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{"id":2362,"date":"2015-07-08T12:46:45","date_gmt":"2015-07-08T18:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=2362"},"modified":"2016-10-13T07:51:19","modified_gmt":"2016-10-13T13:51:19","slug":"secular-catholic-schools-and-same-sex-marriage-the-case-of-waldron-mercy-academy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2015\/07\/secular-catholic-schools-and-same-sex-marriage-the-case-of-waldron-mercy-academy.html","title":{"rendered":"“Secular Catholic schools” and same-sex marriage: the case of Waldron Mercy Academy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

In the news today (as linked to by The Deacon\u2019s Bench<\/a>), a lesbian employee was fired from her job at Waldron Mercy Academy, a Catholic school in Philadelphia, after marrying her female partner.<\/p>\n

The kicker? \u00a0She was the director of religious education.<\/p>\n

Now, everyone\u2019s flipping out in the comments section of the news site that reported this<\/a>: \u00a0not only do they perceive it as inherently unjust to fire someone for having a secular wedding ceremony, but they raise the issue that Pennsylvania has a \u201ctax credit for donations\u201d program which benefits the school, so that, in a way, the school could be said to be getting public funding \u2014 $270,000 per the school\u2019s website<\/a>, plus an unspecified additional amount. \u00a0 Has this been worked out in courts with respect to other voucher programs? \u00a0I imagine so, though I don\u2019t know for certain.<\/p>\n

The bigger issue is this: \u00a0not just community members, but parents themselves are reported to have been perfectly A-OK with a lesbian religious ed director (though the woman herself says she kept this relatively hidden) and rather upset at her firing. \u00a0Is this a small minority? \u00a0Is this part-and-parcel of being\u00a0\u201csponsored\u201d by the Sisters of Mercy, but not directly affiliated with any particular church or with the archdiocese? \u00a0Looking around on their website, there\u2019s scant information<\/a> on religious education. \u00a0They are also quite a bit more expensive than an ordinary parochial school \u2014 tuition is $13,250 per year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And note that a\u00a0 separate article reports<\/a> that \u201cMany parents point to the school\u2019s diversity \u2013 30 percent of students are of other religions*, for example \u2013 in arguing Winters\u2019 release.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

(* Other religions<\/em>? \u00a0Do they really mean 30% of the students are non-Christian, or was this careless phrasing by the reporter or a parent to speak as if Catholicism is a different religion<\/em> than Protestantism, for example?)<\/p>\n

Which means this has all the earmarks of being de facto<\/em> a private school in which the director of religious education is really more of a hired chaplain, and whose instruction to the students may well have been rather nondenominational in any case.<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s the difficulty: \u00a0it\u2019s reasonable to ask a Catholic hospital, which serves all comers and whose services are, by and large, not directly related to Christian doctrine, to be nondiscriminatory in their hiring practices. \u00a0We\u2019d all look at it as inappropriate if such an institution were to fire a same-sex-married doctor, for instance.<\/p>\n

A Catholic school, on the other hand, when, as in the typical parochial school, the entire faculty is expected to model Catholic living, and incorporate Catholic teaching throughout the school day \u2014 in this case one hopes that it should be fairly clear that behaviors that openly and unapologetically violate Church teaching would be grounds for dismissal, whether that\u2019s same-sex marriage or the band director leaving his wife to move in with the orchestra director, or the first grade teacher on the front page as a Planned Parenthood clinic volunteer.<\/p>\n

But the more a school opens its doors to the wider community \u2014 either out of service or to fill seats \u2014 and becomes \u201cjust another private school option\u201d, the more it can, and deserves to be treated as exactly that, losing its religious exemption. \u00a0The problem is that there\u2019s no halfway point \u2014 you can\u2019t half-fire<\/em> someone.<\/p>\n

(Incidentally, I wrote about this about a year ago<\/a>, in connection with another incident, in California, where the bishop was tightening up the \u201cmorals clause.\u201d)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"