My wife and I abandoned the Hartford Courant for the Boston Globe some time ago, so we have been following this tawdry little story since its inception. A Catholic School in Hingham, Massachusetts, in Jesus’ holy name and in Christian love, rejected the application of an 8 year old for admission to its grammar school because his parents are lesbians.
Amazingly, even some institutional Catholics have reacted with outrage. This may be hypocritically fueled, in part, by the fact that they are anxious that their basic hypocrisy, so much on display of late, would not be highlighted once more. It does, after all, seem a little much that the Church that finds it so easy to forgive the repeat priestly offenders that “repent” and then sin once more should find it necessary to punish an eight year old for the “sins” of his parents.
So the Boston Bishop, cardinal or whatever he is, has officially pronounced that this particular form of discrimination is not among the many sanctioned by the Church. But the eight year old will nonetheless not be going to the school of his choice; Church officials will be looking for another school willing to take him.
Now, it’s possible that this is because the parents have told Church officials that they would not feel comfortable sending him to a school that has already discriminated against him, but there is no indication from the press reports that this is so. It appears that the Church is here deferring to local control, something that we Connecticut folks recently learned is otherwise anathema to the Church.
Now, there are few monarchs on earth with more absolute power within their realms than the Catholic Pope. The Pope’s power is, in turn, exercised by his viceroys, otherwise know as Bishops. In other words, the Bishop can just tell this school to take the kid and they have to do it. So why, in this case, the kid glove treatment. Imagine, if you will, that same school allowing Planned Parenthood to come in and speak favorably of birth control. How long before the Bishop puts the kibosh on that?
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