Despite media reports to the contrary, it doesn’t appear that San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone is backing down from his attempt to dictate the private morality of teachers in San Francisco Catholic schools or from his effort to exempt them from federal anti-discrimination protections.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported this week that Cordileone will abandon his proposal to declare all teachers at Catholic schools in the diocese “ministers,” which under the Hosanna-Tabor Supreme Court decision would apply the “ministerial exemption” from federal labor laws to all teachers, not just to those who teach religion.
Cordileone is also creating a committee of four theology teachers to review the proposed morality code, which created in uproar in the local community by declaring that teachers should “conform their hearts, minds and consciences, as well as their public and private behavior” to orthodox Catholic teaching.
Among the rules that teachers are to “affirm and believe” are the “sinfulness of contraception,” that “all extra-marital sexual relationships are gravely evil and that these include adultery, masturbation, fornication, the viewing of pornography and homosexual relations,” and that “the fundamental demands of justice require that the civil law preserve the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman.”
The anti-gay language particularly rankled in the liberal diocese and prompted local parents to organize the Support SF Teachers group and create the hashtag “TeachAcceptance” in support of a welcoming attitude toward LGBT teachers, students, and community members.
Reports that Cordileone is backing down, however, appear premature. In a statement released after the Chronicle story broke, the diocese said:
The Archbishop has not repealed anything. He is adding explanations, clarifications, and material on Catholic social teaching … With respect to the use of the word “ministers,” the Archbishop only said that “ministers” is no longer being considered.
Support SF Teachers said in a statement that while it is true that Cordileone is no longer using the word “minister,” he has not “backed off his effort to reclassify teachers and other staff as ministers. […] The Archbishop is still proposing that the teachers and other staff are ‘called to advance this religious mission’ and that their work is a ‘ministry.’ This is not a meaningful change.”
According to Ted Allen, who runs the music program at Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep High School and has been involved in the protests, the archbishop’s soft-pedaling of the new restrictions follows a familiar pattern. “The Diocese of Oakland dealt with the same situation last year,” he said in an email. “The situation there followed the pattern of an initially harsh opening move from the bishop, a general outcry from parents and teachers, a period of reflection and reconsideration followed by the release of language that is less prescriptive in its expectations for teacher behavior outside of the classroom.”
For Allen and other who object to the new rules—which, he notes, include school administrators and some of the religious orders that sponsor the schools—the sticking point is the harsh anti-gay language in a community that prides itself on acceptance and diversity. “We perceive the archbishop’s language to be a real threat to our status and history as ‘an inclusive community of faith’,” he said. “For many of us, the nature of our familiar and diverse community seemed to be changing into something scary and unrecognizable.”
The controversy gets to the heart of the contradictions of the Francis papacy. On one hand, it’s hard to imagine Francis—of the “who am I to judge” and the admonishment for bishops to spend less time worrying about rules regarding sex—trying to force people to sign on to judgmental rules regarding sex. On the other, Francis has signaled that he has no intention of revising any core teachings on sexuality, especially where homosexuality and contraception are concerned, and has spoken out in favor of schools associated with the church affirming their Catholic identity and refuting secularization.
Writing in Slate about the controversy, William Saletan says it’s not possible to have a church that doesn’t judge and chides the protesters for their “new age babble” and denial of moral distinctions:
The protesters are confused. They reject morality clauses but call the archbishop’s behavior sinful, shameful, and wrong. They belong to a church but seem to think it shouldn’t forbid anything. They insist that no one can be judged, except for issuing judgments that contradict their own. They can’t explain or even acknowledge the moral differences between homosexuality, contraception, and abortion. The nonsense of nonjudgmentalism has turned their brains to mush. … you can’t replace wrongheaded conservatism with empty-headed liberalism. Acceptance, inclusiveness, tolerance, affirmation, and diversity don’t tell you how to live your life.
But it’s Saletan who’s confused in thinking that the “church” is the Catholic hierarchy or that Catholics turn to them for guidance on how to live their lives. As any good Catholic can tell you, the Catholic Church is the community of believers, laypeople included.
And in the Catholic Church, sensus fidelium, or the sense of the faithful, is imperative. It means that all Catholics play a role in discerning the truth of teachings. Catholics have clearly rejected the teaching that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered” and same-sex marriage is a threat to traditional marriage because they have seen loving same-sex couples in their schools, churches and communities who affirm the value of marriage and family.
And since the hierarchy abandoned pastoral engagement with its flock on issues related to sex with Humanae Vitae, it should come as no surprise that Catholics have lumped together all its dictates regarding contraception, abortion and homosexuality as equally irrelevant. This doesn’t mean, however, that they aren’t able to make meaningful moral distinctions in their own lives.
It’s precisely because they’ve lost their moral authority over Catholics that bishops like Cordileone are using threats and intimidation in one of the few areas in which they have leverage—the running of Catholic schools—to force at least an appearance of compliance with rules that Catholics have rightfully rejected.
