Catholics suck at talking about sexuality

ideology as filler for weak mission/intellectual life

Catholic institutions that subscribe to an either/or mentality…have lost sight of their mission, and ultimately, of Jesus himself…Ideology becomes a filler for the lack of substance, of faith, and of straight-up intelligence. 

So I have two friends who work at two different Catholic schools. 

School #1

One works at a school that just started a rainbow alliance, whose aim is to offer an affirming space for LGBTQIA+ students and to challenge homophobia, transphobia, and cisheteronormatvity in the school. 

The school takes its Catholic identity seriously in the sense that it values community strongly and takes their mission of affirming the dignity of their students and transmitting faith to them. The administrative model is also very much based on CST—like for real though.

But it is run by priests who were educated in a rather heterodox seminary in the 1970s. Surely, these priests are devout men who take their vocation seriously. But their theology is quite off, and have normalized teachers and students publicly espousing ideas that openly defy the Church’s teachings—which has alienated some of the community’s more orthodox members. That being said, the priests are quite old-school in terms of their actual lifestyles and worldview. They are “traditional” progressives, and still believe in discipline and holding students to high behavioral standards.

The school has always been welcoming to gay students and teachers (though the teachers followed more of a don’t ask don’t tell policy). There were never an need for rainbow flags (at least not up until now), as they believed the message of God loves you, all are welcome, etc was enough to make gay students feel accepted, and the lack of toleration for bullying in general (which was ousted less by “anti-bullying policy” and more by fostering a solid sense of community and mutual responsibility) had minimized the levels of homophobic sentiment. Yet a contingent of young progressive (in the New Left, identitarian sense) teachers felt that this wasn’t enough, and that it was time not just to accept gay students, but to increase their visibility and normalize pro-gay rhetoric…and to hang up some rainbow flags.

School #2

The other friend works at a school that recently kicked out a student who was starting to question her gender identity. 

This school, whose teachers are mostly political conservatives, also has a strong sense of community and takes the Catholic faith seriously. Yet they pride themselves on fighting against “woke ideology” and standing for “traditional Catholic values.” That means no rainbow, no pronouns, no accommodations for students with gender dysphoria. 

Ideology=filler for weak mission/curriculum

The fact that Catholic institutions are allowing their mission to be co-opted by culture war polemics is sign that they are forgetting what they are actually called to do: to inculcate in the people they serve a sense of their God-given dignity and to provide them the tools to discern how God is calling them to live their lives.