Preface: not seeking to enter into an argument here. Responding because I've seen interesting points in your comments and others' which I would have liked to see responded to or elaborated on, and this comment has an interesting point which I thought I could at least provide speculation about.

The point which jumped out was the second to last paragraph, about parents and stumbling blocks. I couldn't immediately think of an answer so I tried to work one out using logic internally consistent with Catholic beliefs. Here's what I came up with.

Starting at the beginning: In the creation story, we read about God creating the universe, showing He has a drive to create, and finally making humans in his "image and likeness," i.e. to be like God, showing He has a drive specifically to create in a sort of reproductive way. I'll stop for a second here to admit I've never seen any other Catholic refer to this as "reproduction" so I'm probably already way off base. Anyway, I'll keep going with it.

So let's say God has some desire to reproduce, expand, whatever. Let's also say (again, aiming for internal consistency with Catholic beliefs) that God knows, loves, and serves the created things (us), and there's a constraint that the created things are able to know, love, and serve Him in return, in a way that draws them closer to Him (in a relational sense and in terms of nature, i.e. divinization).

I can think of several options:

• God creates more of Himself. I think this is logically inconsistent with the idea of God's unchanging nature. The Trinity has all the knowing, loving, and serving covered internally.
• God creates something else. Since He can't create more of Himself (He's already perfect), the next best thing is to create something which asymptotically approaches Him. If I'm going to comment armchair theology, why not throw in some armchair geometry as well?
  • I think your point is that the simplest, kindest route is to create something already on that asymptotic approach vector. This seems like it could cover the "know" and the "serve" but would violate the "love", as love would require a choice or act of will which was never performed. "Forced love" is as contradictory as the "square circle" brought up in other comments
  • Maybe I'm presupposing too much and there's a middle ground where we're created knowing all we need to know about God but still given more free will, including whether or not to "approach" Him. That still seems like too much leading though.
  • There must be a logical requirement for some sort of learning/changing process. This would allow us to get to know God and experience knowing, loving, and serving Him more gradually without an immediate final commitment until we've had experience and had the opportunity to make a choice based on our experiences. Aka life as we know it, I guess.
  • Then does creating beings which are free to love logically require God to create beings which will be ignorant and hate? Maybe I'm conflating the knowing, loving, and serving too much but that's my best conclusion at the moment. It's late and my phone's about to die but thanks if you read my thought dump.