Over the summer, an independent Catholic school in the Philadelphia area decided that it could no longer employ its director of religious education. Why? Because she refused to abide by the teachings of the Church.
Seems like a simple case. Yet a protest raged all summer against the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, even though it does not run this school. Even more bizarre, the critics were led by a loose group of anti-Catholics who are funded by an atheist billionaire. The media, led by the Philadelphia Inquirer, gave legitimacy to this contrived protest. We wasted no time defending Archbishop Charles Chaput.
The Inquirer ran a dozen stories on this incident, all of them in support of Margie Winters, the lesbian teacher who made public her “marriage.” Most of the stories appeared on the front page of the B section, and a few made it to p. A1. Bill Donohue responded without delay.
“Catholic schools, like all private institutions, sectarian and secular,” he said, “have house rules. Those who don’t like them are free to go someplace else. That’s what diversity means. No one is forced to teach in a Catholic school and every person who works there knows, or should know, what the house rules are. Those who violate these strictures should be fired. More than that, they should be denied victim status.”
Donohue further addressed this issue on CNN and answered every media attack on the archdiocese. One of the points he made was the unremarkable nature of this “story.” For example, he said, “Catholic schools, Orthodox Jewish schools, and Muslim schools do not recognize ‘marriages’ between two men or two women, and therefore they do not welcome employees who claim to be married to a person of the same sex. Even editors at the Inquirer should be able to grasp this.”
Then some phonies blasted the archdiocese, led by Faithful America. It argued that many people want the rogue teacher reinstated. But as Donohue pointed out, there is no real organization called Faithful America. “Organizations list their address, phone number, fax number, and email address,” he said. “Faithful America lists none; it is an ‘online community.’ To be specific, no one goes to work each day at Faithful America because there is no place to go!“
George Soros, the atheist billionaire, funds Faithful America; he also funds Faith in Public Life, which is associated with this “online community.” These are essentially front groups that pose as religious entities. Faithful America, for instance, has attacked several Catholic bishops and is pro-abortion.
Donohue put the matter in perspective. “Let’s go over this once more,” he explained. “An employee who violates the tenets of the organization she voluntarily joined is canned, and an organization that is not really an organization, but is greased by the enemy of the employee’s organization, lodges a protest against an organization that does not run the employee’s organization.”
We made sure that all the parishes in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia knew of our support.
