Jesuit School Defies Catholic Bishop
Catholic school officials refuse to fire gay teacher
Showing children that LGBTQ people are not fit to be teachers has consequences. Demonizing gay people harms LGBTQ kids, teaches other kids to be intolerant, and encourages bullying. The Catholic hierarchy in Indiana has ordered a Catholic school to fire a gay teacher. But school officials, Jesuit priests, and lay Catholics are taking a moral stand by refusing to comply. Could this be the beginning of a moral revitalization in the US Catholic Church?
If you’re a transgender person, a lesbian, or a gay man, you know to look over your shoulder in certain places. You know to keep your mouth shut sometimes. You learned early, and probably harshly, to hide essential truths about who you are.
Anti-LGBTQ violence rates are high, and they’re rising dramatically in much of the developed world. Many blame a rise in right-wing populism. Whatever the ultimate cause, conservative religious forces are leading waves of moralizing protest and othering.
Roman Catholic bishops are cheerleaders for hate
In the United States, the Roman Catholic hierarchy of bishops and cardinals loudly demonize LGBTQ people and frequently push against our full equality. Their actions and edicts are harsh and dehumanizing.
- Bishops in Illinois and Wisconsin have decreed that people in legal same-sex marriages may not receive funerals or be buried in Catholic cemeteries, something generally granted to Catholics without question, even to convicted rapists and murderers.
- Bishop Thomas Tobin of Rhode Island recently tweeted that Catholics should not attend LGBTQ Pride events, calling them “contrary to Catholic faith and morals,” adding that, “They are especially harmful for children.”
- The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops oppose the proposed federal LGBT Equality Act, which would protect LGBTQ people from discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodation. The bishops claim that LGBTQ equality would “harm society as a whole.”
- Catholic churches, agencies, and schools are increasingly acting to fire LGBTQ employees, according to the New York Times.
These positions and Catholic doctrines that teach that LGBTQ people are “depraved,” “disordered,” and “morally evil,” lead to an atmosphere of disrespect and and vilification that must result in violence.
According to the Pew Research Center, intolerant people almost always learn their views in church. Religious doctrines that demonize minorities hurt innocent people.
Tweeting to millions of people that Pride is harmful to children is reckless and irresponsible. Teaching children directly that LGBTQ people are immoral might be worse. Archbishop Charles Thompson of Illinois did just that yesterday.
He showed kids that gay people are less by punishing a school that refused to fire a gay teacher.
Archbishop Charles Thompson issued a decree declaring that Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School in Indianapolis will no longer be recognized or identified as a Catholic institution within the archdiocese.
Thompson has been trying for two years to convince the Jesuit-run school to fire a gay teacher, despite the school’s “robust nondiscrimination policy” that protects employees from discrimination based on race, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation and marital status.
It is time for us to encourage school leaders, both religious and lay, to refuse to comply with demands that they fire LGBT employees.
Greg VanSlambrook, principal at the high school, said the school values diversity in its teachers and students. “We feel that people from many walks of life, whether Catholic or non-Catholic… can come carry out our mission with effectiveness and with care.”
The school requires only the president, principal, religious studies teacher, and campus minister to be practicing Catholics.
The school is standing firm —
Brebeuf School leaders say that following the bishop’s orders would “violate their informed conscience.” In a statement, trustees said the school has,
respectfully declined the Archdiocese’s insistence and directive that we dismiss a highly capable and qualified teacher due to the teacher being a spouse within a civilly recognized same-sex marriage… Whereas the Archdiocese of Indianapolis may choose to no longer attend or participate in the school’s Masses and formal functions, Brebeuf Jesuit is, and will always be, a Catholic Jesuit school.
The conflict pits the Jesuit order of priests against the church’s powerful hierarchy. It’s also the latest battle between bishops and the generally progressive Catholic religious orders and lay people who run schools that employ lesbian and gay teachers.
What makes this episode unusual is that Jesuits and their schools enjoy a degree of independence from the church hierarchy. Unlike many parish schools, the prestigious Brebeuf is financially independent of the diocese, not relying on it for any funding or staff.
Brebeuf’s stand is unusual, brave, and morally commendable
Leaders are taking serious risks. According to the Rev. James Martin, Jesuit priest and author, “It is rare for a Catholic institution not only to side with its LGBT faculty members, but also do so in the face of such fierce opposition from a bishop.”
In standing up for the gay teacher, the school’s leaders are risking their careers and even their status as Catholics in good standing with the Church. But they are setting moral examples that teach kids the true meaning of respect for minorities and the positive values of living in a pluralistic society.
The Catholic hierarchy often laces its toxic anti-LGBTQ pronouncements with meaningless calls for respect — as if respect COULD have meaning when LGBTQ people may not live equally in society. Brebeuf School and its Jesuit leaders are showing their kids what respect is by actively defending an innocent man. They’re living respect by treating a gay man as fully equal and fully moral.
Ordinary Catholics and women religious call for a revolution —
Jamie L. Manson, writing in The National Catholic Reporter, issued a stirring call to action after Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput forced the Religious Sisters of Mercy to fire a lesbian teacher.
If a school feels forced to choose between terminating a person’s career and forfeiting its Catholic identity, that would be an especially menacing form of bullying. Darker still is the irony that a Catholic school would have to prove its identity by destroying an LGBT employee’s livelihood.
Invoking the memory of the Civil Rights movement, Manson quotes Martin Luther King Jr. “One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
She adds that, “No amount of mercy or increased sensitivity will defeat the injustice and indignity of the church’s teachings on LGBT people and same-sex relationships. It is time for us to encourage school leaders, both religious and lay, to refuse to comply with demands that they fire LGBT employees.”
Manson points out that Catholic schools have a clear advantage over the bishops. She observes that lay people respect women religious (nuns) much more than they respect the hierarchy. She points out that large majorities of Catholics in the US strongly support LGBT people. “And more than enough Catholic theologians and ethicists have argued cogently for the full inclusion and equality of LGBT people in the church.”
She urges ordinary Catholics to call the bishops’ bluffs:
“Imagine the pushback and negative press a bishop would get if he stripped a Catholic school of its identity for refusing to fire an LGBT employee. Imagine the momentum that could be built and the empowering precedent it could set.”
We’re about to find out
The Jesuits at Brebeuf just called the bishop’s bluff. They say they’re following their consciences and setting a moral example for young people. They’ve been respectful, but their statements make no bones about their moral position, which by extension calls the bishop’s own morality into question.
Will US Catholics tolerate their leaders firing people merely for being gay? Or will they heed Jamie Manson’s stirring words and follow Brebeuf’s principled example? Could this be the beginning of a moral revitalization in the US Catholic Church? Or is it just a one-off anomaly due to a wealthy school’s financial privilege?
Whatever the case, for LGBTQ people, much is at stake. Firing highly qualified, respected teachers because they’re gay normalizes bigotry and cements our second-class status.
Firing gay teachers shows kids how to bully people because of their minority status. I know two things for sure: