.

It might have been Westmont Hilltop’s way of saying, if the name of the game is winning at costs — stealing away our best athletes, for example — then it’s perfectly fair for us to use the rules imposed by your own bishops to our advantage.

But issues rarely are as overt as that. Nobody openly admits to recruiting student athletes at the high school level. Offers of personal, academic or financial gain cannot be extended or accepted at that level. And while many allegations and insinuations are suggested, rarely are accusations brought out in the open — rarely does any individual dare to declare openly that specific rules have been violated.

The result is that ideals get convoluted. Suspicions persist and grow. The concept of equal opportunity for male and female athletes becomes an opportunity to claim an easy forfeit victory — a forfeit that avenges one rival’s off-season plunder of the other’s roster.

The truly sad thing in all this is that few sports can match scholastic wrestling for its purity. What other sport features two opponents, matched by size and strength, testing each other’s skill, balance, stamina and will to win? There’s little room for deception or distraction. Wrestlers know only one way to win: hard work.

It seems a disservice to the integrity of the sport if Westmont Hilltop is attempting to load its lineup with girls if the intent is to claim an easy forfeit win. On the other hand, who isn’t sympathetic to Westmont Hilltop feeling irked that Bishop McCort stole away its best athletes?

The net result will be a failure to put the best matchups on the mat and determine which is the better wrestling program, and who within the programs are the better wrestlers.

In other words, everybody loses.

So, is the Johnstown meet that hasn’t happened yet a gender issue? Some will say yes, some will say no. It is ironic in this instance that the secular state could remind the religious church of its own teaching. It was the apostle Paul who wrote to the Galatians: “In Christ there is ... no male and female.”

Either way, It would be a shame to pin the entire argument of the Johnstown wrestling debate on gender when other issues, such as unsubstantiated but widespread allegations of recruiting by a parochial school, are stirring the waters just beneath the surface.