My dear friends in Christ,
As many of you have heard by now, our very own Charlotte Catholic High School is embroiled in quite a spiritual battle. Among other crisis, we are currently witnessing an intense backlash regarding a lecture given to the student body last Friday by Sr. Jane Dominic of Aquinas College. In her talk, Sister highlighted the beauty found in God's creation, specifically that we are made in His image as male and female. She lovingly and methodically went through salvation history, employing sacred scripture, art, philosophy and science to develop the theme that God's gifts are intrinsically woven into our nature as either male or female; and that when we serve each other through these roles, we bring untold blessings to our families and to society. The talk espoused nothing but perfect Church teaching, which I'm sad to say is not universally accepted at our school.
The controversy is primarily centered around the second half of Sister's talk which tackled homosexuality. She approached this difficult subject with humility and bravery. I attended the lecture and I felt joyful and relieved that such a large group of our teenagers were being exposed to these truths.
Unfortunately, the most malicious attacks are being directed at our good chaplain, Father Kauth, who invited Sister to speak. And while he was not previously aware of Sister's plans to poignantly challenge homosexuality, he obviously stands in defense of her and more importantly in defense of Church teaching. This fact outrages some of our parents, who sadly prefer to threaten and scorn rather than explore Church teaching.
I invite each of you to take part in a 40 hour prayer vigil in support of Father Kauth. As our leader in the Faith at Charlotte Catholic, he will bear the brunt of this battle. Let us get behind him and help him.
My greatest thanks to those of you who will attend,
As always in Christ,
To sign up, go to:
I am a student at Charlotte Catholic and sat through this speech so I know exactly what she said and how she said and everything else that you do not. I want to start of by saying the beginning of her speech was nice it was very interesting as she described the male and female brain and the student body was very engaged and interested. After that is where the talk went south. She began to talk about how people need both mothers and fathers in their lives while for some this is true it is NOT true for all. She said "the only way for a woman to be fulfilled in life is to be married to a man". This is a complete load of crap....there were students in the audience who only have a mom because, their dad passed away, their dad was abusive and their mom left the marriage, or other reasons. So they are being told their mom is not fulfilled because they are single/divorced. Her stance on women in the marriage was also that women should be subservient in a way to their husbands which is not right. Men and women are equal. Next I will address her facts one by one. She brought up an Australian gay couple who did abuse the child the adopted. While a horrible crime she singled them out as if to say this is what ALL gays do. Well if she brings that up why not bring up the thousands upon thousands of straight families who abuse their children too? Cannot eat your cake and have it too sister. Next she said 44% of homosexual males will have between 500-1000 sexual partners in their life. This is not possible. Take the gay population of the US...every gay man would have to meet every other gay man in the US and have sex with that person at least once. Also for a person to have 1000 sexual partners in their life time(she said a person who has sex 3 times a week) theyd have to have sex three times a day with three different people. Tell me how that would be possible......exactly. She also said the transfer of HIV/AIDS the #1 transfer of it is from gay sex. As someone who re-searches my facts the #1 transfer of HIV/AIDS is unclean drug needles. Her info while some may have been valid in the 1970s-80s is not valid today. She also did NOT breach one ounce of love, forgiveness, acceptance, understanding, or any other core Catholic belief when it comes to accepting those who are single/homosexual. She also did not once mention lesbians. After the speech several kids who had single parent families were breaking down in teachers rooms because they did not feel loved because of her words. Tell me if that is right. The chaplain Father Kauth also crossed the line too. When a senior(a good friend of mine who is going to Davidson college on a full ride-not easy to do) emailed him disagreeing with the speech. My friend is one of the most reverent and religious people at the school and Father called his email "That of an 8th grader who watches TV all day" and if one were to read his email you would see an 8th grader would not have written it, but a very well educated highschool senior. Hsd she preached love, respect, understanding, and other values Jesus taught us we would not have a problem with it. However, when you ignore those key parts of our faith and basically tell someone your mom is not fulfilled because she does not have a husband I am sorry that is not right. I respect your opinions but DO NOT post on here like you know it all when you were not there...
ReplyDeleteGO COUGARS.
Thanks for posting, Derek. You are obviously intent about this, but your tone is always respectful and I appreciate that.
ReplyDeleteSome of what you say looks to me like a question of interpretation and misunderstanding. Children Do need a mother and father in their lives or a substitute figure for the missing parent. Often single moms foster relationships between their children and an uncle or grandfather or a friend. Children need to identify with both male and female models. Talk to any psychologist and he/she will affirm that truth.
As for women being "subservient" are you sure she didn't use the word "submissive?" That's a direct quote from St. Paul. It doesn't mean being a doormat. It does mean that you can't have a family with two heads any more than the mystical body can have two heads. The father is the Christ figure in the family and the mother is the model of Mary. That's biblical. That doesn't mean parents always do it perfectly and sadly, in some circumstances separation, and even divorce, is necessary for safety reasons.
You're right; I wasn't there, but I trust other adults who were. I seriously doubt that sister said women are unfulfilled without a husband. After all, she is herself an unmarried woman who I'm sure is fulfilled. So I wonder how much of this controversy is over misunderstanding and misinterpretation of what Sister said.
Errors of fact should certainly be corrected, but did she actually say what you heard? Many homosexuals do have hundreds of sexual partners in terms of their contacts during their lives. That doesn't necessarily mean distinct individual sexual partners. If a homosexual has sex fifty times with the same person that's fifty sexual contacts, not one.
The bath house phenomena in San Francisco which spread AIDS in that area back in the 80s involved numerous sex partners at one setting. There are S&M conventions and homosexual balls, etc. where numerous partners are available. And bath houses are still popular where anonymous sex is common. http://sanfrancisco.gaycities.com/bathhouses/ STDs are on the rise in San Francisco and it's primarily among men having sex with men. And it isn't just AIDS; other horrible diseases like syphilis are coming back and antibiotics are in danger of becoming ineffective. If you know anything about syphilis before antibiotics that's pretty scary since antibiotics are becoming less effective.
http://www.ebar.com/news/article.php?sec=news&article=69499
It's regrettable that some students were upset. I suspect that had Sister spoken about abortion there would be students who had abortions in the background who would also be upset. But not to speak the truth for fear of upsetting someone means the truth is not heard.
I will certainly be praying for everyone involved in this controversy. If your student body is typical of Catholic schools in the U.S. many parents and students do not accept Church teachings in sexual matters and that is very likely contributing to the high emotions.
Thank you again for posting and for being so respectful.
Thank you for your kind reply. Too many times people fight what they see as "hate" with more hate and that is not how it works so thank you. I will address your comments in order so as not to confuse anyone as to what I am addressing lol. She did not use the either "submissive or subservient", but the way she described the woman's role in the marriage was that basically the woman should be better off helping out with things at home. The old "When dad comes home he wants his pipe light, slippers ready, and drink poured". Now whether she meant that or not the way she delivered it came across like that. Especially when talking to high school kids delivery is everything. Also her commenting on relationships and roles within the marriage turned many off since she has no lived that. Many would want a nun/priest who lived the married life before entering the convent/seminary. The way Sister described the sexual partners stat was that it was 500 different people. Now whether she meant that or not is up for debate depending on your side. Delivery also an issue if it is not what she meant. As for the STDs part, she was discussing HIV/AIDS only not any other STDs unless I missed that part. While in certain parts like bathhouses in SF the spread is mainly from human sexual contact I was referring to the US as a whole(not World since in places like Africa HIV/AIDS is easily transferred from mom to fetus during pregnancy). I checked my facts with a teachers son who travels around educating those on the spread of HIV/AIDS sexual contact(not just homosexual is #2 behind the drug use-this includes mother passing to child in pregnancy). As for the abortion part....I am not sure Catholic would have an abortion talk as no one has gotten on (at least publicly announced it). In our petition that was written it said the talk could've been better used talking about issues like: combating poverty, the mistreatment of the elderly, just war, genocide and ways to prevent it among others. It was written in there since even Pope Francis has said that we need to focus on those things because we are spending too much time on abortion and gay marriage/rights. While important topics those other ones mentioned above are more important at least to me. God Bless Always
ReplyDeleteDerek,
ReplyDeleteIs there more than one Derek Miller at Charlotte Catholic? Because there is a Derek Miller from Charlotte Catholic who has posted an insensitive remark on Twitter that, if he was you, it would be problematical to your narrative.
I have not brought the matter up on twitter. There is only ONE Derek Miller at Charlotte Catholic but the tweet was not from my account. I would like for you to quote said remark and also the twitter handle from which it came, because I have handled this with respect towards others.
ReplyDelete