Serves me right for reading CNN: their reporting on a Catholic “morals clause” (with additions)

Last updated on: June 1, 2014 at 2:58 pm by Jane the Actuary

Serves me right for reading CNN: their reporting on a Catholic “morals clause” (with additions) 2014-06-01T14:58:00-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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The reporting at CNN on a revised “morals clause” for the teachers at Catholic schools in Cincinnati is worse than usual: the school system defined all teachers as having a “ministerial” role, and, rather than the generic promise to abide by Catholic doctrine, they spelled out more clearly that, for instance, “living together or having sex outside of marriage, using in-vitro fertilization, a gay “lifestyle,” or publicly supporting any of those things” are not acceptable for Catholic school teachers.

And the CNN article reports on teachers who are upset by this. Are the majority of teachers actually angry? Or did they interview only those who are upset, and not the others?

In the real world, at least at the elementary level (and high schools seem to be run more often by religious orders than parishes), teachers are not required to be Catholic but are generally assumed to be. And lessons on religion are not restricted to a specific “religion class” period but expected to be a part of everyday life at the school. Art class includes religious themes, for instance. Disputes between students would be expected to be worked out with reference to Christian teaching. And all teachers are required to have diocesan certification as catechists (that is, religion teachers).

Yes, a morals clause leads to some difficult issues, such as the fact that when a woman gets pregnant, it’s visible in a way that a man having a pregnant girlfriend isn’t. But doesn’t a religious school have the right to insist that its employees agree to follow its teachings, rather than openly stating that they think they’re outdated?

UPDATE:

First of all, I found a somewhat more evenhanded article from a local Cincinati site.

Second, I was thinking about this some more while scrubbing the floor, and also looked a little more online. Apparently this is an issue in a number of dioceses, in which the leadership has said, “by the way, when you agree to follow Catholic teaching, let’s remind you what that means.”

I think, in principle, people would agree with the idea of setting a good example in and outside of the classroom — if you shift this from sexual morality to something where there’s widespread agreement, like, “you can’t teach your students racial inclusiveness in the classroom and then support the KKK.”

(Would there likewise be general agreement that it’s a nonstarter for a Catholic schoolteacher to be a Planned Parenthood or NARAL supporter off-hours? One would hope — but I’m not sure.)

So there are multiple issues. The first is that there’s division within the Catholic Church, and a subset of Catholics who have not only rejected Catholic teaching on sexual morality but have moved to a point at which they think that, really, the only ones who still accept it are a few reactionary bishops — in sort of a “I don’t know how Nixon won when no one I know voted for him” scenario. The second is that it may be that some of these high schools have become “secularized” to such a degree that parents think of the school as one with roots in the Catholic Church, but really, as far as they’re concerned, just another private school in every way that matters to them.

And here’s where there’s not a simple answer — but to the extent that such a school becomes a “private school with Catholic heritage,” with a significant non-Catholic component to the student body and staff, the further it moves on a continuum towards “public accommodation.” And yet the law doesn’t see “public accommodation” as a continuum, but as a black-and-white issue; either you are or you aren’t.

This may be an increasingly difficult issue, if GOP attempts to popularize vouchers continue. Is a school at which a considerable proportion of the students are there on vouchers at risk of being deemed a public accommodation?

In Chicago, when parochial schools began closing in large number (in part due to changing demographics and later, I imagine, due to the availability of charter schools as an alternative), it was proposed that the Archdiocese take some closed schools and reopen them as charters, but they responded that in a Catholic school, the Catholic identity is a part of the entire school day, not just a “religion class” that could be turned into an afterschool option.

Here are the parochial schools I have known: growing up, a Lutheran school that I imagine to be similar to the one in Hosanna v. Tabor, in which the male teachers had dual roles: my 6th grade teacher was the Choir Director, the 7th and 8th grade teachers were “liturgists” (that is, a deacon-like role in the services). Teachers were not “hired” but were “called.” Music class doubled as choir, singing in church once or twice a month.

Now my children attend a Catholic school, where all teachers are expected to be trained and certified catechists. This year they “accidentally” hired a non-Catholic teacher, who they assumed to be Catholic due to her resume, but they had to reassign her religion-teaching duties when they found out, and then she left under unexplained circumstances shortly afterwards (my son said that a friend said that she gave them “inappropriate” questions in a writing assignment).

And, of course, our experience at Notre Dame — we were grad students, which is a completely different experience than undergraduate life there, but anyway: the University wrestled with questions of Catholic identity, and were facing the issue that, if they pursue the best faculty in their drive to be a top research institution, they’d end up with Catholic professors only in proportion to the general population, but their objective was to have a significant number of Catholic professors interacting with students in connection with their faith — and the student body is (or was, 20 years ago) 85% Catholic, and for many, the Catholic nature of the school (including dorm masses and a heavy emphasis on Christian service) is a key part of why students choose to attend there.

Are these experiences representative? According to the San Francisco Gate site, the Oakland diocese’s teachers are 20% non-Catholic, which seems like a very high percentage — but in the story itself (and links) it seems to be an issue for the high schools. In the article on Cincinnati, it’s again high school teachers that are the issue. But if that’s the case, and there are so many fewer Catholic high schools than grade schools, then the percent of faculty at these high schools that’s Catholic must be small indeed, perhaps a bare majority, perhaps even less. And if that’s the case, then the furor is more understandable, if there is more of a compartmentalization: if it’s a high school at which religion is a required subject, but that’s about it, and where parents are largely attracted by the academics, not the Catholic identity.

Around here, the high schools are sponsored by religious orders or lay organizations (the more devout parents send their kids to a school sponsored by Opus Dei) — so maybe there’s a difference there? Anyway, once you move to a situation where the school is more secular in culture, it’s a more difficult situation.

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