{"id":234,"date":"2018-11-24T15:18:42","date_gmt":"2018-11-24T07:18:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jesus4lesbians.com\/?p=234"},"modified":"2020-06-19T18:16:42","modified_gmt":"2020-06-19T10:16:42","slug":"pushback-against-the-morality-clause-in-sf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/Jesus4lesbians.com\/?p=234","title":{"rendered":"Pushback against the \u201cMorality Clause\u201d in SF"},"content":{"rendered":"

Archbishop Salvatore<\/span> Cordileone of San Francisco inserted a “morality clause” in teacher contracts that is quite similar to what Archbishop Schnurr did in Cincinnati.\u00a0 The teachers and their supporters in San Francisco, however, were much more pro-active in confronting Archbishop Cordileone.\u00a0 Students in Catholic schools also engaged in nonviolent protests against having their teachers muzzled by their Archbishop.<\/span><\/a> They had candle-light vigils in defense of their teachers and in favor of allowing students to be authentic (see pic above) about their sexual orientation (see #TeachAcceptance<\/span><\/a>).\u00a0 At the Mass opening the school year, students lined the side-walk and entrance way to the Cathedral with expressions of support for their teachers against the heavy-handed morality clause.\u00a0 Nearly 80% of the teachers wore black as a sign and symbol of their mourning.<\/p>\n

Jim McGarry, a retired educator who taught Catholic theology for twenty years at San Francisco\u2019s St. Ignatius College Preparatory, a Jesuit Catholic high school that his own children now attend, supported the student protestors by publishing an \u201copen letter\u201d supporting their efforts and by saying openly what many were afraid to say:<\/p>\n

\u201c[The archbishop] is not in compliance with Catholic teaching,\u201d McGarry said.\u00a0 \u201cHe is very selectively choosing a small number of doctrines and putting them forward in a selective way and, I think, distorting the tradition \u2026 in a way that first of all endangers the health and well being of our children.\u201d\u00a0 McGarry argued that Cordileone\u2019s hard-line stance on homosexuality, which would permit the firing of teachers who wed same-sex partners, directly contradicts a line in the Catholic Catechism<\/a> that reads, \u201cEvery sign of unjust discrimination [against gays and lesbians] should be avoided.\u201d\u00a0 He also noted that Catholic teaching is well-known for guaranteeing freedom of conscience, allowing Catholics to disobey their government \u2014 or even Church authorities \u2014 when they judged that their morality was been violated.[i]<\/strong><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These are excellent points that challenge Archbishop Cordileone\u2019s presumption of orthodoxy when he distorts the Catholic tradition by placing undue emphasis upon the wholesale acceptance of the Ratzinger Doctrine of homosexuality.\u00a0 In addressing the concerns of\u00a0 roughly 80% of his teachers, \u201cArchbishop Cordileone defends his imposition of his “morality clause” into faculty contracts by saying that this is no more and no less the “making more explicit what our schools are called to uphold, even in the face of social pressure.”\u00a0 In so doing, however, the Archbishop is not self-aware; he is not playing with a full deck of cards:<\/p>\n