Matt Abbott has the story at Renew. Matt's story is being widely circulated in Catholic circles. (Pewsitter, Spirit Daily and Catholic blogs on the internet)
Catholic parents met with school officials, archdiocesan officials and the fruit of those meetings is not good.
Parents were first ignored and rebuffed. After three or four weeks of slipping out the back door the school principal, Mr. Enos, met with parents. He made clear at these meetings (as he did with me) that he was 100% behind the article and if the opportunity arose to publish similar articles in the future, he will do so.
Additionally, Mr. Enos expressed his unhappiness with the parents for bringing the article to the attention of the Bishop and the Archdiocese and he made clear to them that they were not to do so in the future.
I'd like to remind you that Sacred Heart's article told children a man who hired pedophiles, tied children to tables and had them abused around the clock for 24 hours or more without a break to 'record' their response, was the enlightened one on matters of human sexuality.
Not only did Mr. Enos defend his actions in approving the article, he used his position as principal to tell parents concerned about the ramifications of this article to their own children and other Catholics who attend the school, that he was not happy that there is a code of silence they were not adhering to.
When asked, Enos said that, in hindsight, he wouldn't change his position and he would approve a similar article again if presented the opportunity in the future. He also told the parents that the conversation he had with them was not to leave the room — a version of 'What happens at Sacred Heart stays at Sacred Heart.'
Anyone see a problem with this kind of thuggery?
Can someone tell me what is worse than distributing information to children that a known pedophile who abused thousands of children is the enlightened one on human sexuality and then threatening parents not to tell the Bishop about scandals in the future?
Isn't this a problem for the clowns at the Chancery who are supposed to be protecting 'safe environments to tell' at parishes and schools?
Parents were eventually referred to Mr. Enos' boss, the grand pubah of the Sisters of the Divine Providence, Sister Mary Francis Fletcher.
I spoke to the parents earlier this Summer and the meeting was scandalous. (I hope to convince the parents to permit me to divulge more information about this meeting in the not too distant future.)
We have sent Sister a number of e-mails requesting a written explanation of the administration's plan to address the concerns raised by the parents. Sister has essentially ignored these requests; thus, parents will have no input into how to prevent this situation from happening at Sacred Heart in the future. Sister's arrogant, dismissive and disinterested manner in which she has addressed our concerns and requests is disturbing.
As concerned parents, we requested that the administration respect our decision (and duty) to educate our children in a school committed to a true Catholic education. We are stunned and deeply saddened by all this. We feel a moral obligation not to support a school that calls itself Catholic but authorizes articles in the school newspaper that undermine the Catholic faith, marginalize Catholic teaching — easily available to anyone with a Catechism — treat parents with contempt, and marginalize parents for raising legitimate concerns over these published articles.
I believe it is absolutely critical (and I will advise the parents, council members and other local and national leaders) to add a few more things to this list.
The superior at the Sisters of the Divine Providence should be investigated for hostility to Catholic doctrine by the Vatican.
More importantly Courage and EnCourage need to be brought into Sacred Heart School and in fact EVERY Catholic school across the diocese where this situation pops up.
Courage can be a constant presence rather than "article and counter-article" that will only lead the children in an intellectual circle. Courage is really group support on the ground. They know what to say and how to say it. They put processes for dealing with the feelings of being marginalized and bring about an end that helps them to know they are no different than any one of us, that there is love in the Catholic Church and Her teachings. There is parental support and family support. If there is a genuine concern about hostility or malice, there are trained people who those children can report things to and have that situation taken care of. There shouldn't be any more shame imparted to a child struggling with a same-sex attraction than there is with any other child struggling with temptation and sin.
Here we will have a climate that is safe for one and all and most especially safe for Catholic teachers to teach the faith and Catholic children to learn it. There is no gripe that can be taken up by people who oppose our faith other than telling them a Catholic school may not be the place for their child.
Conservative Catholics have been and continue to be terrorized. They are wounded, frustrated and deeply concerned about the Catechesis that is leaving Catholic children without the tools to make the choices necessary for their salvation.
We have done a terrible job at getting the message right.
Frankly, I have a confession to make.
I am gay friendly.
I'm probably worse than gay friendly, I actually can say there are gays whom I love and I hope and pray that in evangelizing my faith, or wanting that faith evangelized to Catholic children. it does not diminish that love in any way.
This doesn't mean there is an iota of compromise on wanting my faith taught to me and to those in our Catholic communities.
Using the term 'something is gay friendly' in such a way that makes it seem like Catholics and the Catholic Church should't be friendly to gays is not really the wisest choice of words. We should eliminate it from our vocabulary.
We need some new jargon.
Yes, gays have an agenda. They want to be loved. They want to be treated with respect. There is no obstacle to this in a Catholic agenda of wanting our faith taught in our parishes and schools.
There are, of course, some situations where these lofty goals can't be met. For instance, when people want to publicly reject or do not want Catholic teachings taught in Catholic apostolates.
There is a fight going on with the administration under Cardinal O'Malley on the future of Catholic education and they have not yet begun to see the whites of our eyes.
We will not surrender until our faith is freed from the imprisonment or the desks of Fr. Hehir and his cronies are emptied at 66 Brooks Drive.
As Kate Hepburn once said, "Buckle up, it's going to be a bumpy ride."
**A postscript has been added at the bottom of this article.
Sacred Heart students in Kingston were treated to the article on the right in the May issue of the student newspaper, "The Heartbeat. (grades 7 through 12).
The article starts off by expressing that because the issue of homosexuality remains controversial even 62 years after Alfred Kinsey's work, many lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered students at the school are understandably hesitant to come out to their peers.
So the presence of Alfred Kinsey in the story doesn't get lost, let me break it out for you.
How would you feel if this article said "Even decades after Paul Shanley's wonderful work, homosexuality still remains controversial and therefore kids are having a hard time coming out ..."
You'd be horrified Sacred Heart was promoting the ideas of a pedophile to the students, wouldn't you?
Well, Alfred Kinsey makes Paul Shanley look like a saint.
Shedding light on Kinsey's history requires a content warning - it's extremely disturbing.
Kinsey was a zooligist turned sex pioneer who conducted sex experiments on adults and children.
You read that right. Sex experiments on children.
He tied children onto tables and hired pedophiles to sexually abuse them. The children would be tied to a table for hours upon hours with the goal of seeing how many times he could get them to reach an orgasm consecutively as their victims would violently scream and kick.
Both of Kinsey’s most recent admiring biographers confessed he was a sadistic bi/homosexual who seduced his male students and coerced his wife, his staff, and the staff’s wives to perform for and with him in illegal pornographic films made in the family attic. Kinsey and his mates, Wardell Pomeroy, Clyde Martin, and Paul Gebhard, had "front" marriages, which concealed their strategies to supplant what they saw as a narrow procreational Judeo Christian era with a promiscuous "anything goes" bi/gay pedophile paradise. We now know Kinsey, for example, "was deeply influenced by five pedophile headmasters who were quite clear they had very warm relationships with young adolescent boys of twelve or thirteen" in one New England area. An early adherent and advocate of masturbation, Kinsey suffered an untimely death due, at least in part, to "orchitis," a lethal infection in his testicles that followed years of sadistic, orgiastic "self-abuse." Kinsey’s obsessive, brutally masochistic masturbation methods appear to have assisted in his early demise. Kinsey solicited and encouraged pedophiles, at home and abroad, to sexually violate from 317 to 2035 infants and children for his alleged data on normal "child sexuality." Many of the crimes against children (oral and anal sodomy, genital intercourse and manual abuse) committed for Kinsey’s research are quantified in his own graphs and charts.
"The doctor was convinced children were sexual beings who could experience orgasms almost from birth by stimulating their sexual organs....It is difficult to understand why a child, except for cultural conditioning, should be disturbed by having their genitalia touched or disturbed at seeing the genitalia of other persons, or disturbed at even more specific sexual contacts..."
"Still in the book on the human male, Kinsey noted that child subjects of these experiments would often scream and will fight away from the adult partner and may make violent attempts to avoid climax although they derive definite pleasure out of the situation.."
Kinsey hired pedophiles to molest children while watching and recording their responses to sexual touches.
There is no question that Sacred Heart's use of this pedophile monster Alfred Kinsey as a legitimate source of sexual ethics for children is far more egregious than dropping Paul Shanley's name.
The adults supervising this project should be immediately dismissed.
As if the Kinsey reference isn't enough to demonstrate the catechesis and supervision at Sacred Heart High School has derailed, the children who profile their promiscuous, homosexual and bisexual extracurricular activities go on to complain that they're having a hard time convincing other students to pony up in the sack with them.
While we can take comfort that the sexual harvesting isn't going that well, it makes one wonder where these recruiting activities are taking place and whether or not statutory rape is involved, doesn't it?
Any parent paying tuition thinking they're sending their kids off to school in the morning to learn the fiat of avoiding temptation and sin and living in a state of Grace is being ripped off.
I couldn't help wondering how any of the adults in the school could read the profiles of the three teenagers who wrote their stories and not be compelled to urgently correct their misunderstanding that "not even God will accept us".
This is a closed door for reconciliation with God that invites animosity the children could carry with them for the rest of their lives. How do you care about the people involved and leave them with that understanding of God?
Having our religion caricatured as "intolerance gays encounter on a daily basis that can make you sick.." is not fostering good will in society.
What a lousy witness to Catholicity.
What is next in Sacred Heart's Heartbeat?
Why not run a series?
Why should the masturbaters have to remain in the closet?
How about a profile of teachers having affairs?
It could make for a lovely trilogy?
Another mother of a Sacred Heart elementary student told me she pulled her two children out of the school when an incident occurred over a Christmas fundraiser. They were supposed to be buying
"Christmas cards" but when they came home, they said "Happy Holidays - and may you have many things to be joyful about in this season"...or something like that.
When several parents approached the elementary principal, a nun, she said "We have a Muslim student in the school and isn't a pity some women have nothing better to do than cause trouble".
You change the mission from an academy to train the next generation of evangelists to a school that serves the need of the Muslim family and children boo-hooing about how difficult it is to get somebody to sleep with them as a homosexual in a Catholic school.
Cry me a river.
With Bryan Hehir and his rich cronies ramming a policy down the throats of pastors to accept students whose families reject the teachings of the Church, this is a concrete example of how teachers, principals and Catholic schools are in no way, shape or form ready to uphold the faith.
The slippery slope is here and the "policy" hasn't even been rolled out.
Perhaps instead of threatening to cut off funding, the Cardinal and his Catholic School Foundations initiative will send Sacred Heart a big fat check?
It floors me that the salvation of all the souls involved in this situation means nothing to people using the Name Catholic to earn a living.
It's maddening, really, because people I care about and love have been scandalized by their misfeasance and malfeasance.
The team asks "Is the "Archdiocese" [which is an antiseptic name for "the Cardinal" when you're trying to divert attention away from "who" is giving out the marching orders when it's painfully obvious what's going on isn't "Catholic"] violating Canon law and the directives of the Vatican?"
Is a school (and the Cardinal) who will circulate a "sleep with anyone and everyone, just pay your tuition" to children violating Canon law?
See what you think.
BHE also picks up the story in the Boston Globe today about Michael Pakaluk's Pilot article.
Kudos to Pakaluk for reconsidering his thoughts about gays and pornography.
Just like heterosexuals, gays build their relationships with intimacy. When you don't want to put the work into your relationships to keep the fires going, the fire goes out. People who have to resort to pornography to get the equipment going are suffering from a problem with intimacy in their relationships. It's laziness and selfishness and all kinds of other maladies of the spirit and animus. It has nothing it all to do with sexual orientation.
Catholics really have no idea what makes homosexuals and lesbians tick. Sexuality to Catholics is a narrow road we want to and have to stay on to get to Heaven and we have to teach our children that narrow road.
As our friends at BHE said:
Fr. Bryan Hehir, who Cardinal O’Malley recently described as highly trusted “strategic advisor” who brings “fidelity to the work of the Church” and ”clarity to our message and mission” said in a May 20 WBUR interview that Catholic schools in this archdiocese have been and will remain wide open to children of gay couples. He said, “Are we doing it already? Yes. And we intend to do it as the Cardinal indicated, with formal policies.” That means the Archdiocese fully intends to institutionalize what’s described above.
Amen to all that.
Sacred Heart has derailed from the vocation of teaching Catholic children the tools of salvation. This is exactly where Bryan Hehir and Cardinal O'Malley are taking the future of Catholic education.
It's all as Catholic as Alfred Kinsey.
And, by the way, I would challenge anyone to make contact with Jarret Barrios (quoted in the Boston Globe today) and ask him to verify what was taught to his child in Catholic school.
If the Cardinal can't see that if he goes the route he thinks he's going to go, the buffoonery of every Catholic school in the diocese is going to be exposed -- and scandal after scandal are going to crash upon his shore like the big old waves on a hot summer day at the National Seashore, he is mistaken.
POSTSCRIPT
Numerous people have written with comments that require a postscript.
If I did not publish your comments, there was either a false statement in the post or it was a repetition of a point already made.
Such as:
-Defending Alfred Kinsey's pedophile experiments and/or the school's use of Kinsey's "work" to affirm students in their sins instead of leading them to the knowledge that sin and the near occasions of it are matters taken to confession.
-Sacred Heart is a "private school and not under the authority of the Archdiocese".
Sacred Heart uses the word "Catholic" to define their institution. As the faculty and administration knows, the "use" of the word "Catholic" cannot be done without the permission of the Catholic Church. In order to be granted permission, the school has to agree to be under the doctrinal authority of the Catholic Church.
Thayer is a private school. Montessori is a private school. Sacred Heart is a Catholic school and therefore, they are most certainly under the doctrinal authority of the Archdiocese.
Canon law actually states that the word "Catholic" belongs to the faithful and it is not to be scandalized. Catholics have every right and duty hold people granted permission to use the word "Catholic" to be held accountable when they scandalize the faith.
The reasons the faithful are responsible for public scandal is because our own children may get sucked into the vacuum of their bad theology because they are representing themselves as a "Catholic institution".
Ultimately, this affects our own children's salvation. Therefore, this is not a private matter between students, parents and the faculty at Sacred Heart.
-"A man loves a man just as a man loves a woman. You Carol and those who support you will never understand this, just as you will never fully understand your God"
Of course we understand homosexual attraction, desire and love.
All along our journey, heterosexuals have at one time or another also fallen into the pit of being sexually attracted to somebody that the Catholic religion forbids. This ancient history dates back to Adam and Eve.
The difference here is, heterosexuals don't have to bear the burden of well-meaning adults telling us that there's nothing wrong with those desires and the Catholic Church is a moral dinosaur that discriminates and hates us.
Heterosexuals committing adultery, sexually attracted to the wife or husband of another, sexually attracted to a priest - etc. - are not suffering the indignity of articles in Catholic periodicals convincing us these desires should be nurtured and supported by the Catholic community at large.
If we did, more of us would be carrying out those urges and more is the pity for Christ and our own salvation. It is the antithesis of Catholic evangelism.
-"You assume the relationship between the two males was a sexual one. It was an innocent partnership that had to be kept secret because too much of society is intolerant of it's nature."
What is happening in "society" is not germane to this discussion. The discussion is about a Catholic institution whose mission is forming Catholic evangelists who are to be given the tools to choose right actions from wrong ones on the path to salvation.
As I have explained to several students writing privately to me who want to understand more about the Catholic religion, there are relationships that by their very nature have no innocence at all in the Catholic religion.
If Sister Mary Kate O'Sullivan were sitting in the gymnasium watching the Saints basketball game being affectionate and holding hands with the mailman, giving the appearance they are lovers, there would be and should be concern for that woman in a Catholic Community. That concern would be and should be acted upon by the adults in the Community because we are a community that is solely based upon the salvation of our souls. We are our brothers keeper.
Nobody in their right mind would encourage Sister to take any steps in a journey towards that relationship in a Catholic Community for it is bobby trapped with occasions for mortal sin in a moment of weakness.
This is why Catholic teachers, Catholic faculty and Catholic priests teach people to avoid the near occasion of sin.
If you see an alcoholic on the wagon holding lovingly onto a bottle of Dewers or Daddy holding onto the hands of his secretary in the backseat of the SUV, rational people know it's time for an intervention. There is no time or place for articles in the Heartbeat asking the community to embrace those temptations and relationships.
-"I will simply point out to you the gravity of what you have brought forth, because I don't think you are totally understanding it. Though only a handful of us have responded, I assure you that the entirety of the Sacred Heart Community has heard what you said (trust me, word travels fast in a school of 400). And, though we may not all agree unanimously, you can expect our majority to fight you on this. You're attempting to discredit an enormous part of our lives, and for that, you will not soon be forgotten or forgiven and I mean that as a warning and not a threat."
Thank you.
But, I don't believe the Sacred Heart Community has "heard what I am saying" at all.
They are taking what I am saying and twisting it to grant themselves license to round up people to "fight me" and the com boxes are filled with the fruits of that leadership. The adults in the Sacred Heart community are twisting logic to incite malice that has inspired abusive conduct and threats whereby I have to be concerned about the safety of my home and family. That is something the administration is going to correct. Students and parents who are currently enrolled in the school who participated in the conduct should be expelled. Faculty feeding the frenzy by circulating misinformation about the animus of our intentions -which is slanderous- should be fired.
The sad facts are, Catholic schools are places where "the majority" of faculty and staff behave in this manner when they futz up Catholic doctrine are asked to correct their errors so that children will not be led astray.
This is the state of affairs in Catholic schools and Catholic parents ignorant of the climate need to be educated on it. Parents not exposed to it, who innocently believe the Catholic religion is being taught in Catholic schools, need to know. Here, Sacred Heart is the monument to the fallacy.
Catholic education is gone in the Archdiocese as it has been gone in our local parishes for decades.
And, on a grander scale, it needs to be publicly exposed so that the Cardinal and the doctrinally corrupt now in charge of the Archdiocese are placed on notice that if they want to head down this road, they should gird their loins. For, in no way, shape. manner or form will we sit by quietly as our children are spiritually ravaged and our religion extinguished. Even if they should lead "the majority" to "fight us" on it as the Sacred Heart Community has done.
It is truly a sad witness that the "majority" of adults at Sacred Heart are making those correcting their errors out to be boogeymen.
