A Catholic school contradiction

Professor’s talk fills lecture hall, book sells out

There is a deep contradiction in the governance of schools in three provinces in Canada, the three last provinces to publicly fund Catholic schools: Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan. The clash is too seldom aired and discussed, but the Trent University Teacher Education department and Prof. Karleen Jimenez performed this public service last week with a talk by Prof. Tonya Callaghan of the University of Calgary.

Callaghan presented her findings, the result of research done for her PhD at the University of Toronto, to a full crowd, at Trent, and sold out her book, Homophobia in the Hallways: Heterosexism and Transphobia in Canadian Catholic Schools.

It was exactly the right place and time, and Prof. Callaghan adopted exactly the right tone: Sober, calm and well-documented.

“In some Catholic schools in Canada,” she said, “there are human rights violations because some teachers and students are told that canon law trumps civil and constitutional law.”

She cited section 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982). prohibiting discrimination based on gender and sexual identity. The clash comes with official Catholic church teaching on all manner of sexual issues but particularly homosexuality.

Rather than challenging the harmful words of Canon law in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1993), where homosexuality is described as “‘intrinsically disordered” and “contrary to natural law,” many Catholic schools adopt a pastoral tone of “hate the sin but love the sinner.”

This is scant progress over the recent past of condemning homosexuals outright.

Catholic sexual teaching is characterized by a condemnation of contraception, abortion, masturbation and divorce. Despite the work of Catholic feminists and theologians to persuade the church to rescind offensive phrases and bring church teaching into the 21st century, the condemnations remain. For anyone who cares about words and their impact, this is very troubling.

Publicly funded schools are required to have elected boards and elections, but many will tell you the ultimate authority for curriculum and policy lies with the bishop of the diocese.

Conscientious teachers are caught on the horns of a dilemma.

To disagree with the official teaching means risking their jobs. But to abandon their gay students takes a toll too. So a certain hypocrisy prevails.

Callaghan believes the “revolution” will be led by the young. For example, Leanne Iskander, 16, was denied a gay-straight alliance in St Joseph’s Catholic Secondary School in Mississauga in 2011. Her campaign involving youthful supporters led to province-wide legislation that publiclyfunded schools must have such clubs and call them this, not “Equity Clubs.”

In 2002, 17-year-old Marc Hall of Oshawa, with the support of his family, won a court ruling against the Durham Catholic Board that he could indeed bring his same-sex boyfriend to the school prom. The ruling came on May 10, the very night of the dance.

But Callaghan also discovered flagrant abuses of human rights. In one case, a teaching assistant in Alberta was fired for attempting to have a child with her same-sex partner (2008), and another teacher was fired for transitioning from female to male. Heterosexual allies have also been subject to penalties. One straight ally was fired for putting up a supportive poster.

There is, in some Catholic schools, the referral of homosexual youth to a “reparative’ program called Courage International, a conversion therapy denounced by psychologists.

Remarks and taunts are heard in many schools. “That’s so gay” is one. One teacher said that the aggressive boys in her class often quoted the church’s exclusion of women in defense of their misogynistic views.

“The Vatican,” Callaghan said, “exercises a hegemonic force within Catholic schools.”

When I heard about this lecture, I alerted the Roman Catholic bishop of Peterborough, the Catholic board trustees and the Director of Education as interested parties.

But only two Catholic teachers, who advise Gay Straight Alliances in Peterborough’s two Catholic Secondary schools, attended.

“Shouldn’t educational institutions scrupulously respect the constitution of the land?” Callaghan concluded.

It was an honest and important discussion, entered in to by teacher-trainees of great good will.

Conscientious teachers are caught on the horns of a dilemma