REPEATEDLY over the last year and a half, I’ve written
about teachers in Catholic schools and leaders in Catholic parishes who were
dismissed from their posts because they were in same-sex relationships and — in
many cases — had decided to marry.
Every time, more than a few readers weighed in to tell
me that these people had it coming. If you join a club, they argued, you play
by its rules or you suffer the consequences.
Oh really?
The rules of this particular club prohibit divorce, yet
the pews of many of the Catholic churches I’ve visited are populous with
worshipers on their second and even third marriages. They walk merrily to the
altar to receive communion, not a peep of protest from a soul around them. They
participate fully in the rituals of the church, their membership in the club
uncontested.
The rules prohibit artificial birth control, and yet
most of the Catholic families I know have no more than three children, which is
either a miracle of naturally capped fecundity or a sign that someone’s been at
the pharmacy. I’m not aware of any church office that monitors such matters,
poring over drugstore receipts. And I haven’t heard of any teachers fired or
parishioners denied communion on the grounds of insufficiently brimming broods.
About teachers: When gay or lesbian ones are let go,
the explanation typically cites their contractual obligations, as employees of
Catholic schools, not to defy the church’s strictures, which forbid sexual
activity between two men or two women.
But there are many employees of Catholic schools
nationwide who aren’t even Catholic, who defy the church by never having
subscribed to it in the first place. There are Protestant teachers. Jewish
ones. Teachers who are agnostic and, quite likely, teachers who are atheists
and simply don’t advertise it. There are parish employees in these same
categories, and some remain snug in their jobs.
“Is it more important to believe in the church’s
teaching on same-sex marriage than to believe in the Resurrection — or even
that God exists?” asked the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and the author
of the 2014 best seller “Jesus: A Pilgrimage.” “I don’t hear anyone calling for
the firing of the agnostic parish business manager.”
The blunt truth of the matter is that during a period
when the legalization of gay marriage has spread rapidly in this country, from
just six states in 2011 to more than three times that number today, Catholic
officials here have elected to focus on this one issue and on a given group of
people: gays and lesbians.
