Barry Duke, the Angry Atheist

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1. 

   As someone who produced dozens of nativity plays as a teacher and a Sunday School leader, that title ‘A Gay…

2. 

   The defence of a Christian view never seems to be settled by debate: exchange of facts, reference to historical events.…

3. 

   But …… Rwanda is a safe place: Parliament says so.https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2024/8/contentsSafety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 S 2 Safety…

4. 

   Religion can survive only on the most unquestionable assumptions. The statements made on Sundays on the BBC as if they…

5. 

   Yes, if I’ve got anything remotely like a phobia, as an ex-fundy, its bibles, churches, tracts etc. I like to…

FIVE years ago Shelly Fitzgerald, co-director of guidance at Roncalli High School in Indianapolis, was stunned when the President of the school confronted her with a copy of her marriage certificate and demanded to know why it bore the names of two women.

When Fitzgerald explained that she had married her long-term partner Victoria—the couple at that point had been together for 22 years—she was told she could remain in her job for the remainder of the year if she were leave her wife and daughter, and remain completely silent about her relationship.

But whatever choice she made, the school said it would not renew her contract for a job she held for 14 years and “adored.”

In an interview with Ellen DeGeneres in 2019 Fitzgerald said that shortly after she was given the ultimatum, she was put on administrative leave and banned from campus.

As if this was not bad enough, the school announced its action against her on social media, and effectively “outed” her to the entire world.

So she sued Roncalli High, which had providing her with “years of exceptional performance reviews”, and the Catholic Archdiocese of Indinapolis—and lost.

She appealed the decision and on July 13 The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit sided with the school.

An outfit called The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represented the school and the Archdiocese, issued a statement applauding the court’s decision that that the “Constitution forbids the government from interfering with a religious school’s selection of who will pass on the faith to the next generation.”

Becket’s statement said:

At Roncalli High School, education goes beyond the basic subjects to help form students’ hearts and minds in the Catholic faith. To accomplish that mission, Roncalli asks its teachers, administrators, and guidance counselors to sign contracts agreeing to uphold Church teaching in both word and deed.

In 2018, Shelly Fitzgerald, the co-director of guidance, told the school she was in a same-sex union in violation of her contract and millennia-old Catholic teaching.

Image via The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty

Said Joseph Davis, above, counsel at Becket.

Religious schools exist to pass on the faith to the next generation, and to do that, they need the freedom to choose leaders who are fully committed to their religious mission. The precedent keeps piling up: Catholic schools can ask Catholic school teachers and administrators to be fully supportive of Catholic teaching.

Becket pointed out that this ruling is the latest in a string of court decisions protecting the leadership choices of the Archdiocese and other faith-based schools.

Last summer, a federal court threw out a similar lawsuit by another guidance counselor at Roncalli High School in Starkey v. Roncalli High School and Archdiocese of Indianapolis.

Soon after, the Indiana Supreme Court did the same in Payne-Elliot v. Archdiocese of Indianapolis. These rulings build on Becket’s successful defense of religious groups’ leadership decisions at the Supreme Court in Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru and Hosanna-Tabor Lutheran Evangelical School v. EEOC. 

Davis added that the ruling is:

Common-sense: decisions about who conveys the Catholic faith to Catholic school children are for the Church, not the government. Many parents entrust their children to religious schools precisely because those schools help to pass on the faith, and this victory ensures they remain free to do so.

Last year The Nation explained that faith schools such as Roncalli are increasingly exploiting a loophole in labour law by designating certain staff as “ministers”. This happeneed in Fitzgerald’s case, as per the latest ruling.

Fitzgerald, who has since started an LGBT+ advocacy group called Shelley’s Voice, told The Nation that her wife is still very “pissed off,” and that her daughter has had to deal with the attention that followed after her story made national headlines.

The worst part, she added, is the impact the episode had on her parents. When she came out to them as a teenager, they were worried about how other people would treat her.

Now their worst nightmares had come true. For them it still is very, very hard.

They also suffered repercussions: Her father, who had been doing volunteer work with the school for 40 years, was told he couldn’t do it anymore.

It’s clear that the formation of students’ hearts and minds in the Catholic faith includes levels of vindictiveness that would, in any other setting, would be regarded as unadultered hatred,

Fitzgerald has 90 days to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, but given precedents that have already been established, she stand little or no chance of success.

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