Tuesday, April 03, 2012

Justice, Though the Heavens Fall


A federal judge has decided to allow a lawsuit against the Catholic Church.

It seems a single Catholic school teacher, an instructor of computer science, decided to impregnate herself via artificial insemination.
She was fired for this breach of protocol.
She is suing for wrongful dismissal.
The judge argued that since she is not involved in the transmission of doctrine, the court has standing to hear her case.

The Magisterial documents of the Church insist that every subject taught in a Catholic school must be infused with Catholic principles, outlook and attitude.

Is there a "Catholic" way to teach computer science?
According to the Church, yes, there is.

It's relatively easy to see how such a course might work.

Simply open each class with prayer, provide regular reminders that God is rational, His universe is rational because it reflects who He is, and Divine logic is the underlying foundation that forms the logical structure of computer programming. I could and have taught such courses.

Of course, when I did this, Catholic parents routinely complained that I was supposed to be teaching MATH, not religion, or HISTORY, not religion, or ART, not religion. Catholic parents complained, mind you.

And there's the problem. Precisely because Catholic schools now routinely employ non-Catholics, enroll non-Catholic students, and limit these kinds of "meta-explanations", precisely because Catholic parents enroll their children in Catholic schools NOT to get Catholic instruction, but to get private academy instruction that preps their children for prep school, Catholics schools are no longer Catholic.

Catholic schools haven't been Catholic for quite a while.
And a judge has finally called them on it.

So, the judge has taken it upon himself to decide what can and cannot be considered "Catholic" in any Catholic school.  The judge gets to define what constitutes Catholic Faith and the transmission of a Catholic worldview.

So much for separation of Church and state.

Fiat justitia ruat caelum - "let justice be done though the heavens fall"...

It is hard to know which side to root for... the judge who intends to tear down the facade of Catholicism in Catholic schools or the schools who may only now be realizing, too late, that they really should have stayed true to the Catholic Faith they pretended to pass on.

UPDATE: In an ironical side note, Xavier University has decided to STOP carrying birth control coverage.  It's almost as if Catholics are beginning to realize they bought a mess of pottage.

5 comments:

  1. Hopefully, things like this will help Catholics realize this simple no-brainer: Catholic schools have to be throughly Catholic, not just a secular institution with the word "Catholic" pasted over it.

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  2. Catholic schools, like most other institutions in the post-Christian West should be abandoned to their fate.

    People aren't thirsting for the Gospel. They don't want the Truth, and the certainly don't want their children taught these dangerous ideas.

    Education, according to most, is about getting ahead...and the Faith won't help you do that in any way, shape, or form.

    So we should cut our losses, accept that life's just going to suck for a couple hundred years as everything goes to Hell in a handbasket around us, and hope that God really does exist and know what He's doing.

    Because, pace the Psalmist, the wicked do prosper and, right now, the govern our chanceries, our schools, our workplaces, and, in most cases, our families.

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  3. Unrelated, but you might like this, Steve.

    http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/bishop-aquila-receives-popes-praise-for-reordering-sacraments/

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  4. Yes, I saw that Bishop Aquila had been praised by the Pope for that.

    Now, if we could just convince the other 180 US bishops to fix that...

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  5. Years ago in Maryland folks were signing a petition in the back of church backing legislation to allow Cathoilc schools to get used textbooks when the public schools bought new books. I was looked at strangely when I refused to sign and asked why we would want used government textbooks instead of Catholic ones. "Books cost money!" I was told.

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