Mock Outrage? Or Fuzzy Thinking? Protesting Archbishop Cordileone’s Morality Clause

By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK

The headline in The Los Angeles Times on February 12 read: “S.F. archbishop’s imposition of morality clause at schools outrages many.” When I read the story, the first words that came to mind were “phony outrage” and “crocodile tears.” I was convinced that what we were seeing were examples of disingenuous protestations by left-wing pressure groups to shape public opinion. Outrage? Over what? An archbishop defending the teachings of the Catholic Church?
Then I had second thoughts. I began to lean toward the explanation that the expressions of outrage were sincere; that the people up-in-arms over the archbishop’s position were genuinely convinced that they were taking a stand against a great injustice — even though they were employing a flagrant double-standard to make their case. Such things happen.
The secular leftists enforcing the codes of political correctness on our college campuses these days are good examples. They are people who have spent their entire adult lives championing the causes of freedom of expression and diversity of opinion. But that doesn’t seem to matter now that they control our universities. Their ideological enthusiasms lead them to see nothing inconsistent about demanding academic freedom for Marxist and atheistic professors, while at the same time condoning, encouraging — or leading — the protests that shout down conservative speakers who question the liberal orthodoxy on feminist, homosexual, environmental, and racial issues.
It is the logic that leads universities to hire people like the former Weather Underground terrorists William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn as full-time professors — and then deny Patrick Buchanan and Ann Coulter the opportunity to appear as guest speakers on campus.
So maybe those protesting Archbishop Cordileone’s morality clause are true believers caught up in their secular liberal causes, rather than cunning and calculating Machiavellians pushing an agenda.
But, whatever the motivation, the point is that there is hypocrisy on display. Those who protested the archbishop’s morality clause for his employees are misrepresenting what that requirement would require. Beyond that, they are criticizing Cordileone for doing what every employer in the country would do in similar circumstances, including the liberal academic institutions and media outlets that the protesters treat as the enlightened vectors of society.
Let’s start with what the morality clause would require of an employee. It encourages the nearly 500 school employees to “conform their hearts, minds, and consciences, as well as their public and private behavior, ever more closely to the truths taught by the Catholic Church” on moral matters such as “adultery, masturbation, fornication, the viewing of pornography, and homosexual relations” and “the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman.”
What is wrong with that? The words are clear: The archbishop is urging Catholic school teachers and administrators to live their lives in accordance with the teachings of the Church. That is what an archbishop does, whether he is speaking from the pulpit or addressing his employees in a formal letter. He is not talking about sending out private investigators to pry into their personal lives.
But there is a difference between an individual’s personal life and public advocacy on an issue involving the teachings of the Church. The central focus of the morality clause is what happens when teachers and school administrators take public positions at odds with Catholic doctrine, what the archbishop calls the “toxic confusion” that results when students discover that their teachers — whether in the classroom or in public statements in their private lives — “endorse views” that clash with the “Christian understanding of the human person and God’s purpose in creation.”
One would think it would be clear to those protesting Cordileone’s morality clause that there is a marked difference between a teacher who is involved in a marriage or in sexual relations that the Church considers morally objectionable, and one who marches on the weekends in demonstrations with homosexual activists promoting same-sex marriage; a difference between a woman teacher who has had an abortion and wishes to keep it secret, and one who actively promotes pro-abortion groups in her classroom lectures.
I don’t know Archbishop Cordileone or have any inside knowledge of his intentions in this matter, but I would bet serious money that he has no interest in applying pressure on employees who, in their private lives, face a challenge in living in compliance with Church teachings.
Moreover, do you think those protesting the archbishop’s morality clause would take a stand in defense of the privacy rights of the employees in the following scenarios: a television station that discovered its news anchor is marching regularly in protest outside abortion facilities; a high school where it became common knowledge that one of their biology teachers spends his weekends with Aryan supremacist groups making speeches against the dangers of the “mongrelization” of races in the United States.
Or perhaps a librarian who insists she is within her rights to purchase copies for the library of The Turner Diaries, the book that glamorizes an imaginary race war against Jews, homosexuals, and non-whites, and was said to be an inspiration for Timothy McVeigh and the other conspirators involved in the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City. Do you think those organizing the protests against Archbishop Cordileone would be lining up to protect this free-thinking public servant in the name of an open exchange of ideas and “diversity”?
Ridiculous comparisons? In what way? Budweiser would not permit an employee to make ads for Miller High Life; the Democratic National Committee would not hire Karl Rove to organize Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the presidency. Why should a Catholic institution be expected to provide employment for those who are committed to undermining the Church’s core beliefs? It just doesn’t make sense. In any other context, it would not even be a subject for discussion.
An online petition containing 6,000 signatures from “Bay Area people of faith” asserts that Cordileone’s action “creates a repressive environment in which not only dissent, but any critical thought, robust exchange of ideas, and genuine dialogue are discouraged and punishable by loss of livelihood.”
They can’t be serious. The only way for Archbishop Cordileone to satisfy that complaint would be for him to state publicly that the Church holds its teachings on sex and marriage to be nothing more than hypotheses subject to public debate and dissent by its employees. Does anyone think that Planned Parenthood, the National Organization for Women, the Sierra Club, or the NAACP would buy into such a proposition for their staffs?