...for
their decision not to readmit the child of a lesbian couple to Sacred Heart School in Boulder.
Many cafeteria Catholics will scream bloody murder about the school being______ (Fill in the blank: judgmental, self-righteous, intolerant, mean-spirited, etc.), but it's actually a mercy to the child. What kind of conflict is set up for a child when the school is teaching about the ten commandments and the child's "parents" are living in homosexual fornication, a mortal sin against the sixth commandment. The child is in pre-school now. Can you imagine the future including the expectation of the parents that the school should water down Church teaching to accommodate their lifestyle?
I had that problem when I was teaching fourth grade at a parochial school. One of my student's mothers was living with her boyfriend. The child's dad to whom she was married abandoned the family a few years earlier. That poor child turned from a happy, well-adjusted second grader to a fourth grader who was so filled with anger and so out of control that he tried to strangle a classmate and threw his desk over one afternoon.
I used to urge my students to be little evangelists in their own homes (without criticizing their parents, of course). When one of the children said they never went to Mass when they were on vacation I urged the class to ask their parents to take them to Mass when they were at the beach or travelling and to ask to go to Mass every Sunday. There are Catholic churches everywhere and I emphasized the great opportunity to visit other churches and see how the Catholic family is everywhere.
One of my own children was a second grader at the time and I attended first confession preparation for parents. The priest, who was a young, recently-ordained priest, told the parents that children frequently confessed missing Mass. He told the parents that he stressed to the children that it wasn't THEIR sin. They should ask their parents to take them to Mass, but if they didn't, the parents were the ones committing the sin. He urged parents not to put their children into that kind of moral conflict. If you want a Catholic education, live a Catholic life. I thanked that young priest after the meeting.
So a big public thank-you to Archbishop Charles Chaput and the administrators of Sacred Heart. Spend a minute to say a prayer for all involved in the decision and send the Archdiocese of Denver a big thank-you for upholding Catholic truth.
Address: 1300 South Steele Street, Denver, CO 80210
Phone: 303-722-4687
Email:
info@archden.org
Their goal? To eliminate gender altogether.