In much of Europe, and in South Africa where I come from, May 1st is the time to remember and honour labour and workers’ rights. Catholics who feel marginalized and offended by Catholic teaching on sexuality and sexual ethics are often reminded of the forgotten treasure of the Catholic Church, its valuable social teaching. For the past century and more, that social teaching has included an important emphasis on the rights of workers. As in so many other areas however, the Church itself does not practice what it preaches.
The Americans celebrate Labor Day today – and at Bondings, Francis DeBenardo has a useful suggestion: let us remember those LGBT people who have lost their jobs with the Catholic Church, simply for their insistence on living lives of honesty and integrity, obedient to the words of scripture, and inappropriately quoted by then Cardinal Ratzinger of the CDF in his infamous Hallowe’en letter on the pastoral care of homosexual persons, “Speak the truth in love”.
On Labor Day, Let’s Remember LGBT People Fired from Catholic Institutions
Today is Labor Day in the United States, a time when we stop to celebrate the gifts of all workers in our society. Labor Day always happens on the first Monday in September, right in the middle of back-to-school season.
Charles Reid, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas, Minneapolis, penned an essay for The Huffington Post which combined both of these timely themes by asking Catholic schools and institutions to make a “Back-to-School Resolution: Let’s Stop Firing Gays and Gay-Rights Supporters.”
Noting the long list of firings of LGBT people and their supporters fired from Catholic workplaces over the past year, Reid states:
“It is time, well past time, for Catholic schools to make this back-to-school resolution: No more firings of gays or gay-rights supporters in the new school year.”
His rationale for this suggestion at this point is based on the context of Pope Francis’ summertime statement, “Who am I to judge?” in response to a reporter’s question about gay priests, and specifically rumors about calls to fire Monsignor Battista Ricca, Francis’ overseer at the Vatican Bank, after rumors circulated that Ricca was gay.
– continue reading at Bondings 2.0.
