Send your thoughts to Letters to the Editor. Learn more
The archbishop of Denver, in the troubling inconsistency of his argument defending the recent decision by the Denver archdiocese to ban from its schools children of a lesbian couple, is teaching us more about himself than about the Catholic faith.
Michael Sean Winters made this point as well in a post he made recently on this blog.
Consider now the questions posed by Grant Gallicho, on the Commonweal blog, dotCommonweal:
If the Archbishop of Denver truly believes that the children of parents who fail to adequately support church teaching cannot be educated at Catholic schools, then he has more explaining to do. To the children of parents who are divorced and remarried (without going through the annulment process–at which point the church needs to explain that process to the children of annulled marriages). To the children of parents who practice and even recommend birth control. To the children of non-Catholic parents–especially those who do not support the central dogmas of Catholicism, such as, say, the Incarnation. Is there no place in Catholic education for the children of those kinds of parents? Or is there no place for the children of gay couples? And if so, why doesn’t the archbishop want such children to encounter the truths of Catholic teaching? If it’s merely to avoid upsetting the children of straight, non-divorced, non-contracepting, non-racist, anti-torture, pro-life parents, then I’m afraid he’ll have to do better.
