In defense of Bishop Campbell’s firing of a lesbian teacher.

here is no way to win an argu­ment with a bul­ly: A bul­ly is not inter­est­ed in being per­suad­ed, and a bul­ly is not inter­est­ed in being right; a bul­ly is inter­est­ed in one thing—being a bul­ly. In the present case, I am speak­ing about moral­is­tic bul­lies for the patent­ly wicked, abom­inable, Satan­ic evil of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. They are not inter­est­ed in being just or right­eous; they are inter­est­ed in impos­ing their evil on soci­ety by rhetor­i­cal manip­u­la­tion and legal threat, even if it means attempt­ing to remove from oth­ers the free­dom to say, “No, I will not sup­port you in your evil.”

If you have not been fol­low­ing the case I am talk­ing about, there is a sto­ry about it today in the Nation­al Catholic Reg­is­ter. Accord­ing to the lead para­graph:

Bish­op Fred­er­ick Camp­bell and oth­er school offi­cials in the Dio­cese of Colum­bus, Ohio, could face crim­i­nal charges under the city of Colum­bus’s anti-dis­crim­i­na­tion laws for uphold­ing the Church’s moral teach­ings on sex­u­al­i­ty by fir­ing a les­bian gym teacher.

LET HER EAT EPISCOPALIAN WEDDING CAKE

It seems that the gym teacher in ques­tion, 57-year-old Car­la Hale, has filed a com­plaint with the Com­mu­ni­ty Rela­tions Com­mis­sion. Her attor­ney demands that she be rein­stat­ed, and threat­ens the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a law­suit. It should be not­ed here that Ms. Hale was not fired for being a les­bian, but only after the dio­cese learned that she was in a “spousal rela­tion­ship” with anoth­er woman: The fir­ing involves not her “ori­en­ta­tion,” but her behav­ior and its incon­sis­ten­cy with Catholic moral teach­ing and the objec­tive of Catholic edu­ca­tion. Bish­op Camp­bell has not sought to make homo­sex­u­al­i­ty ille­gal. He has not even sought, not in this case, to make gay mar­riage ille­gal. He has said only that some­one in an active­ly gay rela­tion­ship can not teach in a Catholic school. Let Ms. Hale teach gym in a pub­lic school. Let her get hired by the Epis­co­palians. (Okay, those last two sen­tences are com­ing from me.)

Back to the Reg­is­ter.

Colum­bus’ anti-dis­crim­i­na­tion ordi­nance crim­i­nal­izes dis­crim­i­na­tion on the basis of “sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, gen­der iden­ti­ty, or expres­sion” and has no exemp­tion for reli­gious employ­ers. Vio­la­tors face pros­e­cu­tion for a first-degree mis­de­meanor, a crim­i­nal charge that car­ries up to six months’ jail time and a $1,000 fine.

“The con­sti­tu­tion­al ques­tion involved here should be sim­ple. (Note that I say “should be.”) The first amend­ment for­bids gov­ern­ment intru­sion into reli­gion; that is to say, the state can make what­ev­er laws it likes with respect to sec­u­lar insti­tu­tions, but when it comes to med­dling in the moral teach­ings and dis­ci­pline of a church, it is over­step­ping its juris­dic­tion. Car­la Hale taught for a Catholic school; the gov­ern­ment does not have a veto over God. If, as so many like to insist, there is a “wall of sep­a­ra­tion” between Church and State, that wall is impreg­nable on both sides. (Although, the fact is, the pur­pose of the first amend­ment was not so much to pre­vent the church from hav­ing a voice in the pub­lic square, as it was to keep gov­ern­ment busy­bod­ies and bul­lies out of the affairs of the church. It says that Con­gress shall make no law pro­hibit­ing the free exer­cise of reli­gion; it does not say that reli­gion can’t impede with the free exer­cise of gov­ern­ment. But few are mak­ing that argu­ment any­more.)

lust groping for the door

The self-evi­dence of all this aside, how­ev­er, it is hard to know what a court will do these days. And when those recours­es are gone to us, to whom do we go? Do we gath­er up arms? No. In part, we do take up the weapon of moral per­sua­sion and a sound mind. The truth must be spo­ken and spo­ken clear­ly; a foun­da­tion must be laid; the Church can’t be mere­ly defi­ant; defi­ance must have a ground­ing. But Fr. Z (and H/T to him for point­ing me toward this sto­ry) has some thoughts of his own on this point:

The Church can’t win this rhetor­i­cal war. The forces allied with the unnat­ur­al are too per­va­sive, too effec­tive in the pub­lic square through the MSM. We don’t have either a large enough mega­phone [or] a mes­sage that can pierce through the fog of emo­tion or of igno­rance or of lust-sat­u­rat­ed self-cen­tered­ness that wreathes the debate.

These are stark words, but the point about “the fog of emo­tion” and “lust-sat­u­rat­ed self-cen­tered­ness” is well tak­en. Those states of mind are inevitable when one is accus­tomed to describ­ing evil in the lan­guage of rights. And who can rea­son when eat­en up by lust? Lis­ten to a por­tion of the sto­ry of Sodom and Gomor­rah:

And they called to Lot and said to him, Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may have rela­tions with them. Lot went out to the men at the entrance, shut the door after him, and said, I beg you, my broth­ers, do not act so wicked­ly. Behold, I have two daugh­ters who have not known any man. Let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please. Only do noth­ing to these men, for they have come under the shel­ter of my roof. But they said, “Stand back!” And they said, This fel­low came to sojourn, and he has been the judge! Now we will deal worse with you than with them. Then they pressed hard against the man Lot, and drew near to break the door down. But the men reached their hands and brought Lot into the house with them and shut the door. And they struck with blind­ness the men who were at the door­way of the house with blind­ness, both small and great, so that they wore them­selves out grop­ing for the door. (Gen. 19:5–11, ESV)

So that they wore them­selves out grop­ing for the door: Could there be a bet­ter descrip­tion of a lust so vast it is inca­pable of rea­son? The men of Sodom were so filled with lust that even in their blind­ness they were des­per­ate to beat down the door so they could get at their prey. And though these words were writ­ten thou­sands of years ago, are they not just as descrip­tive of the will­ful and self-envelop­ing pas­sions of many today? We have become vio­lent and un-dis­suad­able in the pur­suit of our own wicked­ness. But what strikes me in this pas­sage, too, is the van­i­ty of Lot in attempt­ing to com­pro­mise with men who are that far lost in their wicked­ness. No good could have come of it; rather, the men of Sodom have even greater con­tempt for Lot and every­thing that is moral and just.

refreshed with the blood of martyrs and saints

So too today: The pro-gay lob­by is vast and well-con­nect­ed and deter­mined and wicked; and no, we will not win this fight for the truth of God—not ultimately—by any attempt to rea­son with them, by any effort at moral log­ic or per­sua­sion. Moral log­ic and per­sua­sion are nec­es­sary for the pur­pose of help­ing lay the foun­da­tion that will rebuild an upright cul­ture after the moral wreck­age has been done and has had its last. What will win this fight, how­ev­er long it takes to fight it, is sim­ply this: courage and for­ti­tude and faith and a will­ing­ness to suf­fer and, if it should come to that, to be mar­tyrs. If Thomas Jef­fer­son said, “The tree of lib­er­ty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patri­ots,” it is equal­ly true that the tree of the Church must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of mar­tyrs. What will win this fight is the knowl­edge that, in times like these, God has been known to raise up saints.

And that is the ground upon which we must stand. This we know: The Church does not hate gay peo­ple. Christ was nailed to the cross and died for every­one. Gay peo­ple need our love and our prayers. But when it comes to behav­ior, the Church must not, can not, will not com­pro­mise with evil. And homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is evil, in part, because it is self-rob­bery. It is self-rob­bery of one’s God-giv­en iden­ti­ty; it is replac­ing one’s iden­ti­ty with an idol. It is evil because it defaces the image of God in one’s very body. Man does not cre­ate him­self.

Ms. Hale does not need to be fil­ing com­plaints and law­suits. She needs to repent.

Fail­ing that, every­one, everywhere—in par­tic­u­lar those in the Church—must sup­port Bish­op Camp­bell for the coura­geous stand he has tak­en in defend­ing the Church’s moral teach­ing against intrin­sic evil. He has act­ed as a Catholic bish­op is sup­posed to act. Every­one, everywhere—in par­tic­u­lar those in the Church—should pray that he has the gift of for­ti­tude from the Holy Spir­it to stand by his action, what­ev­er the cost to him­self per­son­al­ly. Because in the end this is not about Bish­op Camp­bell per­son­al­ly, but about the moral good and the dig­ni­ty of the human per­son and the truth of the Lord.

For as Pope Fran­cis put it when he was Car­di­nal Bergoglio, the attempt to foist gay mar­riage upon soci­ety is “a machi­na­tion of the father of lies.” And the Catholic Church will not com­pro­mise with him.

My hope is that, in stand­ing firm and fight­ing this fight, Bish­op Camp­bell will inspire his broth­er bish­ops to the same courage. Pen­te­cost is near. Let us pray for the gift of for­ti­tude for our bish­ops. Those who love evil are deter­mined, in the end, to make oppo­si­tion to homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, wher­ev­er it comes from, ille­gal. They are seri­ous. So should we be.

Catholic bish­ops, this is the time to stand up. This is the time to man up. We have your back. I cer­tain­ly do.

You can write Bish­op Camp­bell a let­ter of sup­port:

 

Most Rev. Fred­er­ick Camp­bell
Bish­op of Colum­bus
198 East Broad Street
Colum­bus, OH 43215
commailbox@colsdioc.org

updates

1. Dea­con Greg Kan­dra also picks up on this sto­ry, empha­siz­ing the same point that I make above: The fir­ing is not over Ms. Hale’s ori­en­ta­tion, but over her “spousal rela­tion­ship.”

2. Here is a sad and dis­gust­ing exam­ple of what I mean when I say that bul­lies are not inter­est­ed in being rea­soned with, and that pro-gay activists are bul­lies. Such is, in part, cost we must be will­ing to pay for speak­ing the truth in sea­son and out of sea­son.

3. In a relat­ed sto­ry in the Wash­ing­ton Post, Bish­op William Murphy—who had ear­li­er fired a man from his parish job for mar­ry­ing his male partner—has returned to him a peti­tion, signed by 18,000, ask­ing that he be rein­stat­ed. The cov­er-let­ter on the peti­tion is just one sen­tence long: “FROM YOUR FAITHFUL ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOP.” No sig­na­ture. Well, kudos to Bish­op Mur­phy. The for­mer employ­ee, Nicholas Cop­po­la, says, “I real­ly don’t under­stand what sort of mes­sage Bish­op Mur­phy is try­ing to send.”

[Well, I under­stand it, loud as a bell. Bish­op Mur­phy had a more polite (and longer) way of putting it than I would have.]

“Is he no longer lis­ten­ing to the faith­ful?” won­ders Cop­po­la.

[Actu­al­ly he is. It’s just that you’re not one of them. Not right now. You need to repent.]

4. I heard this a few days ago on a pod­cast, but am link­ing it here because I saw it again today on The Blaze. Les­bian activist Masha Gessen is very out­spo­ken in admit­ting that the push for same-sex mar­riage is not about “equal rights,” but rather about destroy­ing the insti­tu­tion of mar­riage alto­geth­er. An audio clip of Gessen is at the link. It is nec­es­sary to always be think­ing three or four steps ahead to where the pro­gres­sive activists real­ly want to take us. It’s nev­er one big leap; it’s always a series of grad­ual, seem­ing­ly harm­less steps, couched in the lan­guage of “equal­i­ty” and “rights.” Or as C.S. Lewis put it, in the voice of Screw­tape, “The safest road to Hell is the grad­ual one—the gen­tle slope, soft under­foot, with­out sud­den turn­ings, with­out mile­stones, with­out sign­posts.”