After the Diocese of Oakland asked one of its Catholic high schools to remove pride flags displayed on campus, the school replaced them with a new rainbow-colored symbol meant to affirm its “LGBTQ+” community.
Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland introduced the “Inclusive O” before students returned for the 2026-27 school year, according to an Aug. 10 report from KQED. The outlet described the design as incorporating colors from the Pride and Progress Pride flags into the school’s signature letter “O.”
Kim Walsh, president of the school, said the new design was intended to communicate that all members of the school community are welcome.
“The Inclusive O,” Walsh said in a letter to families cited by KQED, “affirms that our LGBTQ+ students, families, faculty, and staff are seen, known, loved, and belong here.”
KQED reported that the diocese asked the school to remove the flags after a community member reported a Progress Pride flag on campus to Oakland Bishop Michael Barber. The flags remained on campus until shortly before summer break, when the school removed them.
According to Walsh’s letter, the flags had become a “lightning rod” during the previous academic year. She said the school spent a year developing them with input from faculty, counselors, parents, students, members of the Board of Regents, and people who identify as “LGBTQ+.”
The outlet cited a September 2023 joint pastoral letter from Bishop Barber and San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone addressing broader questions surrounding gender ideology. The bishops rejected gender ideology as contrary to the Catholic understanding of the human person.
They described gender ideology as “opposed to reason, to science, and to a Christian view of the human person.” They also called Catholics to accompany people experiencing gender dysphoria and protect them from unjust discrimination while remaining faithful to the truth about the human person.
“Compassion,” the bishops wrote, “that does not include both truth and charity is a misplaced compassion.”
From Zeale.co
Quite simply, O’Dowd is a fake Catholic school. If the bishop doesn’t end this, it’s on him because it’s his diocesan school.
What is the point of singling out the rainbow people for special recognition with a rainbow-colored symbol? It’s to communicate that everyone in the school must accept rainbow people ideology. The problem is that rainbow people ideology contradicts Catholic anthropological and moral doctrine. Just because the rainbow colors are not in the form of the pride flag doesn’t mean it’s not a pride propaganda symbol. The administration thinks it’s being clever by avoiding the pride flag controversy in a Catholic school while still pushing the rainbow people ideology via a different, purportedly neutral symbol.
Why isn’t the crucifix enough of a symbol in every classroom and shared space? Because the school isn’t Catholic, it’s a gay/rainbow/leftwing school. That’s the crux of the matter. See what I did there? I bet the “inclusive Os” outnumber crucifixes in that school.
But the bishop will do nothing, and here’s why: if the bishop insisted that the school be Catholic it would lose so many students that it would have to close. The bishop would rather have a fake Catholic school open and operating than close it down because the optics of closing a “Catholic school” down are bad.
Well said, 👽. You most eloquently laid out the situation. We must pray for the bishop to develop a spine, to be able to face the loss of his school’s Catholic identity and do what it takes, if possible, to remedy the situation.
OK right-wing bishop.
He won’t have the guts to stop us.
They are being shrewd as the devil. I bet they laughed smugly when they came up with this plan to inject the school with gay propaganda all over the place, in classrooms, on shirts, in hallways, in the gymnasium, and do so in a way that faithful Catholic parents and students would seemingly not be able to object to.
“It’s not the pride flag” is the school’s rejoinder to any complaints.
If the school put as much effort into being Catholic as it did into creating this instrument for circumventing the requirements of Catholic identity, it would be a fine Catholic school. The school spent a year developing that devious symbol. How much time and effort has the school spent considering whether it is genuinely Catholic?
It’s misnamed. It’s the exclusive O because it promotes LGBT and conveys that if you disagree with LGBT you are not welcome. If you refuse to wear the O you are implicitly a bigot. Are teachers free to not display the O in their classrooms, or is it mandated. Probably mandated.
What it communicates is that all members of the school community are welcome so long as you don’t oppose LGBT normalization. So Catholics need not apply, apparently.
The O is excluding Catholic faith.
This is like the school’s swastika. You must agree and you must display and wear it or you will be punished.
This is so much worse than the pride flags because it will be everywhere not just in the lobby.
Well done, Satan.
The bishop should retaliate by prohibiting Mass and the sacraments from being celebrated at the school.
That would cut the students off further from the Church. No.
When I taught at Archbishop Mitty High School in San Jose, the administration wrestled with how to sneak gay approval into the school and curriculum without upsetting the annoying faithful Catholic parents, students and faculty. First it was allowing students to bring a same-sex “guest” to school dances such as homecoming and prom instead of requiring that the student’s date be of the opposite sex. Then it was declaring that the school was a “safe space” for LGBTQ students. Of course, shills were enlisted to make it seem like this was all kosher with Catholicism. A deacon and religion teacher presented to the faculty that same-sex marriage could be sacramental. Religion teachers began to teach their students that the Church’s prohibition of same-sex marriage was discrimination. Faculty announced their same-sex weddings and were celebrated. Pride colors began to be displayed in the lobby and classrooms.
I suspect that many, many, many Catholic schools are the same way.
Many Catholic schools are a joke and a fraud.
I request that my name please no longer be used by the school. It is an insult to my memory, my faith, my service to the Church, and to Catholic education.
I suggest the name Fr. James Martin High School instead. You can make an “inclusive J or M” next year.
Thank you.
Good point, your Excellency. You can commiserate with Archbishop Mitty. He too is dishonored by the diocesan high school named in his honor. If you want the Oakland school named after James Martin, maybe the archbishop will settle for the San Jose diocesan school being named after one of the priests of the lavender mafia there.
Look at the picture on this page from the school’s website:
https://www.bishopodowd.org/mission-and-values
Bishop O’Dowd is not a Catholic school. It’s a COEXIST school that teaches religious indifference. You’ve seen the bumper stickers.
I thought the purpose of Catholic schools was to teach the Catholic faith, which includes teaching that Catholicism is the one and only true revealed religion.
Apparently this school’s purpose is to teach religious indifference and gayness. How exactly is this a Catholic school, then? Can the bishop answer that question? Because it’s owned by the diocese? Is that it? Is that all?
O good grief, you are right. There is nothing Catholic about this school. It’s a miss mash of everything on the planet. As for colors, thank God in old age, I gave up giving any meaning to any color a long time ago, so I wear whatever I want – just not in a six-striped rainbow – and let the chips fall where they may. At my age if someone shoots me for wearing the wrong color, they will be doing me a great favor. They will only be putting their own soul in danger.
The point of my last post is that one can get shot in many places in California just for innocently wearing the “wrong” color. One young man was on a St. Valentine’s date with his girl friend in San Jose, California, and he got killed (stabbed if I remember correctly) for wearing red in blue gang territory. He was not even in a gang. It is just terrible here. No one is safe any place any more. It seems to be that way in the whole world with a color meaning one thing to certain people and another thing to another group.
The Vatican should issue an order for all bishops, worldwide, to immediately close all so-called “Catholic” schools, universities, seminaries, and all other institutions that reject Catholic teaching and promote harmful immorality and filth, in their dioceses. The Vatican dicasteries, institutes, and all organizations under the Vatican, also should be immediately purged of all non-Catholics, and Catholics who reject Church teachings. And no more feminist politics, no women in posts belonging to the clergy. The Vatican needs a total, deep cleansing, from top to button. And a return to the true Mission of Christ.
I totally agree with the comments up above that it’s still a fake Catholic school. If it were truly Catholic it wouldn’t be promoting gay propaganda. It’s totally symptomatic with all the diabolical nonsense going on in the rest of California. Convert and repent.
The bishop allows this to happen and yet I’m supposed to respect his authority? LOL
LOL for many Catholics long ago to respect the popes and clerics involved with the Second Vatican Council. Don’t tell us that was the “work of the Holy Spirit” — it is the work of very humanly flawed, liberal Catholic clerical leaders seeking a modern update to their Church founded 2,000 years ago by Christ. Just exactly.like their recent work of the Synod on Synodality. And the result? Absolutely pitiful. None of their doings are magically protected by God. (Except, the Sacraments operate independently of the human cleric– “ex opere operato.”) Aside from the Sacraments, Catholic clerics do not necessarily live and work in obedience to the Holy Spirit. You either have faith in Christ and are a sincere cleric who teaches and preaches and lives by true faith in Christ — or you don’t. And the Holy Spirit is only with Christ’s true followers “who have left all to follow Him.”
Where are our future Priests coming from if these These Catholic schools are nothing more than propaganda machines for the gay agenda? The Bishops need to be more vigilant with all these so called Catholic schools and ensure that to be named Catholic they need to teach the Catholic faith to all their students. Our Lady of Fatima pray for all Catholic schools that they proclaim the Gospel message of the true Catholic Church founded by Jesus Christ through the Apostle Peter.
A large group of hundreds of Catholic parents in the Archdiocese of Hamburg, Germany, has written to Pope Leo, and has filed a formal canonical complaint at the Vatican, against their Archdiocese and Archbishop Stefan Hesse, because of a mandatory, new pro-LGBT and gender ideology sex-ed program for their kids in Catholic schools, that is totally against Catholic teachings. So far, the poor parents have heard nothing from the Vatican on their case.
Reply to Vatican: The Vatican must take a strong stance against this diabolical intrinsic evil in the schools. The Catholic Church founded by Jesus Christ through the Apostle Peter needs to have courage and be bold and speak up to defend the truths of the Gospel message that has stood the test of time. Only that truth will set you free. Parents keep defending your children because they are your God given responsibility.
The Vatican gave a cruel reply to the poor parents in the Diocese of Hamburg, Germany. These parents must pay an obligatory church tax, if they are to remain members of their church. Homeschooling is illegal in Germany. So the German Catholic families are now in a dangerous trap. The Vatican refused to intervene in the dispute in which the parents objected to the LGBT and gender ideology sex-ed program to now be implemented in the Diocese of Hamburg Catholic schools. All the Vatican would do is send a letter reaffirming Catholic teachings on the subject. The parents were refused a Papal audience when they requested one.
You can be sure that if a McDonald’s franchise started making its own items not on the approved menu from corporate that corporate would put a stop to it immediately. No, a McDonald’s franchise cannot offer McWings or McSoup. Why then do bishops tolerate Catholic schools teaching things that aren’t on the Catholic menu?
McDonald’s and all other businesses are run on a different principle than a church. Their only goal is to make money. The Catholic Church has too many liberal, over-educated intellectual fools– with little or no sincere faith in Jesus Christ and His true teachings. They have no common “horse sense” — and no integrity at all. They want a do-nothing job–and are totally incompetent. Look at them promote dangerous criminals like Theodore McCarrick and Marko “Rapenik.” Children, young people– and holy nuns– are all safe at McDonald’s– but not safe at all in their Church.
Your teenage son can get a summer job working at McDonald’s– and the workplace willl probably be just fine. No worries. (Except, don’t eat McDonald’s food– bad for your son’s health.) However, be careful if your teenage son wants to sign up for work in a Catholic youth program. What are the priests like that your son will he be working with?
The Church is supposed to be a sign that contradicts the world, not a sign that contradicts itself.
Probably all the administrators and teachers in that school need to be fired for it to be a real Catholic school.
I understand that teachers in that school have to sign a contract with a morality clause. Is there a doctrinal orthodoxy clause? How does this covert gay emblem pass muster at a Catholic school that understands what Catholic education is?
They don’t enforce the morality clause.
Many today believe in a fake concept of Christianity, with no reality of the deep struggles of Godly men and women from the days of the Old Testament onwards. The Bible is full of struggles, conflicts, wars, and battles. As Christians in the pagan world we face evils everywhere. We must “put on the armor of Christ” (Ephesians 6:10-18) — and courageously go to war against Satan… even in our own Church. God is on our side. The real battle (see Ephesians 6:12) is not against “flesh and blood” (people) but against the “spiritual powers of evil in the heavenly realms.”