[Denver] Catholic school boots student with gay parents [AP]

[AnotherVoice]

Do you mean the couple is using the child OR the decision as part of an agenda to promote same sex marriage?

I viewed them as using the children and their enrollment in school as leverage to having their living arrangements accepted as valid.

As part of the enrollment process information about the family is required. Based upon the Archbishop’s remarks I concluded that the two women were insisting that they be recognized as the family for these two children. They felt their relationship was as good and valid as any other family relationship. The church cannot agree with that; nor does the state of Colorado since they do not accept gay marriage.

 

[redrosetea]

Good question. Why indeed would loving parents subject a child to the absolute pain of hearing Church teaching and then having to see the sin played out in living color at home? How cruel to subject a child to the knowledge mom(s) are living openly in grave sin. Wouldn’t the loving thing to do be to live apart, and set an example of the faith? The couple has chosen this situation for the child, not the Church.

We must also consider the social impact this would have on the other kids…I would want my children to treat this child with kindness…However, I would not allow any child of mine to go to this house, to play, or for an over nighter

I would not want my children to be confused about what the church thinks is a family or morally acceptable…This certainly is not going to be helpful to this child, and I think many parents of children in this school would feel the same way

My first job as a parent it to tech and to protect my child from secular views that people are trying to impose on our faith

 

[irishpatrick]

Yes and no. Once you accept a child into the school there’s a sort of legal contract that binds both the school and the family. You need to show that you were abiding by the contract when you dismissed them from the school.

There is no actual contract. Catholic schools can kick kids out for nearly any reason.
If there is anything akin to a contract, it is one in which the school says we will teach the kids the Catholic faith and that parents MUST do their part by teaching them in the home. Again, in this case, the two adult gaurdians failed their end of the deal.

 

[irishpatrick]

Yes and no. Once you accept a child into the school there’s a sort of legal contract that binds both the school and the family. You need to show that you were abiding by the contract when you dismissed them from the school.

 

[Mystic_Banana]

Don’t forget the “go and sin no more part” (I hate when people seem to leave this part out when talking about sin and “judging” sinners).

And exactly how many of us manage that?

 

[Charlotte408]

I was discussing this with someone else on another forum, and they brought up Flint Powers Catholic High School… a private school that has gay teachers and coaches. If the staff can be gay why can’t the students?

 

[rlg94086]

I was discussing this with someone else on another forum, and they brought up Flint Powers Catholic High School… a private school that has gay teachers and coaches. If the staff can be gay why can’t the students?

1. A “gay” teacher is fine in a Catholic school, as long as they are living a chaste life.
2. Maybe Flint Powers Catholic High School doesn’t have a problem with having gay students, gay parents of students, etc. If the staff at the school in Denver has teachers and coaches who are living an active gay lifestyle, that would be relevant. If Flint Powers was a Catholic school in Colorado (as opposed to Michigan), it would be relevant.

 

[Elizabeth502]

I was discussing this with someone else on another forum, and they brought up Flint Powers Catholic High School… a private school that has gay teachers and coaches. If the staff can be gay why can’t the students?

Because the staff’s family (or pseudo-family, self-named family, etc.) does not have an essential relationship with the school, whereas every student’s family unit does.

Different dynamic, different expectaion, different level of intimacy and mutuality.

 

[Hypatia]

Further Update:

Lesbian Parents of Expelled Kids Defend Their Catholic Faith

‘“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.”’

 

[redrosetea]

No one is stopping them from doing that…they can take their kids to mass and put them in CCD…they are using these kids to push their own pagan agenda…and now sniveling because it didn’t work out the way they wanted it to

 

[Elizabeth502]

I read the very short article just referenced in post 228. Again, the couple, and those arguing for them – or for the child as a separate entity – still don’t get it. The child cannot be viewed separately from the arrangement between the two women. The Church cannot acnowledge both women as “parents,” because it doesn’t consider them to be both legitimate parents of the child. Their relationship, and their dual claim of “parenthood” is a fundamental distortion of the Catholic understanding of family, and therefore is compatible with the school to family dynamic required in Catholic schools.

(1) I question who baptized the child, and under what conditions and assumptions of what the household of the child was going to be reflecting, quite visibly. If the couple was not renouncing their sexual relationship, the child was already being introduced into a controversial environment, at that baptism.

(2) It is not the Church who is not fulfilling its promise; it is the couple who is not fulfilling a promise, if they want themselves to remain as respected guardians of the child in good standing with the Church, they will renounce their sexual relationship. I’m quite sure that if they had, they would no longer be calling themselves a lesbian couple, and that this fact is something they would be making public, and would have made known to school officials as well.

(3) The couple is obviously grandstanding. There are plenty of Christian churches which allow these relationships and whose tenets do not conflict with such relationships. It is one of those churches that the couple should have joined, if they truly wanted to live their faith honestly and sincerely, instead of using a different church to parade their lifestyle. Or, again, if they want to live a Catholic faith honestly and sincerely, they will renounce a lesbian lifestyle. The same thing holds for gay men who want to live in a state of grace within the RCC; the same thing holds for gay Catholic priests who want to remain priests: any active sexual inclinations have to become permanently dormant. Don’t like it? Change churches.

 

[redrosetea]

If they desired to live as Catholics they wouldn’t be a a gay relationship…It is a sin and it is forbidden in both old and new testaments

We are not a secular society we are a church with rules and laws to govern our conduct…Christianity is a way of love…Christ told us to carry our cross and follow Him…Their cross is being gay and they refuse to carry it…instead they want everyone else to carry it for them…tough rocks…we all have to obey scripture , we are not required to like it , just to do it

 

[Elizabeth502]

and therefore is compatible

I meant not compatible.

 

[Other_Eric]

No one is stopping them from doing that…they can take their kids to mass and put them in CCD…they are using these kids to push their own pagan agenda…and now sniveling because it didn’t work out the way they wanted it to

How would such a couple enrolling their children in CCD be substantively different from enrolling them in a Catholic school? Why do you dispense this couple, who is living a lifestyle of overt, manifest, gave sin, from observing the authority of the Church as outlined in Canon 916, which forbids such people reception of the Eucharist and celebration of the Mass? (1) Obviously, there can be no hope that these children will be raised authentically Catholic. Baptizing them was a mistake. (2)

(1) Code of Canon Law. Can. 916. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1983. Prepared under the auspices of the Canon Law Society of America Canon Law Society of America Washington, DC 20064 Codex Iuris Canonici. Available online at: http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/__P39.HTM

(2) Cf. Ibid. Can. 868, §1, 2º. Available online at: vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/__P2X.HTM

 

[Mystic_Banana]

No one is stopping them from doing that…they can take their kids to mass and put them in CCD…they are using these kids to push their own pagan agenda…and now sniveling because it didn’t work out the way they wanted it to

Either that, or they’re simply heretical - pagan? Really, not necessarily. There are such people as sincerely, dedicated, gay catholics. In error? Probably. But how perfect are the rest of us? And how truly righteous?

 

[redrosetea]

Either that, or they’re simply heretical - pagan? Really, not necessarily. There are such people as sincerely, dedicated, gay catholics. In error? Probably. But how perfect are the rest of us? And how truly righteous?

Righteous enough to obey the will of God, and not try to use a child to push an agenda God Himself has forbidden…so so we can get out own way…Righteous enough to obey and carry our Cross as Christ told us to do…are we perfect?.. no…but we are obedient to the magesterium, ans all Catholics are commanded to be

 

[Mystic_Banana]

Further Update:

Lesbian Parents of Expelled Kids Defend Their Catholic Faith

‘“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.”’

Actually, looking at this, they are practising Catholics, and they even consider themselves in error for their own lifestyles - what do you want?!?

 

[Elizabeth502]

MB,

I read the same article (thoroughly). What they say is contradictory. If they were/are practicing Catholics, and if they “see the error of their ways,” they would have, and/or would now, renounce their “couple” status, live as sisters, etc. There is no indication in the article that they have done so or intend to do so. Rather, they want it both ways.

I thought Jimmy Aiken’s piece in the Nat’l Catholic Register said very much what several of us have been saying (Corki, myself, others). (He also addressed the couple’s contradictions, btw.)

When we, as Catholics, see the error of our ways, we go to confession. But the confession lacks effect if it lacks the resolution to make radical changes in any forbidden lifestyle (gay, adulterous, fornicating, incestuous, or anything non-sexual which is equally at fundamental odds with a life oriented away from sin). A firm purpose of amendment is essential to contrition, or we are being hypocritical in our confessions and will lack the grace to change.

 

[selylidne]

(3) The couple is obviously grandstanding. There are plenty of Christian churches which allow these relationships and whose tenets do not conflict with such relationships. It is one of those churches that the couple should have joined, if they truly wanted to live their faith honestly and sincerely, instead of using a different church to parade their lifestyle. Or, again, if they want to live a Catholic faith honestly and sincerely, they will renounce a lesbian lifestyle. The same thing holds for gay men who want to live in a state of grace within the RCC; the same thing holds for gay Catholic priests who want to remain priests: any active sexual inclinations have to become permanently dormant. Don’t like it? Change churches. [emphasis added]

Goodness no! The Catholic Church is not just one church among many for people to pick and choose among. Let’s not encourage anyone to sin by leaving the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. Instead we should be keen to bring sinners in, teach them the faith gently and rationally, and leave unavoidable judgments to the priest in the confessional and all the rest to God!

 

[Elizabeth502]

seldylidne,

I do appreciate the sincerity of your response, but the problem is, again, their lifestyle is currently incompatible with Catholic doctrine and with the very teachings that would have been imminently presented to their child in any Catholic school. (Starts right from the beginning, in the young grades, with the definition of family. They may teach that family is just anything in publics, but count on them not teaching that in a Catholic school.) The discomfort, embarrassment, self-conciousness that would await the child is something not escapable in a Catholic school environment, and presents a two-way problem for both school and the illegitimate family unit understood as such, and taught as such, to such a child.

I didn’t see references to kicking them out of the Church. That’s a different matter. Let the women come to true contrition, renounce their errors, live apart or as sisters, and then bring the child into Catholic education. As single, celibate women not claiming dual motherhood, but respecting a life born to one of them, however illegitimately that was done, they can live a decent Catholic life and become part of a school community.

The child can be catechized inside the church but outside the school community, where the family unit is such an integral part of the direct and indirect education. Anything else publicly scandalizes the other families in the school.

My point in the quote you boxed was that any gay ‘couple’ who feels strongly that their lifestyle should be accepted on face value within the RCC, is not a couple who either understands the theology behind it, or a couple who prioritizes membership in the RCC over adherence to their lifestyle. In that case, when the lifestyle is more important to you than the church you’re affiliated with, you should indeed leave that church – temporarily or permanently – and find a different church with the same priorities you have. Hope that’s clear now.