Controversy is brewing in Miami after a Catholic school fired one of its instructors for engaging in a same-sex marriage ceremony with her partner. The first-grade teacher had been working at the school for seven years but was dismissed after the school learned of the ceremony. There is no word yet whether she is taking any legal action, though Politico’s Marc Caputo says the decision was “probably legal.”
The teacher in question, Jocelyn Morffi, took to social media shortly thereafter and accused the school of treating her like she was “not the right kind of Catholic” due to her decision to marry another woman. She proclaimed herself “#guiltyoflove,” which is a clever slogan but is ultimately a fundamental misunderstanding of what love is, at least as defined by the Catholic Church.
These are not easy circumstances. But it is incredibly pressing that the Church remains firm in its position on the sanctity of marriage and the intrinsically disordered nature of gay “marriage.” There are, to be sure, plenty of Catholics who would rather not have this fight: The great evangelist Bishop Robert Barron, for instance, believes that we shouldn’t “press” the issue for fear that it would “cause much more problems and dissension and difficulty.” Which is an odd light in which to put it: What is gay “marriage” in the eyes of the Church, after all, than itself a “problem” and a “dissension”? Can we counteract such a thing by closing our mouths about it?
The collapse of Catholic social ethic over the past half-century or so — the growing embrace by the laity and much of the clergy of homosexual acts, contraception, abortion, marriage — has blown a hole in what used to be a broadly uncompromising bulwark against societal perversions and degradations.
The Church has lost significant ground on any number of critical fronts: Where four decades ago less than 10 percent of Catholics got “divorced,” these days it’s fully one-quarter. More than four-fifths of Catholics today believe birth control is “morally acceptable.” A great many bishops and priests, afraid of angering congregations and worried about appearing fussy and outdated, cheerfully administer communion to politicians who support abortion. The current hobbyhorse to grant communion to “divorced” and “remarried” Catholic couples is slowly gaining ground among the clergy.
All of these depressing and distressing developments have occurred in tandem with a general collapse in the faith — a Georgetown University survey some years ago revealed that fewer Catholics believe in the Real Presence today than they did at the beginning of the century, while less than one-quarter attend mass every week, even though all practicing Catholics are obligated to do so.
There are any number of factors that have contributed to this downward spiral, and clawing our way back from these dismal numbers will not be easy or very pleasant. But the first step is for everyone — popes, cardinals, bishops, priests, laity, every one of the faithful — to not budge. The Church should commit itself to remaining as steadfast and as uncompromising as possible on these critical social values. It won’t be a panacea; a strong pro-marriage, anti-abortion stance isn’t going to repair the faith overnight. But you can bet that the lack of such a stance will only continue to degrade it.
Sometimes it can be difficult: It is sad and unfortunate, after all, that a well-liked and apparently competent teacher should lose her job. Nobody should be gleeful over such a thing. But our faith sometimes demands hard choices. And the Church should not, nor should it ever, be afraid to make those decisions when the integrity of our Catholic institutions is at stake.
Daniel Payne is a writer based in Virginia. He is an assistant editor for the College Fix, the news magazine of the Student Free Press Association. He blogs at Trial of the Century.
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