On May 22, the San Francisco Chronicle reported: “There is more fallout coming from our story last week about how Catholic school teachers must sign a new contract with the diocese of Oakland pledging to conform to church teachings outside the workplace.” The Chronicle’s article had originally reported that five teachers had refused to sign the new contracts, which require Catholic school teachers to pledge fidelity to the “mission and ministry of the Church.” A later version of the article reported that only three had quit. The Chronicle blamed the mistake on erroneous information from the diocese of Oakland.
The article continued, “(Bishop) O’Dowd teacher Kathleen Purcell said that she crossed out what she felt was the objectionable language on her contract, then signed and submitted it. But it was rejected and the history teacher and career counselor won’t return. Purcell, a longtime civil rights and constitutional law attorney, said she couldn’t in good conscience sign the contract.
‘It’s a loyalty oath and to sign that would go against everything I believe in,’ Purcell said.
She also objected to new contract language that she felt would classify all teachers as ministers, ‘and if that’s the case, then you’re not protected by the law.’
As for reaction, Purcell said one prominent Oakland business told her that it was considering ending its career day program for diocese students because of the controversy.
O’Dowd community members are planning a demonstration at 7:30 a.m. May 30 — the last day of school — to show support for diocese teachers and hope to rally support at other Catholic high schools.”
Disgruntled faculty and others have created an online petition at change.org asking Oakland’s Bishop Michael Barber to “reinstate the current contract language for the upcoming school year while the community discusses the change in greater depth.” The author of the Chronicle article, Joe Garafoli, disclosed that his wife had signed the petition.
On May 5, the Catholic Voice, Oakland’s diocesan newspaper, published an interview with Bishop Barber, in which he explained his motivation for the new contract language. The interview provides welcome and necessary clarity about the vocation of teachers in a Catholic school. Excerpts:
“I made a very small change to the annual teacher’s contract in order to clarify for teachers — and the school community — that each of our Catholic elementary and secondary schools is an integral part of the mission and ministry of the Catholic Church. This makes them different from a charter school or public school. Our school contracts are invitations to teachers to join in this mission and ministry of the Church. I wanted to restate the mission of a Catholic school, and the expectations required of those who desire to participate in this mission and ministry.”
“All teachers are expected to join in the Church’s educational ministry, teaching and modeling the values and ethical standards of Christ and the Catholic Church. This has always been so. Our employment contracts and faculty handbooks have underscored this for years. It is more than just a job. I restated the mission and ministry of a Catholic School in my meeting with school principals and presidents last August. …Each of our schools provides a ‘Christ-centered’ education. Our schools are a primary ministry of the Oakland diocesan pastoral plan ‘To know Christ better and to make Him better known.’”
“My intent is to call attention to the reality that teachers are role models for students. They teach by example. It’s much more than teaching ‘math’ or ‘English.’ A good teacher makes a lifetime impression on a young person. Teachers have enormous influence on their students, who are sent to us by their parents at an impressionable age. Catholic Schools have values. We exist to teach these values to the young. Teachers teach by modeling these values….”
Read the entire interview of Bishop Barber here.
If you’d like to express your support for Bishop Barber:
Bishop Michael Barber
Diocese of Oakland
2121 Harrison Street, Suite 100
Oakland, CA 94612
bishop@oakdiocese.org
I have taught in the schools of the Archdiocese of San Francisco for 33 years and this change has been too long in coming. At a human level, I can feel sympathy for people who may feel that a rug was pulled out from under them, but in this case the rug (tolerance of views and behaviors contrary to Church teaching) should not have been there in the first place. Catholic schools are here first and foremost to assist the Church in saving souls, not building careers or lifestyles for either teachers or students.
If a parent sends their child to a Catholic school because they want them to get a better education that from a public school, they may be missing the boat. The purpose of a Catholic school is to teach the faith and make it part of the student’s everyday life forever. If they teach history and math and English, so much the better. But, it is the faith that should dominate. If that is the case, then the teachers are “ministers” and should behave that way in their everyday life. A Catholic school teacher can be gay, for example, but can’t publicly advocate for same sex marriage or be a part of it. They can’t for example live with someone of the opposite sex if not married, etc. Why is that concept so hard to understand and support?
Looking forward to the day Archbishop Cordileone expects the same from teachers in his Archdiocese. Long long overdue.
Just sent my email to Bishop Barber thanking him.
FYI The email address printed above is wrong. It should read bishop@oakdiocese.org
Everyone support him please.
Thank you Nicholas, this encouragement is needed.
Pray for Bishop Barber, and for Archbishop Cordileone.
Thank you! I.had sent him one but it was kicked back to me. I support him 100%
Hopefully the openings will be filled with faithful Catholics such as the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist!!!!
That would be truly wonderful. A Godsend! )
Your Eminence,
YOU ARE TOTALLY RIGHT ON!!!!! If those people don’t wish to sign, then by ALL means they should resign and go teach somewhere else!!!!!!
Keep up being a true Shepherd and know that your flock has your back :)
He’s “Your Excellency,” not “Your Eminence.”
Only Cardinals are called that, Your Grace… :)
Teaching in So. Cal., I would have no trouble signing this. My major concern is that I suspect many teachers would sign such a document and knowingly lie. Of equal concern are the administrators (principals, counselors, education staff, etc) who should also be required to sign such a document.
Notice that the So. Cal. bishops and archbishop are awfully quiet, aren’t they?
Those who break a contract can be fired with cause.
The Catholic Faith must be intertwined in everything we say or do.
We do not check our Faith at the door.
Parents who send their children to Catholic schools expect nothing less.
Other parents can send their children to the local government (public) schools or various other private schools. No one is being forced to attend a Catholic school.
Children learn not only by what is said, but also by example.
Which is why we should teach our students compassion and tolerance.
Tolerance for sin?
Anonymous, I find it curious that you don’t rather say; Which is why the teachers should show compassion towards Catholic students and tolerate their Catholic faith. The children are the clients. They are the ones who deserve a quality product. A Catholic education should offer much more than simply entrance into a worldly college.
Compassion (noun) – The deep feeling of sharing the suffering of another; mercy.
We must NEVER TOLERATE Sin.
Those teachers and administrators who refuse to adhere to the teachings of the Church, and pass these teachings on to the children can find employment elsewhere.
Code of Canon Law: ” 803 §2. The instruction and education in a Catholic school must be grounded in the principles of Catholic doctrine; teachers are to be outstanding in correct doctrine and integrity of life. ”
Why would anyone go public with a petition that can be signed by anyone who is not Catholic, or a Catholic heretic or schismatic, or not even living in the Diocese?
” . . . each of our Catholic elementary and secondary schools is an integral part of the mission and ministry of the Catholic Church.
This makes them different from a charter school or public school.
Our school contracts are invitations to teachers to join in this mission and ministry of the Church.
I wanted to restate the mission of a Catholic school, and the expectations required of those who desire to participate in this mission and ministry.”
“All teachers are expected to join in the Church’s educational ministry, teaching and modeling the values and ethical standards of Christ and the Catholic Church. This has always been so.
Our employment contracts and faculty handbooks have underscored this for years.
It is more than just a job.
I restated the mission and ministry of a Catholic School in my meeting with school principals and presidents last August. …Each of our schools provides a ‘Christ-centered’ education.
Our schools are a primary ministry of the Oakland diocesan pastoral plan ‘To know Christ better and to make Him better known.’ ”
Absolutely perfect – thank you Bishop Barber !
Teachers who wish to apply – should read the “CATECHISM of the CATHOLIC CHURCH, Second Edition” prior to signing any contract.
“….the CATECHISM has raised throughout the world, even among non-Christians, and confirms its purpose of being presented as a full, complete exposition of Catholic doctrine, enabling everyone to know what the Church professes, celebrates, lives, and prays in her daily life.” – Pope John Paul II (CCC pg xiv)
In this day and age, the obvious, must be codified. In our own Diocese of Sacramento, we had a Planned Parenthood supporter/worker/advocate who taught dramatics at Loretto High School, a Catholic college prep school for girls. The drama came when this was brought to the attention of the High School authorities and they sided with the teacher. It was quite a scandal. Lawsuits were threatened by the teacher, backroom deals were made, the whistleblower was expelled from the high school. No more. No mas. This attitude of admitting wolves into the sheepfold of our Catholic school system has to be renounced. I say, bravo to the bishop of Oakland who cares about his flock. The outraged can go work for the public schools where they will never again be “forced” to be faithful to the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic church in or out of their classrooms.
When one does not get an appropriate “Catholic” response from any Catholic School Administrator – go to the Diocese Bishop – with documentation.
Good riddance. What’s the point of a “Catholic” school if it does not teach the faith?
ditto Michel! Also, what is the point of sending your child to a “Catholic” school which perverts and undermines their faith? This is about the children, not the employees.
People pushing abortion and homosexuality should be screened and banned from all Catholic schools. And from the priesthood too, thereby removing the “filth” lamented by Pope Benedict XVI and “smoke of Satan” discerned by Pope Paul VI.
Wow, way to go, Bishop Barber. Stay firm. Let Ms. Purcell, and any of her pals that want to, go away. Does anyone actually believe that the Catholic Church should compensate someone to teach their children that goes home to a same-sex sexual relationship; or to an adulterous relationship; or that openly lives with their co-fornicator; or [fill in the blank]? And, who are the “O’Dowd community members” anyway? This is not a public school, subject to voter approval. If parents do not like what the school does or teaches, they have the power of the purse and can remove their child. CA people, and liberals, generally, simply refuse to see that there are decisions about some things that are not politically power based. There is no need for Bishop Barber to do anything at all with the “Community”. If he wishes to provide some context — as a teaching moment — then he can explain that he is the Bishop, that the Bishop decides,, and that he decides based on the teachings of the Church, not local will. In fact, that is the real problem: the “Community” well knows what the Church teaches; its just that the “Community” does not like it. What else does the “Community” not like? Perhaps inviting the “Community” to consider the Episcopalians is a good response.
God Bless Bishop Barber for having the courage to enforce the one, true, Catholic faith at the Catholic schools in the Oakland Diocese. We pray his message will spread to the adjoining Dioceses in Northern California. He is setting an example for his fellow Bishops.
Bravo to Bishop Barber
These needs to happen everywhere.
M
Why is Bishop Barber’s request so hard to accept? What if in the military the trainers of our new soldiers advocated on their own time, the advantages of life under communism, or Al Queda? Or, even worse, the overthrow of our Constitution? Same thing as false witness, it seems to me.
Let’s all pray that the Holy Spirit continues to provide Bishop Barber with fortitude to withstand the pressures of his opponents.
“My intent is to call attention to the reality that teachers are role models for students. They teach by example.” –Bp. Michael Barber
How dare the bishop ask that the teachers in a Catholic school be role models of the Gospel! I am shocked and appalled, as we all should be.
[Or: We actually might think this would be an invitation to face one’s conscience and decide if I really want to lead a life in conflict with “Christ’s values” and the school’s educational mission, as Bp Barber says. No small wonder this is so offensive to some.]
The “disgruntled faculty and others [who] have created an online petition at change.org” also seriously underestimate the mettle that Bp. Barber is made of in trying to orchestrate an open revolt against him. Barber has the courage of Leonidas.
And yet…Bishop Vasa of Santa Rosa backed down just a year ago from insisting on this same pledge!
They will soon know that the time extension they were given is only so they can all be replaced with ease and less fanfare for the teachers that will not comply.
These teachers should save everyone the time and just leave. They can go work for one of the other dozen or so other godless “education” institutions the Bay Area has.
I’m sure teachers who are leaving can find work across the Bay in the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Anything goes there.
A little background on Kathleen Purcell is very instructive:
She is a major partner of the quite progressive law firm Remcho, Johansen & Purcell, LLP (retired, but active) which specializes in “political, election, ethics, constitutional, and public policy law” (according to their own site), and she is a member of the Litigation Committee for Equal Rights Advocates (see: equalrights.org),which specializes in representing “marginalized women workers” (their language) and whose goal is amending the Constitution with the ER amendment.
One of her law firms’ “special tasks” is defending Prop 71, the disastrous Calif stem cell law, from any legal challenges (one of the justifications for abortion is that fetal stem cells may have a positive scientific effect, a claim which has so far not been effectively proven ), and also defending Prop 10, which imposed an increased tobacco tax on cigarettes with the alleged basis of funding “early childhood education” (Prop 10 has definitely inflated the CA government with a myriad of government “childcare” programs, none of the positive effects of which, if any can be measured. According to http://www.emaso.com, she contributed to the “No” on Prop 8 Campaign (the 2008 CA amendment in favor of traditional marriage).
Makes you wonder why is she teaching in a “Catholic” school, hmm?
O’Dowd has long supported homosexualist activism. Some examples:
In a 1995 “Bay Area Network of Gay and Lesbian Educators” (BANGLE) convention at Holy Names College, speakers included a priest who taught “Christian Sexuality” and co-moderated the “Gay and Lesbian Education and Affirmation” (GLEA) Club at O’Dowd. Boasting of having covered “our corporate a_ _,” he advocated forming “GLEA clubs” in other Catholic schools.
In March, 2003, O’Dowd publicly supported a “transgender” teacher’s female to “male” transition. Material distributed at a parent/teacher/student meeting included “Transgendered Terminology” characterizing “gender” as merely a “psychosocial construct, distinct from sex” and “transition” as the “period where a transsexual begins to live their life in the new gender of choice.”
During the meeting, a woman who claimed to have been the “transgender” teacher’s roommate at U.C. Berkeley said she’d been apprehensive about sending her son to O’Dowd because she’d found the Church “repressive and narrow-minded.” But she’d found the “diversity” she sought at O’Dowd, so she’d “deal with all the religious crap as needed.” Most of the audience laughed and applauded.
‘It’s a loyalty oath and to sign that would go against everything I believe in,’ Purcell said. She also objected to new contract language that she felt would classify all teachers as ministers, ‘and if that’s the case, then you’re not protected by the law.’
Goodness Gracious – just the thought that teachers in the Catholic Schools should be Loyal to the teachings of the Church (let alone Believe in them) – as if Education were a Ministry of the Church, and their personal example mattered…
– Is contrary to the whole spirit of State Antagonism (more then just neutral atheism) towards Religion and the Catholic Church in Particular. and should never be tolerated by those already professionally ‘tolerant’- of the Anti-Catholic attempts at forcing ideological conformity to the Gaystapo Agenda in Catholic Schools.
BTW – SB 48 (by senator mark “Kiddie Porn King” Leno & the”Frothy Mixer” Caucus) forbids the public schools to provide Any Information (No Matter how factually accurate) deemed to “Reflect Adversely” on the whole Larry Brinkin posse of “Frothy Mixers” and their Twysted Syster allies (say like discussing Homo-Nazi Terrorist Storm Troopers led by pederast founder Ernst Rohm.) even when glossing over the lead up to WW-2
As yet – We have yet to see the first political show trial for those whose Loyalty to the Gaystapo is in question as a result of the “Kiddie Porn King” Thought Crime Law – but just as soon as a suitable scapegoat steps out of line, no doubt the show will go on.
As I wrote in my local newspaper in 2006, after seeing The Laramie Project at a nearby high school:
The Laramie Project, a “faux documentary” which “scores a direct hit on audience emotions”(as homosexual playwright Moisés Kaufman’s website reports), portrays reactions to homosexual college student Matthew Shepard’s 1998 murder.
A Laramie presentation usurped Cal High’s last period junior-senior English classes on Valentine’s Day. “_____, the school’s first-year drama teacher, had the idea” for the school’s production, pleasing two “Gay-Straight Alliance” officers (Times, Feb. 11).
Principal _______’s disclaimers couldn’t defuse Laramie’s subversive portrayals. A Mormon leader, endorsing heterosexual marriage, appears insensitively off the page. A Bible-believing Baptist minister seemingly morphs into crazy “God Hates Fags” Fred Phelps. Republican Gov. Geringer hasn’t “pushed hate crime legislation.”
In manipulative contrast, a student actor defies worried parents, and a lesbian valiantly recruits “a big-a_ _ band of angels” to answer Phelps.
Why no equivalent empathy for Jesse Dirkhising, a 13-year old obscenely brutalized and killed by two homosexuals in 1999?
As another lesbian, commentator Camille Paglia observed, “Shepard’s death was immediately transmogrified into a moral parable of sweet, saintly gay boy set upon by bigoted thugs and crucified for his homosexuality….
And it turns out that Kathleen Purcell, the protesting O’Dowd teacher (counsellor) highlighted above, is a retired (founding) partner in the Remcho, Johansen, & Purcell (RJP) law firm. See http://www.linkedin.com/in/kathleenpurcell.
In significant part, the firm’s online “representative clients” list (www.rjp.com/index.cfm/clients) reads like a “Who’s Who” of liberal causes — and the firm is well known for its advocacy on behalf of Sacramento’s Democrat caucus and its own measures.
In 1995-97, during Purcell’s active partnership in the firm, another non-lawyer and I, representing ourselves, prevailed in Superior Court and then in California Appellate Court (First District) in an election contest in which the opposing side was represented by RJP. To the satisfaction of both courts, we proved double voting, votes by ineligible voters, and absentee-signature mismatches.
At issue was our local school district’s (San Ramon Valley Unified’s) attempt to qualify or rehabilitate illegal “yes” votes in an $82 Million school-bond measure. On through the Superior Court decision, the school district spent $237,000 in taxpayer funds on representation by Remcho, Johansen, & Purcell as its counsel (with Robin Johansen leading the courtroom team).
Having lost the Superior Court contest to us two non-attorneys, the firm lost in the appellate process for free.
First of all– we desperately need a strong and SERIOUS “practicing Catholic” Church once again– with all clergy, nuns, and lay people fully taught their Faith and Morals, and fully PRACTICING their Faith and Morals- – and the Pope and his bishops fully practicing their Faith and Morals, too, to include utilizing the Code of Canon Law! That means, to excommunicate immoral, heretical, apostate Catholics! (For example, excommunicate Nancy Pelosi, Sandra Fluke of Georgetown U., Kathleen Sebellius, and many others, to start off with!) Then, it is much easier for laymen applying for teaching jobs in the Catholic schools! They will already be in a “practicing Catholic” Church, and truly know, as we did years go– what it means to be a Catholic, and to teach in a Catholic school, as the nuns once did! The nuns really ought to be doing the job, as they used to do! They truly would be the ones to inculcate a religious-based education, for the Church! The post- Vatican II Church is a farce!! Too secular, worldly, and too much heresy, apostasy, and vast immorality! A HORROR!!
My mention of The Laramie Project in my second post above was intended to provide background on the last portion of my FIRST post above — a portion which was cut in posting. The missing two paragraphs there originally said:
In November 2002 and again earlier this month, O’Dowd students performed The Laramie Project, a grossly misrepresentative drama about the murder of homosexual Wyoming student Matthew Shepard that has been used around the country to promote support “hate-crimes” legislation, antagonism toward Christian fundamentalists, and other “gay-rights” objectives.
Bishop Barber, a commissioned US Navy Commander, has been a Marine chaplain. So oo-rah, Bishop Barber — and Semper Fi!
Seems that the Bishop is probably caving to public pressure:
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Oakland-Diocese-Bishop-to-Meet-With-Faculty-Over-Morality-Clause-260758241.html
Hallelujah to the contract and to the supporters here! Catholic schools should not be the place where diverse lifestyles, experiences, and opinions should be tolerated or accepted. These people cannot be trusted to not openly practice or promote their lifestyles, like other professionals. I for one am glad that my kid doesn’t go to this school.