"If Catholic School Employees Had to Live By The Bible, They’d All Get Fired" [View all]

[mr blur]

[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#deedfc; color:#00000 0; margin-left:1em; border:1px dashed #7a7b7d ; border-radius:1em; box-shadow:4px 4px 4px #999999;"]Camille Beredjick who works in the LGBT nonprofit industry, writes:

Marriage equality may have swept the nation last week, but LGBT people are far from equal. Even in places where LGBT individuals and same-sex couples are granted some array of legal rights, religious institutions routinely fire LGBT teachers after they come out or get married.

The most common explanation is that gay teachers aren’t upholding Catholic ideals when they pursue or “flaunt” their relationships. When they get hired, teachers at these schools are often asked to sign agreements stating they’ll abide by “Catholic principles.” If someone gets outed as LGBT, administrators use these documents to claim a breach of contract, then send the gays on their way.

In practice, the terms of these contracts don’t do much except ban same-sex relationships, ignoring a host of other prohibitions the Bible sets. In an excellent op-ed for the New York Times titled “The Church’s Gay Obsession,” openly gay columnist Frank Bruni explains why that’s such an issue:

"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."

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http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/10/13/if-catholic-school-employees-had-to-live-by-the-bible-theyd-all-get-fired/

So why is the RCC willing to overlook examples of its members not living 'Biblically' until it involves gay people? At best this seems to suggest double standards, at worst outright bigotry leading to hatred.

(NB: Before the usual apologists pile in I don't know why I feel the need to point out that isn't "flamebait" - experience probably - but this is a group to discuss religion and this is a religious topic and the New York Times piece makes several important points.)