New York Daily News, July 21,2015
A priest who came out as gay after losing his ministry job at a New Jersey private school is looking to the Holy See for guidance.
Rev. Warren Hall penned a one-page letter earlier this month detailing a decision by the Archdiocese of Newark to end his role as a Seton Hall University chaplain for advocating against LGBT bullying.
He hopes Pope Francis will have a chance to see his note before he departs for the World Meeting of Families scheduled in Philadelphia this September.
“Good teachers are being fired, pastoral and compassionate priests and religious women are being silenced and accept it out of fear of being disciplined by their superiors, and good, faith-filled people are leaving the Church as they witness all of this happening,” Hall wrote. “As a gay priest, I am personally experiencing all of these things.”
Hall cited a Facebook post decrying the prevalence of bullying that plagues lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender men and women for effectively resulting in his termination notice in May.
“In a letter to me, the Archbishop of Newark stated that the reason for my removal was that ‘the inaccurate messages on either Twitter or Facebook have raised serious questions in my mind about where you stand with reference to some important Church teachings,’” Hall explained in the correspondenceobtained by Religion News Service.
The message that marred his 26 years as a priest was a social media update from “NOH8,” an advocacy group with ties to California’s battle to overturn the state’s ban on same-sex marriage in 2008.
Hall came out as gay two weeks after being fired.
Hall is not the only disgruntled member of Catholic clergy seeking, if not an acknowledgement from Pope Francis himself, at least a conversation with local dioceses about the growing number of LGBT educators and priests at odds with the Church’s exclusive policies.
His letter trailed a heartfelt plea mailed to the Apostolic Palace on behalf of Margie Winters, the Philadelphia educator forced to resign after a complaint revealed her sexual orientation and same-sex union to the local diocese.
While her letter has failed to produce a single form of acknowledgement from Catholic religious leaders, Winters and her wife, Andrea Vettori, have hope Hall’s ordeal will build momentum for their cause.
“I think people are understanding who these people are and why they’re being fired. They’re questioning that,” Winters told The News on Thursday.
That awareness comes at the cost of other ministerial educators who have lost their jobs such as Matthew Eledge, a former English teacher at Skutt Catholic HIgh School in Omaha, Neb., Flint Dollar, a music teacher at Mount de Sales Academy in Macon, Ga., and Tyler McCubbin, a volunteer coach at Dowling Catholic High School in Des Moines, Iowa.
“When is that threshold going to be?” Vettori asked. “We hope it’s now, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see."
10 comments:
They're playing to the wrong crowd.
The Holy See thinks the action is in Europe, but it's in the Third World, especially the Middle East.
I think Francis gets that, but he's got a bunch of commie cosultants telling him he's got to be more like Bill Wilhelm.
A little background on Margie Winters. She was director of religious education at a Catholic high school. A parent tried to communicate with her by email with a suggestion about Catholic religious teachings and was ignored. The parent dropped the issue and home-schooled the child on these teachings but took the issue up with the trustees after learning that Winters was married to a woman. The parent's position is that she purchased a Catholic education for her children and was not getting that. The parent withdrew her kid from the school. The school then did not renew Winters' contract. For Winters's part she says the school knew she was a lesbian when she was hired. Basically, the issue is whether a private religious institution is required to retain a person living a life (gay married) which is inconsistent with the Church's teachings. The fact that she was the Director of Religious Education and the fact that the school knew she was a lesbian when they hired her are other factors to consider.
Far more sympathetic is the case of Matthew Eledge, an English teacher who was fired from a Catholic high school for violating the school's code of conduct and morality clause after it was learned he had announced his engagement to another man. He already has found employment elsewhere.
Note that these cases involve gays and lesbians hired by the Catholic school who were not fired until it came out that they had married. The Tyler McCubbin case involves a Catholic high school which revoked an offer to hire after it learned that Mr. McCubbin was engaged to be married.
I am curious what the Pope will have to say. If anything.
Is the Church going to enforce it's doctrine or is it going to change?
How are any of these cases sympathetic? Were they dragooned and forced to teach? Was Church teaching kept secret from them ? Who was it ran off immediately and snitched to the media?
As for gay priests consider the case of Rembert Weakland, archbishop of Milwaukee.
Makes war with the faithful, makes love to his boyfriend. Faithful out half a million bucks to keep boyfriends mouth shut. Boyfriend btw in his mid thirties , still tries to sue the Church for abuse.
Or consider Rev. Mark Sorvillo. Chicago gay priest who embezzled 40 grand from his parish, spent on keeping himself and his gay stripper boyfriend fashionable.
The higher you go in the hierarchies, including the Church hierarchy, the more dominant The Liberal Mind. I think that's Chesterton's phrase. Anyway, the point being that The Liberal Mind worships itself, ipso facto it not only can't worship God, it is at war with God. And all of God's absolutes. Needless to say The Liberal Mind goes through all the motions but it doesn't really believe. Leniency on an abomination follows from that lack of belief. Read Ann Barnhardt. She lays it all out.
These are the people (the Church schools and the gay teachers/staff, not the priest) who are negatively affected by the sudden manufactured-for-political-reasons major social change. The priest is an activist, maybe the Director of Religion lady, too. The dramatic fainting is part of the act. But regular people, like these teachers, and the church schools which are caught in the middle? I have sympathy. Most churches are now so invested in progressive social justice issues that they're basically just mouthpieces for the state.
Here's the deal. There are rules. When you become a priest, you promise to follow the rules. The rules go back a looooong way. A person who wants to be ordained as a priest knows about the rules a long time before ordination. A long time.
A padre doesn't get to say "well, screw those poopy old rules because I have feels" when the lies about following the rules come out. And speaking of out, how, eggzacktly, does a celibate, asexual priest come out as being gay? Or straight, for that matter, without dipping one's pen in the appropriate inkwells?
Father Openly Gay needs a different career. The Methodists are hiring, I hear, and are totes okay with all things non-hetero and non-celibate.
Agreed. If he wants to start his own religion it's not like there's no precedent for that. Or if too lazy could just be an Episcopalian.
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