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Op-Ed Submission From Thomas Langan, President of the Catholic Civil Rights League Re: Durham Catholic School Board

The coalition of groups meeting later today orchestrated by MPP Smitherman and CAW president Buzz Hargrove is yet another press show offered to ridicule the Durham Region Catholic School Board's justifiable and legal refusal to allow a student to bring his 21 year old 'boyfriend' to the school prom. It will heap scorn and pressure on the school, the Board and the Church for not allowing this simple situation to be resolved to their liking.

Recognizing the intense pressure the media and activists groups have brought to bear on the Board, it is our wish to clarify and defend the Catholic Church's teaching, and to explain that the school Board is well within its legal rights to make such a decision.

The Board's steadfast commitment to offering true Christian love to those who suffer with homosexual inclinations is to be commended. We cannot allow one student, or the activist groups which have exploited his situation, to deny other Catholic students the loving teachings of the Church. At a time when the needs of students struggling with homosexuality are becoming more apparent, the Church's liberating teachings are needed more than ever in our schools.

David Morrison, authour of Beyond Gay, writing about his own experience as a Catholic man with homosexual inclinations, demonstrates why we must defend the Catholic Church's position and our school's right to manifest the faith. He writes:

"As a Catholic and a homosexually oriented man, I am deeply grateful to the Catholic Church for her position on homosexuality and homosexual acts. Catholicism, almost alone among Christendom's churches, refuses to patronize homosexuals with a watered-down gospel or brutalize them with a message of irredeemable hostility. The Catholic Church loves me and all the men and women like me who live as homosexuals. She looks at us as the adults we are and says that we, too, can cooperate with the Holy Spirit to Sanctify our lives and "approach Christian perfection". She confidently calls us to sainthood and to the narrow road that will bring us there."

The Church's teachings, as manifest by Principal Michael Powers' decision, reflect a true understanding of what the Catholic commitment to love entails. It recognizes that our sexuality is not something we own, nor something to which we are entitled. It is a gift from God that comes with responsibility and purpose. Our sexuality divorced from either of these conditions is disordered. And while a tendency toward disordered sexual expression is not a sin in itself, freely chosen acts that express this disorder are. Therefore, "special concern and pastoral attention should be directed toward those who have this condition, lest they be led to believe that living out this orientation in homosexual activity is a morally acceptable option. It is not" (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Letter, No.3).

The student at the heart of the fight has called the Church argument hypocritical. He said that last year, a pregnant teenager was allowed to attend, even though the Church disapproves of premarital sex. To clarify the Church position, there must be a distinction between compassion, forgiveness and consent. At the prom, she was in a pregnant state, a consequence of premarital sex. In allowing her to attend, the School was further acknowledging acceptance, mercy and love of her, despite failings. Dealing compassionately with a fait de complis must be distinguished from the Board dealing responsibly in advance averting unacceptable homosexual behavior and activity.

In Canadian law, the recent Supreme Court of Canada decision in Trinity Western University demonstrated that the Charter does not create a hierarchy of rights, whereby one right trumps another. Moreover, s. 93 of the Constitution has long been upheld (since 1867) to guarantee denominational rights of Catholic schools.

What goes unasked is why the Canadian Auto Workers president is acting against the faith and conscience of the tens of thousands of Catholic members of the CAW whose funds the union is using to attack their Catholic beliefs. Why should Catholic members pay for Hargrove's attempts at social engineering and cultural manipulation? Perhaps he wishes to grab hold of some of the media darling status and success that gay activist groups have had in recent campaigns.

In Mr. Hargrove's previous press release he attacks both the legitimate legal position of the board and the moral teaching of the Church under the guise of "embracing diversity."

If the CAW sees fit to intervene in Catholic school principal and/or board decisions, there can be no objection to future CCRL interventions in internal union politics. Our first initiative will focus on the important need to allow union members of conscience to opt out of compulsory union dues when its leadership takes on immoral positions in the public square.

Is Mr. Hargrove brave enough to allow this fundamental right to be extended to his own membership? Or would he argue that membership in the CAW comes with a certain price? Whereas a gay student can receive an education and his/her choice of a date at a public school, does a CAW member have the right to keep his/her job at General Motors without financially supporting abortion lobbyists on the CAW payroll? Surely, Mr. Hargroves' sense of fairness would allow such members to opt out of the payment of compulsory.

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