Suppose you are a Burger King restaurant manager who has an employee who comes to work wearing a McDonald’s uniform and responding to customers with his negative opinion of the Burger King food they are ordering. Do you tell this employee he needs to go look for another job or do you sign him up for a long-term employment contract? Similar to the expectation that an employee at Burger King must positively promote their image and products, a Catholic school teacher or administrator is expected to back Church doctrine, teach the truths of the faith, and not tarnish the Catholic “brand.” Whatever the job, if an employee can’t integrate with the company’s/organization’s principles and mission, it’s time for him or her to move on and find a more suitable employer.
In my 34 years as a Catholic school principal, I had to establish this obvious condition of employment to every new teacher I hired. Before offering a contract, I bluntly stated that anyone teaching or elevating heretical ideas would create scandal, which the Church defines as when a person’s behavior is so damaging that it could lead others into evil. An educator whose public actions inside or outside the classroom reject Church doctrine would be scandalizing our students and their parents, thereby indicating the person was not a proper fit to teach in a Catholic school. Notably, the Catechism explains that there is higher gravity to the scandal “when given by those who by nature or office are obliged to teach and educate others.” This is related to how Jesus once said,
Frustratingly, what we are finding these days are cases of educators who call themselves “Catholic” but are demanding Catholic schools let them choose for themselves the self-selected variety of Catholicism they desire to teach and the handpicked features of morality they fancy to model to their students – typically involving a disregard for the sanctity of marriage. By publicly affirming they are actively engaging in homosexual sex (or heterosexual fornication, for that matter), these teachers and administrators are giving young, impressionable students the wrong idea about God, the Church, and salvation and are leading children’s souls into sin.
To legitimately be designated a “Catholic” school, its employees must respect, publicly observe, and pass on Catholic concepts and Church doctrine. Catholic educators must do all they can to guard against scandal, which includes not advocating for sexual sins but teaching the truth about God’s plan for human sexuality. In today’s decadent society where it is considered counter-cultural to support chastity, an authentically “Catholic” school employs fortitudinous and orthodox administrators and teachers who both model and teach to their students that sexuality is a beautiful gift from God that He planned to be used solely by a man and woman married to each other and open to reproduction. (You can read my past articles on how to identify authentic Catholic schools here and here.)
Sadly, a growing number of Catholic school educators model to children counterfeit Catholicism when they refuse to adhere to doctrinally-based school policies, reject the truth about the dangers of sexual sins, and find nothing wrong with homosexuality, so-called gay marriage, and so-called transgenderism. Although historically most Catholic schools have been known for faithful adherence to doctrine, too many modern schools have tarnished their Catholic identity by employing teachers and administrators who choose to seek the approval of their world rather than the approval of their Lord. You can spot these schools by noticing if they employ wimpy administrators and/or defiant teachers who relish embracing secular society’s ideology surrounding the so-called *LGBTQIA2S+ movement.
With the trend of more and more Catholic schools employing counterfeit Catholics, it was actually heartening to read how a court recently ruled that a Catholic school in the Charlotte Diocese had the right to not employ a teacher who publicly defied the Catholic faith by announcing his same-sex “marriage” on social media. Yet it brought back memories of disheartening, similar circumstances during my time working in Catholic schools in the Seattle Archdiocese.
A few years ago, two different Catholic high schools in the Seattle area (here and here) had a few of their Catholic school faculty publicly announce their same-sex “marriages,” which resulted in the employees being informed by their respective principals that they would not be re-hired the ensuing school year. However instead of Charlotte’s common-sense court ruling, what resulted in these Seattle cases was one principal quit due to unbearable animosity toward her from the many school staff and parents who rose up to back the active homosexuals and another principal was forced out by the Archbishop who caved to public outcry. One of the schools even paid off their disobedient employee rather than go to trial over his lawsuit.
One would have hoped the Seattle Archbishop would have emulated the Charlotte Bishop by staunchly insisting – to the point of a willingness to fight in court – that their Catholic schools have an obligation to dismiss faculty members who refuse to carry out their religious mission. Instead, Seattle’s head cleric responded by choosing to convene a task force to evaluate if the policies on school personnel contracts were too stringent and should be watered down. This task force ran a muddled process that included a gratuitous survey (that even non-Catholics and random people outside the Archdiocese could complete) asking for their “feelings” regarding allowing practicing homosexuals to teach in Catholic schools and their “feelings” on God’s words in the Bible regarding marriage and sexuality.
The task force’s wishy-washy final report attempted to sit on both sides of the fence by refusing to answer if Seattle’s Catholic schools should remain orthodox or should get with the spirit of the age and join the sexual revolution. To support the latter side of the fence, 20 different times the report stunningly referenced information from New Ways Ministry – a heretical organization that promotes so-called gay marriage, resists Church teaching on sexual morality and was previously labeled “not credibly Catholic” by the Vatican. Conversely, at no time did the task force reference anything from Courage – an approved apostolate of the Catholic Church that compassionately counsels men and women with same-sex attractions in living chaste lives. Upon unveiling the final report, the Seattle Archbishop announced he would “take these recommendations into prayer and begin my discernment process.” However, nothing was done. The Archbishop never spoke on this again…until now…three years after the report was published because the Archbishop currently finds himself and his Archdiocese once again in the news regarding yet another controversy of a teacher getting “married” to her same-sex partner.
As in the prior incidents, in this current scandal, all of the counterfeit Catholics in the community along with so-called LGBTQIA2S+ activists nationwide started protesting when it was learned the active-homosexual teacher would not be re-hired. However, in this case, it wasn’t the school principal who made the decision to not offer the defiant, scandalous teacher a contract; it was the pastor. This time the principal threw the pastor under the bus by openly washing his hands of any involvement in the decision, signaling his support for sexual sin and breaking Church policy. When asked about this incident, the Archbishop’s statement was as feeble as his task force’s previous report:
* (Note that Seattle Archdiocesan school faculty sign one-year contracts, called “covenants,” with no guarantee of continual yearly employment.)
When this latest incident hit the news, an anonymous group’s petition got circulated to all Seattle Archdiocesan school teachers and administrators to sign, asking them to band together in compelling the Archbishop to choose the side of not allowing Catholic schools to consider “private lifestyle choices” (the petition’s wording) when hiring employees. Predictably, this petition doesn’t mention if schools should consider “Church doctrine,” “Scripture,” or “binding contracts.”
One wonders if protests would have gone this far if in the earlier scandalous episodes the Archdiocese would have shown a stalwart commitment to orthodoxy by stressing that Catholic schools cannot advocate disordered sexual acts and will not turn a blind eye should personnel cause scandal. Instead, a worthless task force report, wimpish clerical and educational leadership, and the many radical, counterfeit Catholics who are large in number in Western Washington all combined to create today’s current environment where Catholic education in the Seattle Archdiocese seems to be more bogus than authentic. Too many administrators, teachers, and school parent communities either outright endorse or subtly accept “gay pride” and either outright allow or subtly pay no heed to faculty who propagandize children that the Church is wrong on so-called LGBTQIA2S+ matters.
If Catholic schools don’t stand firm in acting counter-culturally, which includes refusing to employ scandalous employees, increasingly more Catholic youth will be confused and won over by those who advance secular society’s lies that physical relations with members of the same sex are natural and good, and that “Love is love” is a bona fide mantra to champion.
Pray that our Catholic schools – both in Western Washington and nationwide – and the parents who enroll in them enlighten their kids that the genuine mantra is “Jesus – who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life – shows us that love must speak the truth.” This truth includes that it is not loving to tell a lie to people who are involved in homosexual activity or who champion “gay pride” that they are righteous. Yes, we all should compassionately acknowledge that God’s command for sexual chastity can be a struggle for many and refraining from sexual sins (not just homosexual activity but also heterosexual fornication) can be a trial, but we must do so while also unwaveringly teaching that God condemned sodomy.
Besides praying for strong Catholic schools, pray that the weak administrators, defiant teachers, and progressive parents – who want to disobey the Church that Jesus founded, oppose their Catholic school’s Godly principles, and lobby for disingenuous, scandalous employees who defy the Church – will leave our religious schools to go work for or enroll in secular schools where it’s not controversial to disobey God, flaunt one’s sexual appetites, or groom kids.
Or if their local Burger King is hiring, let’s suggest they go check them out.…Read more by
