This must be gay news day. A Catholic girls school in Detroit has fired a security guard who publicized she was a lesbian. Before you jump to conclusions that the school is completely without fault, check out the whole story.
The woman, a former cop, says that she and her “partner” have “often attended school events, chaperoned dances and went to parent-teacher conferences,” and their relationship was a surprise to no one. It only became an issue when she wrote an autobiography about being a lesbian cop.
The school might be able to appeal to Church teaching and that someone living in open and public defiance of that teaching should not be in constant contact with the children if it could say that it only just discovered the truth. It might be okay if a new administration had come in with a new commitment to Catholic identity. But this just sounds like a variation on “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” and that as long as no one outside the school knew about it—and thus no pressure would fall on the religious order running it—they’d be happy to let her be a bad example to the kids.
Genther said Sister Lenore Pochelski, the school’s president, gave her the news Friday, two hours after a local newspaper reporter interviewed her about the book. She said Pochelski said she wouldn’t have gotten fired if she hadn’t gone public with the book.
“She was very clear,” Genther said. “She said it was because my lifestyle does not coincide with the teachings of the Catholic Church. I personally felt she was having a hard time firing me. ...
“But she was firm that she had to go along with the teachings of the Catholic Church.”
There is a big difference between living the faith completely and wholeheartedly and treating it as if it’s a series of regulations and legal obligations to follow. This is a case of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons and I have no doubt that the girls in this school are not learning the right lesson, but only that they can’t trust the Church.
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as long as no one outside the school knew about it—and thus no pressure would fall on the religious order running it—they’d be happy to let her be a bad example to the kids.
I’m skeptical about the bad influence Dom suspects. There is a legitimate sphere for “non-discrimination against homosexual persons” (if I may quote the title of a Church document), and it ends when the immorality becomes relevant to her work. Tolerating a lesbian employee as a security guard is a matter of prudential judgment on the school’s part, and they may have been right to do so.
If her immoral relationship was a private affair, it was plausible to say that it didn’t affect her role at the school. OTOH, when she took it public and made herself a public apologist for homosexuality, she crossed a line and removed any doubt about whether she could be an acceptable employee at a Catholic school.