POSTS AND COMMENTS on LGBT TEACHERS IN CATHOLIC SCHOOLS

Regarding gay teacher in Catholic school 2015
 
You wrote "What you call respect for the Catholic ethos is not morally correct. To teach children that to be gay is intrinsically evil is not only immoral but it is child abuse." Well done.

I would like to add that saying it is intrinsically evil to have a loving gay relationship is bad enough. But the Church makes it far worse by saying Jesus was right before he became man to command the Jews to stone gay men to death. The Church says that if you don't repent you are bad enough to go to hell forever and you will.

The Church has to be charming in order to lure people in. But the fact remains that priests represent the teaching of the Church even if they don't voice it. And the other problem is that their niceness is about "hating the sin" - they want the gay person to "see the light" and repent of ever having made love to a person of the same sex.
 
From the Vatican in 1992 "There are areas in which it is not unjust discrimination to take sexual orientation into account, for example, in the placement of children for adoption or foster care, in employment of teachers or athletic coaches, and in military recruitment."

The Church still bans deliberately employing a teacher of children and young people who is in a gay relationship or who publicly supports gay rights.

A parent's right to suggest their values to their children is important. The idea that a parent has a right to pass on their values has connotations of parents pressuring and conditioning their child to absorb their ideas and make them their own. But in case a young person is gay, it is important that gay teachers be welcomed in school. They can be a role model for that person and an example also for straight young people.

The Church may not endorse stoning gay men to death NOW - but it still teaches the command to kill them by stoning came from God and was right for its time - but the fact remains that it claims to represent a man who claimed responsibility for telling the Hebrews to do just that before he became man. I would not expect a gay teacher who knows this to be comfortable in a Catholic school. That subliminal discrimination has to be addressed.
 
Re: Catholic School refusing to participate in St Patrick's Day parade 2014 as an LGBT group were allowed to march

People do not commit suicide over being unable to practice Catholicism. LGBT people do commit suicide over the discrimination they suffer. The school is sending a nasty message to its LGBT pupils. The school is plainly showing that religious doctrine is to be put before people. What else can we expect I suppose?! If the doctrine of everlasting torment in Hell was driving millions insane with worry would the Church drop the doctrine? No! I don't understand by the way why LGBT people would celebrate St Patrick who served the Church when it was more rampantly homophobic than it is now and when it endorsed hate statements against sodomites and who must have been a gay hater himself.

Response to Telegraph article - The Catholic church is losing control of Ireland's schools Sept 2013
 
16,000 school children will learn about atheism in Irish Schools. As long as atheism keeps its focus on a principle along the lines of , "Do good for its own sake and not to please any God or anybody" and "Nobody should condemn others for breaking religious rules but for breaking the rules that help build up society - eg do not condemn missing mass but condemn stealing and lying etc" parents will be happy to have their children learn about atheism.

Some worry about atheism being taught as if it were a religion for it is in a religion course.

It would be worrying if the course led to atheism being seen as another religion. But would people who see it that way be very serious about it being a religion? There is no prayer or magic spells or funny rules or sect.

There is a problem with teaching about religion. For example, if a course teaches about Catholicism it teaches about official Catholicism. What is overlooked is the huge majority of "Catholic" people being outwardly Catholic but inwardly thinking for themselves. A huge number of them agree that the notion that a piece of bread is really Jesus is against all logic and reason and is therefore untrue. That is one example out of thousands. People cherry-pick what they like out of their faith. You can easily find Catholics who cherry pick other religions too and believe in the Hindu doctrine of karma. Each person really has a faith of her or his own no matter what religion he or she claims to be part of. Teaching about a religion is therefore narrow. It neglects the fact that in reality you have a case where one Catholic person's faith differs from the next and both are artificially labelling themselves as Catholic.

Should courses be about faith then and not religion as such? Should atheism be seen as faith in yourself and not in magic/supernatural claims? 
 
If denominational schools do not lead to sectarianism in some parts of the country, they will lead to it in parts where the parents of the children have imbibed sectarian notions. And we must remember that it may not be correct to say sectarianism does not necessarily follow denominational schooling. What about covert sectarianism such as "I like people of other religions but I am most at ease with members of my own." Or, "my religion teaches the word of God correctly. Other religions do not. I have no evidence or proof that my faith is right but I won't let that stop me." The seeds of rabid sectarianism are still there. Denominational schools would not exist unless people thought members of other religions were misguided and in some way harmful.

Context - a teacher was fired from a Catholic School for marrying her same-sex partner. The school was a private school and it was stated that it has a right to make rules and fire people who break them.
 
Christianity is not the huge believer in loving your neighbour as yourself that it pretends it is. I blame the parents who send their children to a school based on bigotry. It is true the school has the right to make its own rules but that is not the point.
 
Jeremiah2000 David Pavett wrote, "What a joke. Schools need to be run by liberals and indoctrinate the kids with all the liberal dogma."

It is true that liberalism has dogmatic traits but surely it is better to have a liberal school than one with a Roman Catholic ethos. Dogma is unavoidable in life so all we can do is be as liberal as possible and consider moral quandaries on their own merits case by case. Schools should follow whatever system of thought has the most tolerance.

Parents in collaboration with the Catholic hierarchy however are ultimately to blame for schools that discriminate against teachers like the sacked LGBT teachers who are not doing anything wrong.

2014 Irish Times report that you cannot become a primary schoolteacher in Ireland unless you are Catholic or Protestant and not openly gay. Every trainee teacher is required to pass a Certificate in Religious Studies (CRS).
 
It is awful how man-made beliefs can be used to discriminate against people. What makes it worse is that the evidence that God really gave us the Catholic Church is debatable and other religions claim that God founded them instead. To give religious belief special rights is to give believers special rights. If the beliefs are human inventions then in reality some religious people are getting more human rights than non-religious and more rights than other religious people who disagree with them. The discrimination contradicts the separation that should exist between religion and the state. It in effect leads to the state saying," Man-made beliefs cannot be intrinsically sacred and it's not right to discriminate over them. But if the beliefs are not man-made and revealed by God it is a different matter. We will endorse Catholicism but it is best not to admit it clearly and we will pretend to be neutral."

Re: Schools run by Christians in Manchester claiming evolution is a lie and that gay people choose to be gay and that wives should obey husbands, 2014

A spokesperson for one of the schools claimed, “The overriding message of our curriculum is one of love. It does not teach children to run around and blow things up or that certain groups should be attacked or marginalised." This is illogical - it implies that there is nothing more to hate than violence and shunning people. Most hate is craftier than that! It takes time to build up hate in people to the point where they will engage in violence and blatant shameless discrimination. And would the school accept a teacher who was openly gay or openly atheist?

Regarding a cross being cut down in Ireland as a protest against Catholic control of Irish schools: If you were a true Atheist then you would be totally indifferent to the sight of any religious act or symbol. You would be totally neutral by not even recognizing the existence of the thing in the first place. The fact that you have a belief against something is in fact a belief in itself. I would of thought an each to their own was the true path to tolerance?

Reply: Indifference is not an option for an atheist for Christianity says that God is an extremely important matter. God by definition means the spirit who alone matters who counts and who is the origin of all things. If we are to love each other because there is no God and people need help when there is no God to help them or if we are to love God above all people and ourselves and love people only because it pleases him (that is really just loving God and appearing to love people) that is no trivial matter.
 
Some say that those who oppose the cross being re-erected through public funds and on public property, must want the chapel atop Croagh Patrick demolished.  It is not the same thing.

What about a gay teacher with HIV?
 
I know many people in society who claim that most who get HIV get it through their own fault. They say that those with illnesses they have not brought on themselves should be prioritised in medical services and care. Religious people who think gay sex is a sin and should not be happening are the worst. I would advise people at risk to challenge such bigoted attitudes - if you are sick, nobody has the right to blame you for it and punish you for it. Nobody has the right to say even if your sickness is not a punishment of sin it is still a result of sin. That is why saying gay relationships are sinful is so dangerous. It accuses anybody who contracts HIV in a relationship of as good as deserving it.

Finally

The main argument for keeping active gays out of schools or politics etc is that unlike other sins such as adultery or stealing, LGBT people link their sin with ideology.  It is a sin that tries to promote itself even if not all LGBT are explicitly into social and political change in favour of LGBT rights.  The other issue is that it is gay men who make most of the noise and the Church feels their sex act is the gravest deviancy in the LGBT community. To deny it's a sin is to silently support the ideology.