A reader writes

My dear Dark Lord,

I’d like to hear your thoughts on a certain issue. First of all, I’m one of your blog’s “followers”, and I tremble daily in fear of your wrath, Oh Great One, etc. I’m a Catholic living in the Philippines. Even though we’re supposedly a predominantly Catholic country, anti-Catholic thought is actually quite popular from what I can see in the news and in everyday life. The anti-Catholicism here is mostly anti-hierarchy and anti-authority in nature (usually in the form of “We can call ourselves Catholics without having to listen to our priests and bishops, or even the pope!”).

Last night, I read an article online about a new law that will allow unwed mothers to sue any workplace that discriminates against them. The Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines is now requesting that Catholic schools be exempted from this law, citing the fact that a Catholic school needs to uphold Catholic moral principles (including the teachings about marriage) when choosing its faculty. Here’s the article:

I must say, reading the hate-filled comments on that article was a real pain in the neck for me. Everybody was talking about how this “shows” that the Church hates women, that the Church wants to bring us into some bigoted patriarchal dark age where men are more privileged than women, that the Church doesn’t care about Jesus’ teachings on compassion, that the Church wants single moms to be jobless, etc. (you know, the usual knee-jerk accusations hurled by anti-Catholics).

I myself think that any religious institutions should have the right to deny employment on religious grounds. I think a person’s gender has nothing to do with it because, after all, a man who disrespects the sacrament of marriage is also unsuited to be associated with a Catholic institution. What do you think? Was the CEAP justified in seeking exemption from this law?

Whew! This is the sort of stuff I tend to stay away from. I have no idea of the people involved, the legal issues, or the personalities. Combox commentary seems to me irrelevant, since it’s usually just strangers projecting their personal issues on the news.

I can see an argument for each side, myself. Yeah, the Catholic school has a right to uphold its moral teachings, but single Mom’s gotta work too. I’m not persuaded that Catholic teaching is so simple that married Mom’s uphold Catholic values and single mom’s don’t. There is, after all, a big place in our Tradition for helping single parents and honoring their fidelity to the family when the other spouse has walked out.

At any rate, I’m too removed from this controversy to have much of an opinion that’s worth anything.