Go over to LifeSite and review the petition in support of Kansas City, KS, Archbp. Naumann, who has made some unpopular (and therefore proper) decisions of late.
PETITION: Support Archbishop Naumann’s defense of the Catholic faith
A parish school in Kansas is under fire after declining to enroll a child being raised by a same-sex couple in its kindergarten program.
After the pastor of St. Ann Catholic School in Prairie Village, Kansas, Fr. Craig Maxim, sent a letter explaining their decision – based on Catholic teaching – to parents, faculty and staff, a petition AGAINST the decision was started.
OUR PETITION, however, SUPPORTS the school’s decision AND the Archdiocese of Kansas City, KS and Archbishop Naumann who, in making this difficult decision, have had the integrity to safeguard the innocence of the school’s other children…and, the Church’s teaching on marriage.
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Are there no public schools or even muslim schools in Kansas which this could could attend?
I see the gay lobby has moved on from Christian bakers.
I live in the KC area and have seen this a few times on the news. I support the diocese’s right to accept and refuse anyone they wish to a parochial school, since it is a private institution, and certainly agree about their stance on traditional marriage. I only have one question: would it be improper to allow the child to be educated in a Catholic institution, even if the “parents” are not in conformity with Church teaching? This is a legitimate question and I don’t criticize the Diocese at all. It seems to me that this would be the best chance the child has to see the error of his/her “parents” ways. Then again, I realize the strain it could have on the child and the school, when there would no-doubt be opposition by these “parents.”
This is all about incrementalism and like Gab said, we are the next Christian bakers.
Step one: Archdiocese caves and lets the kid in.
Step two: Kid has a target on his/her back from other kids.
Step three: School is sued for not protecting kid from bullies.
Step four: School is sued for discrimination because kid is not allowed gay accommodations he/she has been told to ask for.
Step five: Kid is told to change genders and school is sued again.
Step six: Kid identifies as a cat and is denied a litter box. School sued.
Let’s fight this battle now, on the beach.
@ Austin, there’s no canonical prohibition regarding enrolling such children in Catholic schools. It could be allowed. As a prudential matter, I think the bishop is making the right choice here because it would be scandalous to the rest of the community to enroll a child from a household that is in a prima facie contra naturam civil union; it would cause students in the school who observed the same-sex “couple” at school functions to wonder about marriage and natural law morality, even if the students didn’t express their wonder in those terms. Furthermore, we have seen the playbook from the left, and the strategy is to find ways to play the victim to the media so you can cast your opponents as bigots. They are playing victim now. If the child had been enrolled they would have played victim later when the child was instructed about the nature of marriage. They won’t stop until all Christians are forced to bake the cake, take the photos, provide the flowers and accept their pawns/kids in private schools.
By the way, the weaselly Fr. James Martin is predictably and tiresomely ranting that this is an example of unjust discrimination targeting LGBT folk.
In addition to what Sawyer said: there will undoubtedly be (or should be) many instances in which the teachers and text books at that Catholic school explicitly deny the validity of the same-sex couple’s “marriage”, (if they are “married”) teach that same-sex unions are unnatural and disordered, and teach that homosexual behavior is an act that “cries out to God for vengeance”. This presents the teachers and the child with innumerable occasions of unnatural classroom tension, such as (a) the teacher being led to either reduce the seriousness of the grave sin, or deny the certainty of our knowledge of its disorder, or in some other way to fail to teach Catholicism in its entirety; or, it (b) presents the child with occasions which demand rejection either of the teacher, or of his parents’ authority to teach properly.
The Catholic Church teaches that parents have the obligation to both teach the child as primary educators, and to guide the selection of the child’s other teachers so that those teachers support the parents in handing on the full truth of the Catholic faith: when parents select teachers who cannot possibly agree with the parents on fundamental aspects of doctrine, it represents a situation where the parents must necessarily be failing their obligation to select good teachers, or they are themselves wrongly in rejection of Catholic doctrine, and they have the grave moral responsibility to correct their own error so that they can teach their kid in conformity with the other teachers and with the true doctrine. Papering over fundamental differences DOES NOT solve the failure.
The school has made a prudent choice, even though it will be hard to back it up (unless, implausibly, they have also denied entrance to kids of others living in obvious and public disregard of Catholic doctrine).
Done.
@Sawyer. You make some good points, and I overall agree. It just seems that these problems raised are inevitable issues of secular culture being at odds with the Church. The left will attack given any circumstance. It just seems that, for whatever reason, this couple wants to have the child go to a Catholic school, and it seems to be the best chance for the child to be educated in the Truth. There’s a lot of red tape, and I don’t fault the Diocese in the slightest, it just seems unfortunate that the child, who isn’t living in public sin, should be denied a Catholic education. Maybe I’m being naive. Pax
Tony O has hit the nail on the head. I have seen that so often with teachers where there are Non-Catholics in our Catholic schools, a policy I oppose.
In my diocese we are repeatedly told that we cannot exclude children from same sex couples unless we exclude children whose parents are invalid unions. Of course, this is apples and oranges. At least a couple (male & female) is a natural union which can be sacramentalized, presuming they are free to marry whereas the same sex couple can never be sacramentalized.
What have we come to? Our own people refuse to support faithful bishops and priests.
What we are seeing, here, is the inevitable working out of the consequences of Liberalism, which is derived from the Protestant Principle of Private Judgment. Another historian friend (military history) and I were talking a few weeks ago and he pointed out me to the disconnection of social history (he was referencing the work of another historian, whose name I didn’t write down, so I can’t cite, alas) from before and after the Protestant Reformation. This is the principle dividing point in social history. Never, before, had a population been turned loose on its own wiles of moral judgment, having been previously bound by clan or king or Church.
We have arrived at this point in history because of the naivety of the Church in thinking that it could dialogue with liberals to achieve a common understanding. This was a heresy to be crushed, an infection to be quarantined. In the West, once chemical contraception was introduced, the slope of the deteriorization became logarithmic. The deteriorization of society began feeding on itself, as all attraction to the Flesh does.
Can we stop this juggernaut? Not without a coordinated effort and the forces of morality are hardly coordinated, at this point, especially within the bishophood. Liberal bishops are organized – they have probably been, for years (see: St. Galen Mafia). If there were even a nucleus of ten conservative bishops who were redeeming the time by writing and preaching with one voice, it might create a crack in the liberal wall. Most conservative bishops, however, seem, from what I can gather, to live in fear of retaliation.
It was once thought that Big Tobbaco was unassailable, but they were brought to their knees by good science and the application of reason by a concerted organized group of lawyers building on the unbiased science provided by independent researchers. They were on a mission – would that the same could be said of bishops. The same could be done to combat the liberal progressive movement. It takes courage and the ability to understand the Opponent’s tactics. It is hard to pull people back from the Flesh without creating a correct relationship with Christ. So many clergy, both Catholic and Protestants, are teaching a false Christ to their Faithful that seems to support the liberal private judgment.
One of the early books on the subject of liberalism is still the best. It was written in 1886 and translated into English in 1899. It is called, Liberalism is a Sin, by the Spanish priest, Dr. Don Felix Sarda Y Salvany. It may be found, in the English translation, here:
http://www.liberalismisasin.com
Unfortunately, liberals control the organs of communication, at this time. Where is the conservative Google? Where is the conservative Facebook? Why are the liberals so good at grabbing the reins of mass communication? How can society ever be converted if the message of truth is drowned out amidst other agendas? If Liberalism is an infection, then there needs to be a cordon sanitaire established around them. There are not enough coordinated conservative bishops to cause a chain reaction. This is logarithic growth against logarithic growth and our logarithmic exponent is considerably smaller and our slope considerably less steep than the the other side.
They have the St. Galen Mafia. We need an Eliot Ness and, if not a spiritual FBI, at least a spiritual IRS.
The Chicken
We recently declined to enroll our child in a Catholic school where there are two same-sex couples who have children enrolled there. I asked a non-Catholic acquaintance whose child attends school there about the religious education and the “vibe” of the school (not about those families in particular). The answer was, “Everyone is so welcoming and not judgmental! Most of the teachers aren’t even Catholic and they’re the ones teaching religion, so it’s all all pretty basic stuff — God loves you and all that. Nothing controversial.”
After hearing that, we made our decision to look elsewhere. The Faith is controversial, by its very nature, because it’s in opposition to the world. Let us not be afraid to proclaim the fullness of the Catholic Faith in our lives.