The Preschooler’s Two Mommies Speak
[Guest post by DRJ]
The mothers of the Catholic School preschooler denied enrollment in next year’s kindergarten class are speaking out. It turns out they have two children enrolled at the school and, like most things in life, there’s more to this story:
“The lesbian parents of two children rejected from re-enrollment at a Boulder Catholic school say they won’t give up their faith despite their shock and anger at the church.
In a written statement, the women, who asked that their names not be used, said they enrolled their children at Sacred Heart of Jesus parish school because they’re Catholics who regularly attended services at Sacred Heart and baptized their children there.
“When we were allowed to have our children baptized, we made a promise to raise our children in the Catholic faith,” they said. “We now feel like our attempts at fulfilling this promise are being undermined by the church itself.”
A prior post on this story is here. The mothers dispute many of the church’s claims:
“The lesbian couple said in their statement that the decision was a shock because their children had been attending Sacred Heart’s preschool for three years — and they had been open with the school about their sexual orientation.
They said they will continue to attend Catholic services and raise their children as Catholics, though they don’t know if they will go back to Sacred Heart Church. They haven’t been there for two weeks to avoid being the center of attention.
In their statement, the lesbian couple said they’ve never sought approval from the church for their relationship and don’t expect the school to “modify its teachings to accommodate our family.”
“It is wrong to punish a child for who the child’s parents are,” they said in the statement. “We do not think this reflects what Jesus would have done.”
The Archbishop announced his support for the Church’s decision. Meanwhile, local protests continued over the weekend.
— DRJ
The problem once again is Homosexuals pushing acceptance of their lifestyle on an institution that rejects it.
This is not a public institution. If they want, found a private school that caters to people of their sexual orientation and leave people who don’t want to associate with them alone.
PCD (1d8b6d) — 3/16/2010 @ 4:50 amMothers and fathers are not interchangable.
Amphipolis (b120ce) — 3/16/2010 @ 5:08 amIn the end, it’s still a private matter of an established religion. This would still be the case if a private school received the same proportionate share per child as public schools. Yet another reason to cobble together 38 states and update the Constitution. One thing to do would be to make the nations capital Omaha, NB.
cedarhill (746e6f) — 3/16/2010 @ 5:20 amI do have some sympathy for the people involved. Someone in the Catholic Church gave them the idea that raising a child with a lesbian couple as parents was consistent with raising a child in the Catholic faith.
One may disagree with the beliefs of the Catholic Church, but there must be something about freedom of association and religious freedom that allows a group to define their own beliefs.
MD in Philly (70a1ba) — 3/16/2010 @ 5:28 amSeeing the Catholic Church punishing children for the sins of their fathers (or rather: mothers) reinforces my prejudices against said Church.
Newtons.Bit (660dda) — 3/16/2010 @ 5:36 am“We don’t believe in Catholic doctrines but we’re Catholic.”
Uh-huh.
George (bf158b) — 3/16/2010 @ 5:37 amWould you want your children to be taught that you, the parent, are immoral and won’t be going to heaven because of your immorality? Why would you send your children to such an institution?
Corwin (ea9428) — 3/16/2010 @ 5:57 amThe Church School intends to teach church doctrine, (there’s a shock!) which is why many people send their children to the school in the first place. (The other reason is that Catholic schools are generally well ordered with a reduced amount of politically correct BS to deal with and actual education occurs there) The kids would be taught that the (very public) relationship in questions is disordered. A protest would be raised over that, too, no doubt. Better to get it out of the way now. Why would they want to subject the poor little kids to that? …
The couple has motives that are not in the interest of the children.
Mothers? Oh, please! You can put a saddle on that Hampshire and call it a pony, but it’s still a pig.
No, the children would be taught that the relationship is intrinsically disordered and objectively sinful, but culpability and the ultimate fate of the sinner are not decisions the Church makes.
quasimodo (4af144) — 3/16/2010 @ 6:26 am“The Church School intends to teach church doctrine, (there’s a shock!) which is why many people send their children to the school in the first place. ”
Including these parents. The parents seem fine with their kids getting church doctrine.
imdw (93ef94) — 3/16/2010 @ 6:41 amRight. They have ulterior motives here, in my opinion. They would protest anything the school does that does not comport with sanctification of their relationship. They obviously have no interest in church doctrine. It’s not just obvious, it’s intuitive to a casual observer … who died 10 years ago.
quasimodo (4af144) — 3/16/2010 @ 6:57 amWashed the feet of sinners, dying for all of us sinners, its interesting these blunt, direct actions need to be “interpreted”
EricPWJohnson (44bba4) — 3/16/2010 @ 7:06 amWashed the feet of sinners, dying for all of us sinners, its interesting these blunt, direct actions need to be “interpreted”
EricPWJohnson (44bba4) — 3/16/2010 @ 7:06 amFrom the statement, published on a PDF under the masthead of gay rights org Boulder Pride:
This sounds to me like someone has been letting these mothers slide for awhile, and an unnamed somebody — perhaps a person who has just replaced someone who has either died, retired, or quit — decided “Enough’s enough, now we’re playing by the rules,” and put his/her foot down.
It’s as if Norm at Cheers was suddenly told to pay his bar tab. Can you imagine the look on his face? Nonetheless, he ought to have been paying for those vats full of beer he’d downed all those years regardless of whether other people were also allowed to violate a sound business model.
It’s true that this is more complicated than it seemed at first, but what I said in the first thread is also true: There is NO story here except the MSM mantra that homosexuality is perfectly normal, and that any church that says they’re not should be targeted for ridicule, boycott, and perhaps worse.
L.N. Smithee (eb3307) — 3/16/2010 @ 7:13 am“They obviously have no interest in church doctrine.”
They go to church. Or did, till their kid was kicked out.
imdw (803b85) — 3/16/2010 @ 7:18 amBut living in a homosexual relationship reflects something Jesus would have done?
A homsexual becoming a member of the Catholic church and then complaining that the Church condemns your lifestyle is like a vegetarian going into Outback and complaining that they serve beef. You KNOW the deal ahead of time, so shut your cakehole already! You AREN’T going to change Outback’s menu, nor will you change God’s Word.
Crush Liberalism (9d23b9) — 3/16/2010 @ 7:44 amBut we can pass a law to force Outback to limit the amount of salt they use! /sarcasm
Corwin (ea9428) — 3/16/2010 @ 7:49 am1) I believe the church has the right and power to do what it has done
2) That said, I still believe the church is in error to do this, for a number of reasons:
a) It supports those who extol notions of intolerance of people of Christian faith. While there are certainly some of these, I would hope that there are enough who grasp that Jesus consorted with sinners, for a clear reason:
Matthew 9:
9 As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.
10 While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and “sinners” came and ate with him and his disciples.
11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?”
12 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.
13 But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
b) It drives the children away from the church. How is this a positive thing?
c) It drives other people to believe they have no possible connection with the church.
Their presence in the church is an opportunity to expose them — both the children and the parents to the reasons why what they do is wrong.
By rejecting someone who is clearly at most a victim of their error, they destroy both the opportunity of the parents to learn their error, they create a barrier to others who might associate with the church, as well as a likely future negative response in the children.
The sin of these parents is not directly one affecting others around them. The church itself is not directly threatened by their sin. It should therefore tolerate the sinner while rejecting the sin, in the hopes that their exposure to The Light will lead them to realize their error. It further allows them to teach the children the opposite message of what they will learn from their parents regarding homosexuality.
> Right. They have ulterior motives here, in my opinion.
Look, I grant you that this is probably true of many gays. I see little argument to make this claim of these two. They’ve been going there for a while, one of their children has been in the school for years. They have been open in their sexual preference but it does not appear that they are militantly, vocally gay. I believe you make an error of presumption here. I don’t have adequate data to prove that, but I don’t believe you have adequate data to prove your assertion, either, and believe there is enough data to the contrary to suggest that it’s the church making a big hairy deal out of this more so than the parents.
> No, the children would be taught that the relationship is intrinsically disordered and objectively sinful, but culpability and the ultimate fate of the sinner are not decisions the Church makes.
Which is all right and proper. Indeed, it is precisely this kind of tolerance but disapproval which the church should be showing.
> A homosexual becoming a member of the Catholic church and then complaining that the Church condemns your lifestyle is like a vegetarian going into Outback and complaining that they serve beef.
I don’t think the problem here is the attitude towards the parents, it’s the attitude towards the children, who have done no wrong.
> They obviously have no interest in church doctrine.
I think it’s clear they disagree with one major tenet of the doctrine. This hardly qualifies as “no interest”. I think it’s clear that they do, indeed, have a lot of interest in church doctrine outside of one specific, but major, aspect of it.
====
God expects you to learn to walk a fine line, between absolute adherence to The Law and complete inattention to it:
IgotBupkis (79d71d) — 3/16/2010 @ 8:44 am==============================================
A great Rabbi stands teaching in the marketplace. It happens
that a husband finds proof that morning of his wife’s adultery,
and a mob carries her to the marketplace to stone her to death.
The Rabbi walks forward and stands beside the woman. Out
of respect for him, the mob forbears, and waits with the stones
heavy in their hands. ‘Is there anyone here,’ he says to them,
‘who has not desired another man’s wife, another woman’s husband?’
They murmur and say, ‘We all know the desire. But Rabbi,
none of us has acted on it.’
The Rabbi says ‘Then kneel down and give thanks that God made
you strong.’ He takes the woman by the hand and leads her out of
the market. Just before he lets her go, he whispers to her: ‘Tell
the lord magistrate who saved his mistress. Then he’ll
know I am his loyal servant.
So the woman lives, because the community is too corrupt to
protect itself from disorder.
Another Rabbi, another city. He goes to her and stops the mob,
as in the other story, and says: ‘Which of you is without sin? Let
him cast the first stone!’
The people are abashed, and they forget their unity of purpose
in the memory of their own individual sins. Someday, they think,
I may be like this woman, and I’ll hope for forgiveness and another
chance. I should treat her the way I wish to be treated.
As they open their hands and let the stones fall to the ground,
the Rabbi picks up one of the fallen stones, lifts it high over the
woman’s head, and throws it straight down with all his might. It
crushes her skull and dashes her brains all over the cobblestones.
‘Nor am I without sin,’ he says to the people. ‘But if we allow
only perfect people to enforce the law, the law will soon be dead,
and our city with it.’
So the woman died because her community was too rigid to
endure her deviance.
The [third, more famous] version of this story is noteworthy
because it is so startlingly rare in our experience. Most communities
lurch between decay and rigor mortis, and when they veer too far,
they die. Only one rabbi dared to expect of us such a perfect balance
that we could preserve the law and still forgive the deviation. So,
of course, we killed Him.
– ‘Speaker for the Dead’, Orson Scott Card –
these women are using the children to advance their agenda … it is not the school who is damaging the kids but the women.
He also said “go and sin no more” not “do whatever you want – nothing matters.”
Don’t blame the school, this is completely in the hands of the women who “want their cake and eat it too.” Gay agenda uber alles!
quasimodo (4af144) — 3/16/2010 @ 9:11 amThe gay agenda: YOU WILL APPROVE.
quasimodo (4af144) — 3/16/2010 @ 9:14 amTo begin with, pre-school does not begin at age 5 and if their child is entering kindergarten, and has been in pre-school for three years, that means the child was in pre-school since age 2. It sounds more like a day-care center than a pre-school which starts at age 4.
Since day-care centers are run by lay people, there would be no reason for them to even reveal their life style to the director of the day-care center. All of the Church run day-care centers I know of take children of all faiths.
I suspect that with the posting on a gay website, there is an ulterior motive to these “parents”. But then, anyone with two grey cells bumping together understand that the entire gay “movement” thing is polical, not civil.
You cannot say that you subscribe to Catholic doctrine except for those few rules that you don’t like. This is like Teddy Kennedy claiming to be such a good Catholic, but he still supported abortions, clearly against Catholic doctrine.
Apply this concept to the law; I will follow the law unless it happens to disagree with my personal beliefs and then I will break the law and complain how the law is oppressive.
The Church is right, these women are wrong.
retire05 (1e885c) — 3/16/2010 @ 9:45 amYOU CAN’T BE A PRACTICING LESBIAN AND BE A CATHOLIC AT THE SAME !@#%$ TIME.
Sorry for shouting, but these two women are not Catholics. They are heretics.
East Coast Chris (ded5f2) — 3/16/2010 @ 12:07 pmUmmmm – at the risk of bringing up actual theology, in Biblical terms, is there anything suggesting that practising lesbians are de facto ? de jure ? sinning ?
After all, they are not a “man lying with another man as with his wife” … they are not “casting their seed upon barren ground” …
With that said, as far as I know, it is possible to be both Catholic *and* a sinner … if sufficiently egregious, the Catholic Church does have Excommunication available to it …
I do agree that these ladies do seem to be wanting to *both* have their squaw bread *and* eat it, too …
(Remember – “To the pure, all things are pure !” – (grin))
Alasdair (e7cb73) — 3/16/2010 @ 12:28 pm