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April 27, 2015 (CardinalNewmanSociety.org) — When a Catholic school teacher is disciplined using a harsh tone in a public debate over a sensitive issue—as happened recently in the controversial case of a New Jersey teacher who was suspended for her Facebook defense of traditional marriage—is there a danger that it could chill teachers’ public witness to the faith?

The Cardinal Newman Society spoke to two education experts who acknowledged the challenge for schools and bishops, but bemoaned any actions that might prevent teachers from fulfilling their calling as witnesses for Christ.

Last week, Immaculata High School in Somerville, N.J., announced that Patricia Jannuzzi, a Catholic school teacher who garnered national attention when she was suspended for comments defending traditional marriage on her Facebook page, would continue her employment so long as she monitors her tone and choice of words when addressing matters of faith in public.

Numerous Vatican documents speak to the importance of teachers engaging the culture and evangelizing their students, but incidents like the Jannuzzi suspension can make teachers nervous about the consequences of using a tone or word choice that is offensive or misconstrued.

In an interview with the Newman Society, Michael Buell, superintendent of Catholic schools in the Grand Traverse area of Michigan, lamented that fewer schools and teachers are engaging the topic of traditional marriage in the classroom, let alone on their social media accounts.

“So few schools are dealing with traditional marriage these days, even in the classroom,” said Buell. Today, Church teaching on traditional marriage “is a complex issue for youth to work through, and it requires time and a response in a traditional learning process,” Buell contended.

Buell noted that social media represents a particular challenge for teachers, as posts can easily be deconstructed into “sound bites” that fail to capture the context of the poster’s intent.

“There’s no depth to social media,” Buell said. This can make teachers less invested in engaging important cultural issues, but they should nevertheless be encouraged to ensure that such topics are being adequately covered in their classrooms.

Dr. Dan Guernsey, a longtime Catholic educator and the director of The Cardinal Newman Society’s K-12 education programs, noted that Jannuzzi was not censured “for anything she said in school or to her students, and not for criticizing any specific homosexual person in her school, nor any particular homosexual person in general.” Instead, “she was criticizing those she identified as homosexual ‘activists’ for making self-contradictory arguments and whom, she believed, ‘want to re-engineer Western [civilization] into a slow extinction.’”

According to My Central Jersey, Jannuzzi’s Facebook post concluded, “We need healthy families with a mother and a father for the sake of the children and humanity!” Jannuzzi’s post drew national outrage, spurred on by social media and celebrities with alumni ties to the school. Actress Susan Sarandon, whose nephew attended the school, claimed that such teachers make school “even more difficult” for students, while reality television actor and Immaculata alumnus Greg Bennett declared Jannuzzi a “nightmare dumpster human.”

Immediately following the negative media attention, the school suspended Jannuzzi. Immaculata principal Jean Kline reportedly stated in a letter to the school community that Jannuzzi’s words “were completely inconsistent with our policy and position as a Catholic Christian community.” Several weeks later, the school reinstated Jannuzzi due to her “otherwise good reputation as an educator over her 30 years at Immaculata,” according to another letter sent to faculty and staff.

“It is the School’s position that a Catholic school teacher must always communicate the faith in a way that is positive and never hurtful,” said Immaculata’s director, Monsignor Seamus Brennan, in a statement, according to My Central Jersey. “Tone and choice of words matter, and I trust Mrs. Jannuzzi’s stated promise to strive always to teach in a spirit of truth and charity.”

But a teaching environment designed to encourage “sensitivity” on important issues could raise significant problems for teachers attempting to share certain elements of the faith, Guernsey pointed out, particularly “in these disordered days of apparent intense sensitivity and ‘trigger warnings,’ where indignant offense can come at the drop of a hat or the pinprick of an ego.”

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“Must the private postings of Catholic teachers be ‘positive and never hurtful’ when also dealing with other activists and highly controversial topics in the public sphere? What about abortion activists? Can one accuse them of being complicit in murder? Is this now grounds for termination in a Catholic school?” Guernsey asked.

The document Lay Catholics in Schools: Witness to Faith from the Vatican Congregation for Catholic Education explains:

One specific characteristic of the educational profession assumes its most profound significance in the Catholic educator: the communication of truth. For the Catholic educator, whatever is true is a participation in Him who is the Truth; the communication of truth, therefore, as a professional activity, is thus fundamentally transformed into a unique participation in the prophetic mission of Christ, carried on through one’s teaching.

Teachers are exhorted by the Church to “bear witness to Christ, the unique Teacher” both “by their life [and] by their instruction,” according to the Vatican Declaration on Christian Education Gravissimum Educationis. The Congregation for Catholic Education’s document, The Catholic School, also states that the “nobility of the task to which teachers are called demands that, in imitation of Christ, the only Teacher, they reveal the Christian message not only by word but also by every gesture of their behavior.”

Guernsey offered encouragement to teachers who are struggling in a hostile academic environment:

All Catholics, teachers and non-teachers, need to take to heart St. Paul’s exhortation to “preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings…

“We need to encourage our teachers to take unpopular stands, based in love, but which may unfortunately come across as ‘harsh’ or ‘unloving’ in an increasingly hostile, confused and easily offended world,” Guernsey said.

Reprinted with permission from The Cardinal Newman Society