I attended a Catholic school in sunny Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico. It sat a block from my house which was also my dad’s restaurant. We all wore uniforms which were consistent within each gender. I believe that there was a store from which we could buy those uniforms, but my mom, having been a seamstress, simply made our uniforms. Our school had an attached church on one end, whenever asked which church we attended we simply responded with the church for our school. We didn’t though, my family ran a business and don’t remember attending church regularly. Honestly, I think we attended this school because we wanted a good education, the faith element wasn’t really a factor.
Precisely one homeroom teacher taught each grade, and the class numbered around thirty of us. Our homeroom teacher taught most classes, but we had an occasional guest teacher for different subjects. Some of these teachers were nuns, which wouldn’t be a surprise being a Catholic school. Our English teacher was a nun, and I failed that class. Speaking Chinese at home, I struggled to learn both Spanish and English in the few years that I attended that school before we moved to Florida.
That said, all our teachers were either nuns or married women (denoted by the “Señora” title).
The boundary between faith and policy
Once we moved to Florida from Puerto Rico, we enrolled into the public school system. We endured a year of bilingual classroom before we were thrown in with the unwashed masses. Though even through elementary and middle school our teachers were disproportionately married women (now denoted by the “Mrs.” title). We had the occasional male teacher, but even those were specialized subjects like, art, shop, or band. Most conventional academic subjects, like reading, English, math, etc. were still taught by women and mostly married. It wasn’t until high school when I finally had legitimately male teachers for subjects like English, history, or geometry.
And there was, of course, science; one teacher who taught me for two years was one of my best teachers. He knew his subject and inspired us. He always watched for our safety as we performed experiments. If we ever broke a thermometer, he screamed at us to get clear while he donned safety equipment and cleaned up the mercury. Being one of his best students, he asked if I would consider tutoring another student where I could make a little money. He was instrumental in my passing the AP exam. I believe that he was gay, though it never came up in conversation. While I would never ask him personally, he might’ve told me if I had asked.
My education would’ve suffered without him; he inspired me to become a better student, indeed a better person. If he had been teaching in my Catholic school, he might’ve been fired.
Stop claiming that it’s about sin; it’s not
A number of Catholic schools have dismissed teachers because they were gay. Once the US allowed gay couples to marry, they did. They came from all walks of life; yes, some of them even teach your children. In such schools, once you cross this threshold of effectively “don’t ask; don’t tell” then the administration takes action and fires you. Some will claim that it’s about living up to a particular standard; that it may be ‘a lifestyle thing’. The thinly veiled premise is that teachers should be role models, and role models should not conduct themselves in sinful ways.
I understand that argument, but it’s bullshit.
Do I believe that somehow in your twisted culture, you have concluded that this teacher marrying who they love equates to sin? Yes, I’m convinced that you absolutely believe it. However, I do not believe is that you take exception of sinful lifestyles in general. The heartless dismissal of these devoted teachers has little to do with sin, but instead it’s about xenophobia. The “sinful lifestyle” is just a simple rationalization; you may even believe it.
However, the problem is that these actions are inconsistent with their rationalization, and that’s where the hypocrisy is obvious. Not all sins are treated equally.
Cherry-picking the sins
If we’re honestly making the assertion that we want to extricate sin from your teaching staff, then by all means extricate all instances of sinful behavior from your staff. Though I think you’ll quickly find yourself short-handed, not to mention the entire ‘let he who is without sin cast the first stone’ thing. It simply stinks of hypocrisy that you take exception to this particular sin, but other sins are magically permissible. What ever happened to them?
A number of sins align with felonies. Generally, ‘thou shalt not kill’ and ‘thou shalt not steal’ map to murder and grand larceny. I imagine that convictions in either one of those will disqualify you from a teaching career, especially in a Catholic school. Those particular sins come out in the wash because, you’d be denied employment anyway. I think we can agree that we do not want felons teaching our kids.
Though we have to wonder about other sins, like lying, honoring thy parents, coveting thy neighbor’s wife, etc. You could argue that those aren’t really sins and thus we don’t really count them. Though by the letter of the law, there are really only two categories: venial sins and mortal sins. Though let me tell you, that list of mortal sins is pretty darn long, and includes items like adultery, contraception, divorce, envy, extreme anger, lying, hatred, masturbation, etc.
If we truly want to insulate our children from teachers who are sinful, then let’s dismiss all teachers who exhibit sin without bias to the particular mortal sin.
Confession and repentance
There was one lesson that stuck with me from Catholic school about confession. As I approached taking my first communion, they advised us that we’d need to go to confession. The premise was simple: We needed to repent our sins before taking the body of Christ. It’s all part of the ritual, and I understood the procedure. We had one priest that came in to chat with us and asserted that confession was not a panacea for committing sin. His example was that you could not come in and confess that you stole two chickens (yes, the lesson mentioned chickens) when you had every intention of stealing two more chickens next week. The chickens made the lesson memorable. The idea was that in order for confession to work, you had to repent and genuinely intend to never commit that sin again.
I can understand that lesson. Catholics do allow you to repent and regain acceptance into the church as long as it’s honest. Even if you should take someone’s life, as long as you’ve confessed and repented, you may still come back in good graces. This also means that if you should happen to have a gay fling with that hot bartender at the wedding, it’s ultimately okay as long as you’ve confessed and repented. To continue to have gay sex or marry someone of the same gender, that pretty much blows the ‘intend to never commit that sin again’ clause out of the water.
When you go into confession and mention ‘lying’, are you truly vowing to never commit that sin again?
Want to eliminate ‘sinful’ role models? Do it uniformly
Do you want to align with your values? I get that. If you honestly believe that your kids’ educators should adhere to a higher moral standard, then uniformly apply the moral standards that you want to extricate educators who exhibit any mortal sin:
- Did a divorcee get remarried? Fire them!
- Did a teacher envy your new car? Gone!
- Did one teacher get condoms or buy a sex toy? Dismiss them!
- Did the English teacher ‘exaggerate’ deductions on their taxes? Show them the door!
Even the bible doesn’t make a distinction in the severity of the sin when it comes to homosexuality; it’s one among a long list of grave sins. How are we concluding that this one particular sin magically becomes the one sin for which we’re willing to dismiss our educators?
Are we willing to do fire any educator that commits any mortal sin? No? Then own the fact that it’s not about sin; it never was. It’s about your feeling of ickiness with something that is unfamiliar; it’s your baggage. This is the very definition of the term homophobia; you can at least own it.
It’s not about sin. It’s about hypocrisy.