According to emails sent to school staff by leaders of four separate Portland Catholic schools Thursday and Friday, the Archdiocese of Portland has “temporarily” closed its Department of Catholic Schools.
“Yesterday, Archbishop [Alexander] Sample let pastors of schools know of an important change for catholic schools for our Archdiocese…the Department of Catholic Schools has been ‘temporarily’ closed,” wrote Pastor Matt Libra of St. Rose of Lima Catholic School, a K-8, to parents on Friday. “In the interim period, the Pastoral Center will coordinate the functions of this Office with the help of a team of principals.”
The abrupt closure comes at a time when parents and teachers at St. Rose are pushing back against Archbishop Sample’s guidance surrounding the use of personal pronouns for students. (Sample, whose views on abortion mark him as one of the more conservative archbishops in the country, released guidance earlier this year instructing educators to use the pronouns associated with a child’s assigned sex at birth, and not to use a student’s chosen pronouns.)
Catholic school parents and teachers earlier this month circulated a petition online asking that parents, teachers and other advocates for LGBTQIA youth submit their thoughts on Sample’s guidance.
“A coalition of parents and educators representing over 15 different local parishes and schools is in the process of drafting a response, to express the concerns arising within their communities and invite the Archbishop to meet with a small group of representatives for further dialogue,” the online petition reads. “Many faithful Catholics throughout the Archdiocese of Portland are profoundly concerned about the consequences of this document, which ignores commonly-accepted best practices in education, medicine, psychology, and child development, and has the potential to cause grave harm to an already-vulnerable population.”
Libra added in his Friday email to St. Rose parents, “It does not indicate any closure of schools but rather a reworking of the department at the archdiocesan level.”
It’s unclear whether superintendent Dr. Jeannie Ray-Timoney still leads the Department of Catholic Schools or what the implications of the temporary closure of the department will be, but an email from a top school administrator to teachers at The Madeleine Catholic School on Friday asked that they keep Ray-Timoney in their prayers—implying she had been terminated.
“I personally have worked with Jeannie for 21 years and couldn’t have thought of a better person to serve as Superintendent,” the school administrator wrote. “I consider her a friend and she will be missed….”
From Willamette Week
Bravo for the Archbishop not allowing woke staff to confuse little kids. Someone has to tell children that God did not make a mistake in creating them as boy or girl.
Weak, fearful parents won’t tell their own child this truth – they will have much to answer for.
What do parents who have children born with no genitalia tell them?
Why is what is between the legs (which is just flesh) more important that what is between the ears, which is mind, soul and body?
Those rare cases can be handled individually. But for the other 99.7% what Bp Samples is doing is natural and logical.
“What do parents who have children born with no genitalia tell them?” This condition is called vaginal agenesis. Some facts about the condition: Vaginal agenesis affects 1 out of 5,000 to 7,000 female infants. (from Google). For ambiguous cases ( 1 in 2,000 children born each year ) the XY vs XX chromosomes are definitive, so the cases are not really ambiguous. Finally, your question answers itself: what is between the legs is part of the body and hence a constituent part of the totality of mind, body and soul. Also the most basic part of the body having to do with gender are the chromosomes. So it cannot be said that children are born absent physical indicators of gender. We are back to Biology 101.
Nobody has answered the question “What do parents tell them?”
Asked and answered.
I think my question is not being taken seriously.
What do parents of any developmentally disordered person tell them?
Some of us have issues from birth that make us different from others.
Some are fatal. Some are painful. Some are not anything we notice until we get around others.
Maybe those others have invisible disabilities.
Some people seem to get everything; others start out behind the 8ball and never get out.
“What do parents of any developmentally disordered person tell them?” I think that depends on the disorder. I can’t believe a one size fits all answer is possible. I submit that God permits disorders to teach the parents, siblings and others about love. It is only in the language of love that parents know what to say to their child, and when, and how.
Thank you for at least acknowledging my question.
I don’t know what to say when my child asks “Why didn’t God rest on the day he made me?”
Doubtful there are any answers that would satisfy you, so not going down that rabbit hole. You want someone to admit God made a mistake – look elsewhere to satisfy that desire of yours.
I do not believe God makes mistakes. False accusation.
People are cruel.
The bishop needs to take control of the schools. Do not give any of then an inch. In fact, it would be better to just shut down the schools instead of having them fall into the hands of the SJWs and their allies. They will destroy the schools anyway while damaging the souls of the children.
I wish Bishop McGrath and Cantu would have done the same in the Diocese of San Jose. I was affiliated with Archbishop Mitty High School in the decade of the 00’s, and I complained to Bishop McGrath and Marianne Stuckey about the infiltration of gay ideology at that “Catholic” school. They did nothing about it. I know they got my complaints. Registered mail doesn’t lie about delivery. I wonder if pronouns and bathrooms are an issue at Mitty today.
You’re not the only one who has written Bishop Cantu about Mitty leadership and gotten no response. Does this shepherd not want to know (about) his flock? Are the lay faithful, who make up most of the Church, and some of his priests who raised this issue not deserving of a response? This bishop has become deeply disappointing and scandalous. This is a prime example of clerical elitism. What happened to the man, this bishop, who prayed in front of the abortion clinic in Las Cruces with the Blessed Sacrament until it closed? Please pray for Bishop Cantu.
There is only a he or she. God is perfect! God makes no mistakes. Pray especially for the children and their families.
“…sex ‘assigned’ at birth”? Uh, in other words…reality?
May the good archbishop not cave in to the woke class and educators and parents who lack a truly Catholic heart for educating our young.
John the Baptist, Peter, Paul and others ignored commonly-accepted best practices of the 1st-century Roman Empire.
May he (correct pronoun) stand firm. Let’s pray for him and, especially if you live in that archdiocese, write him in support.
Pronouns are either accurate or inaccurate, not preferred. Ze, Zie and Ey are not real pronouns.
Amen!
“Many faithful Catholics throughout the Archdiocese of Portland are profoundly concerned about the consequences of this document, which ignores commonly-accepted best practices in education, medicine, psychology, and child development, and has the potential to cause grave harm to an already-vulnerable population.”
Bravo to Abp. Sample for ignoring these supposed best practices. There can be no graver harm than the woke indoctrination of children by “many faithful Catholics throughout the Archdiocese of Portland” and their cohorts in the secular world. Here is a bishop who knows how to stand firm against the forces of darkness which have, sadly, have gained a foothold in area churches. Yes, the pronoun war is stupid but also corrosive to faith in a faithful Creator.
Dan, you know Murphey’s Law, right?
It happens in utero.
It happens after birth.
Not all things to all people but each as the Creator decides.
Some people are born without genitalia or with ambiguous genitalia.
Some people are born with reproductive organs of both sexes.
And many more genital anomalies are possible.
If the Creator allows all that between the legs, He equally allows it between the ears.
Catholics should not be in this as a culture war.
They should show compassion for the suffering.
It is always easy to tell someone else that they need to offer up their sufferings.
The pushback against inappropriate materials in schools and libraries and in entertainment for children is a completely separate issue.
You do know that all the things that go wrong are the result of original sin, right? From the beginning, it was not so; it was not the case that there were deformities and abnormalities in the human body nor in Adam and Eve’s psyches. If there are people whose biological sex is difficult to determine due to bodily deformities, that does not mean their sex cannot be resolved into either male or female; it also doesn’t mean that there are more than two sexes. It also doesn’t mean that people can change their biological sex.
The culture war is necessary because a cultural matrix shapes people’s moral principles and moral decisions. Look at how much the culture has deteriorated following the legalization of gay marriage and the promotion of gay pride. Catholics should be very interested in fighting the culture war and promoting natural law and Christian virtue in society. Otherwise, you’re going to wake up soon and find that pedophilia is being legalized in the interests of equality for people who are minor-attracted persons. God created pedophiles that way and allows pedophilia, so it must be legal and celebrated; that’s an extension of your argument, right? Beware of not fighting the culture war.
You missed the whole point.
There are two sexes: male and female.
Sex cannot be changed.
Transgender people have a disorder or condition of the brain.
It is real.
They cannot change it.
No talk therapy, no medication can change it.
Children should not be used as pawns in the culture war.
It is child abuse to do that.
The parents of children with this condition are the one who say how it will be handled. They do to doctors, pastors, other parents, people who have this condition to find out what helps and does not help.
This condition is co-morbid with other conditions especially autism.
Like autism, there are things that help.
If a parent has decided that calling them the opposite pronoun helps, then he will not want to put their child in a school that refuses to do that.
I think you do not understand the difference between treating someone the way they want to be treated (using pronoun) and allowing someone to hurt another human being. (pedophilia)
“Some people are born without genitalia or with ambiguous genitalia.Some people are born with reproductive organs of both sexes.And many more genital anomalies are possible.If the Creator allows all that between the legs, He equally allows it between the ears.”
I answered some of this in response to the post by what do parents say? June 27, 2023 at 12:53 am, but I see I was wrong in some cases. In many instances of genetic defects, gender (male or female) can nevertheless be determined. But not always. I found this on the prevalence of intersex births:
” If the term intersex is to retain any meaning, the term should be restricted to those conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female. Applying this more precise definition, the true prevalence of intersex is seen to be about 0.018% .” (close to 1/5556)
So it is a very rare circumstance where genetic anomalies preclude gender identification. But you raise a very important question: for these 0.018%, what does God allow? I don’t really know, and would defer to someone better suited to answer the question.
Dan I think the better question is why do third parties, completely unrelated to the person with the “abnormality” feel they have a right to judge the morality of the medical and psychological decisions they make? Who sinned, the man born blind, or his parents? Neither…
The sterile woman or man is not subject to this kind of scrutiny even though the purpose of marriage until only a few generations ago was procreative.
These pages have already discussed the useless mutilation of genital tissue known as Circumcision.
Men wear lace all the time and when it is blessed we call it masculine. Yet I f it secular we call it sick and grooming? George Washington wore wigs but if George Smith wears one we want to ban them from public. Some judges still wear wigs.
Clowns sometime entertain children and sometimes sell them hamburgers and sometimes scare them. But we don’t make a moral case out of their makeup and outlandish shoes.
Folks getting themselves worked up about all this stuff, as though it is even any of their business, seem to me to make themselves look ridiculous and judge mental and unChristian.
“Dan I think the better question is why do third parties, completely unrelated to the person with the “abnormality” feel they have a right to judge the morality of the medical and psychological decisions they make? ” A good question, YFC. I shall try to do justice to it. Some decisions made on behalf of children reflect the biases of the parents or others having influence on decision-making. Children need time to develop their identity in so many ways, and if parents or others attempt to shorten this process by making decisions for the child that in the long term turn out to be bad decisions, that is morally problematic. Contrary to experts of the day, I think it is in the child’s best interest not to intervene with any “gender affirming care” at all. Witness the destroyed lives of youth rushed into such “care” and who later regretted it. Witness too the intrusion of males into female sports. Such males glory in beating females, but this is narcissism at its worst and most destructive. Best to forbid any of this “gender affirming care” before 18, though personally I would see it banned for everyone. Generally speaking, one cannot improve on God’s creation.
YFC, I don’t understand the relevance of circumcision, lace and wigs to the argument that it is unchristian to involve ourselves with issues of “gender affirming care.” Circumcision was commanded by God in the Mosaic Law; lace was determined to be appropriate dress for certain nobility and for priestly garments, and wigs also had their place for generals, lawyers, politicians and I guess clergy. In none of these cases were these signs of gender dysphoria.
I hope I have made some progress with your question. I invite any response you might have.
Cohen’s corollary states that Murphy was an optimist!
wait…what?
A faithful Creator?
Who is the Creator being faithful to?
Us
He can neither deceive nor can He be deceived. Get it?
See 2 Timothy 2:13… “if we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself.”
God is faithful to his people and to his promises to them. See also the Prophet Hosea and the Prophet Isaiah. See the whole New Testament. The whole Bible is the story of God’s covenant faithfulness. Every Mass is a celebration of God’s covenant faithfulness.
You thought you had a mic drop moment….
Good post.
Until the snark at the end.
showed where your heart really is.
I think the original comment had plenty of snark in it, so the responder was simply replying in the same vain.
I reckon people don’t like answers with some bark on them. Too bad. Maybe you will remember better now. Maybe.
Why did you need to respond like that?
Now Jimmy Martin is promoting an article published at his gay website that says the Bible verse that God created male and female doesn’t mean that God created only male and female. The Jesuits are saying that transgenderism is compatible with the story of creation. Suppress the Jesuits.
https://twitter.com/OutrchCatholic/status/1672925898486448138
Sex is not “assigned at birth.” It is determined at conception when the male sperm fertilizes the female egg.
XX chromosomes: Female;
XY chromosomes: Male;
Lesson 1, biology 101.
Prayers of support for Archbishop Sample! It is disheartening, as the shepherd of his people, I am sure, to find that those you have trusted with the Catholic education of children, are actually not to be trusted; they need to go. Likewise, parents who want their Catholic children to use androgynous pronouns are welcome to enroll them in the frightening Portland public schools.The good Bishop is trying to teach and lead, but there are those who will not listen. We are each to work out our salvation with fear and trembling; so be it. But Sample is doing his job well.
Good for you AB Sample. Stand compassionate but firm. This is not a time for faithful Catholics and all Christians to be silent. The small but vocal minority in America is not paying attention to the “push back” against the trans movement in Europe and around the world. But most importantly this trans minority is not facing the biological and God given truth. Great harm and abuse, intentional or not, is being forced on our children by the trans movement.
Thank you, Your Excellency for having the courage to do what is right and not to give into the world which is disordered.
I 100% support AB Sample. I pray that he doesn’t get a “Vatican visit”…
Every diocese that I know of has similar policies. This will not trigger a “Vatican visit”. You probably knew that.
I’m a guy in his 70’s and was shocked to hear that parents and educators had a problem with the A.B.’s directive!!!
The synod will hopefully address this in a positive way.
Hopefully, you all saw the statement from the Archdiocese of Portland stating that the closing of the Department had nothing to do with this.