The Ethics of Exit
What happens when a Catholic teacher violates church teaching?
Last
year a male faculty member at a Catholic high school in Washington
State was fired when administrators learned that he was married to a
man. An unmarried woman was fired from a Catholic middle school in
Montana when the principal discovered that she was pregnant. Two
unmarried teachers were fired from a Catholic high school in
Massachusetts after they revealed to the principal that they were in a
relationship and that the woman was pregnant. They immediately lost
their health insurance and were denied letters of recommendation from
the principal.
These situations raise difficult questions
for the administrators of Catholic schools, who are charged with
promoting their institution’s Catholic identity. On the one hand, the
four employees mentioned above were reported to be well qualified and
good at their respective jobs. On the other, all four were publicly
exposed as being in violation of Catholic teaching and in breach of the
morality clause in their contracts.
Unlike situations regarding sexual contact
with students or the nonperformance of duties, the situations described
above are difficult to adjudicate because there are no clear-cut moral
principles to guide right action. This is especially true regarding the
treatment of married gay and lesbian teachers in Catholic schools. After
all, it is only recently that most schools have this population in
their ranks.
The modest goal of this essay is to
elucidate principles that ought to guide discussion of these challenging
issues. These cases are especially difficult because, unlike Catholic
colleges and universities, Catholic elementary, middle and high schools
teach children who may be encountering these moral questions for the
first time. These teachers have a responsibility to create an
environment in which students can learn how to live a virtuous life.
This article focuses on the moral duties of school administrators. The
moral responsibility of individual teachers is also a fertile area for
inquiry, but that is a subject for another article.
Asking the Right Questions
Two points should be made at the
outset. First, ethics is done well when it asks and answers the right
questions. We begin, therefore, by setting aside a question that is
often asked but that is irrelevant to this article: “Is the church’s
official teaching correct regarding the morally illicit nature of gay
marriage?” That is an important question that should be discussed and
debated in Catholic households, parishes, colleges and universities. But
it is a not a question to be asked by Catholic school administrators in
their role as administrators. While individuals within institutions
have the right to dissent from church teaching as individuals, they do
not have the right to unilaterally alter an institution’s values and
conscience. For instance, if a Catholic school principal believes that
the church’s social teaching is wrong in its critique of liberal
capitalism, this does not empower him or her to alter the curriculum so
that students learn the economic philosophy of Milton Friedman and
Friedrich Hayek instead of reading Paul VI’s encyclical “The Development
of Peoples” or the U.S. Catholic bishops’ letter “Economic Justice for
All.”
Second, we need to expose an error in logic.
It does not necessarily follow that because a teacher has violated
church teaching, and his or her contract, that he or she should be
terminated. Many teachers violate their contracts without being fired.
The question is not simply: Did the teacher violate the contract?
Instead it should be: Does the violation of the contract disqualify the
teacher from educating students in a Catholic context?
In his words and writings Pope Francis has
demonstrated the importance of returning to the foundations of the faith
as one engages the moral details of a case. A central theme in Francis’
writings is that the disciples of Christ should see the world as it
relates to God (see especially “The Light of Faith”). Francis applied
this logic when responding to a question regarding homosexuality, and
answered with a rhetorical question of his own.“Tell me: when God looks
at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love,
or reject and condemn this person?” Francis rightly noted that
Christians first are called to see the gay person or the unmarried
pregnant woman as a person who is loved by God. This foundational pillar
of the faith has moral implications, as St. Thomas Aquinas helpfully
explained using an analogy in the Summa Theologiae: “When a man
has friendship for a certain person, for his sake he loves all belonging
to him, be they children, servants, or connected with him in any way.”
The analogy is then extended to God. If one loves God, one also should
love all of God’s friends. Who are God’s friends? Everyone: gays,
lesbians, couples who conceive out of wedlock, children, the poor and so
on. Therefore, in order to love God one also must love all people. (Of
course, we have deeper and more substantial relationships of love with
friends and family.)
Forming the Whole Student
In Catholic schools, the moral
priority rests with the good of the students. Schools exist for the
students, not the faculty. The unique mission of Catholic schools is to
educate and form the whole student—academically, spiritually and
morally. As a rule, Catholics give special priority to the needs of the
vulnerable in a given community. At their meeting in Puebla, Mexico, in
1979, the Latin American bishops wrote that the option for the poor
applies to the materially poor, but also to all children. Thus, while
justice must be rendered to the faculty and staff, justice is primarily
conditioned on what is best for students. The rights of faculty and
staff are limited by the rights of students to receive a high quality
Catholic education. This is not to claim that the rights of faculty and
staff are to be ignored but that these rights must be placed in their
proper context.
With the heart of the Catholic tradition in
mind, we now can begin to discuss the moral resources that have proven
to be helpful in the adjudication of difficult cases.
Counsel. The first and most important
step that administrators, or anyone else for that matter, can take when
discerning the right course of action in difficult situations is to
“take counsel.” I use this word in a moral sense, not a legal one.
Aquinas argued that the prudent agent should take “good counsel” in the
determination of what ought to be done in cases in which there is
reasonable doubt regarding the right course of action. Counsel is
especially useful in new cases, where there is no codified moral wisdom
upon which to draw.
By sitting together with others one can
overcome one’s own limited perspective. Members of the group might
attend to realities that may have escaped one’s own notice. Following
Aquinas’s practice, when appropriate the principal should gather
together a diverse group, made up mainly of other administrators. In
cases in which scandal is a threat, one should also seek the counsel of
the local diocesan bishop. Because of the newness and complexity of the
situations facing Catholic school administrators, it would be wrong to
fire a faculty member without first seeking counsel from various
constituencies, including the school’s attorney. While the
administration of a school is not democratic, the best of Catholic
tradition supports decisions that are made in a manner that emphasizes
dialogue and participation.
Casuistry. Once a group has been
assembled, there are a number of tools they can employ to adjudicate
difficult cases. The first is casuistry. While a distorted version of
casuistry was lampooned and fell out of favor centuries ago, the
essential approach of casuistry—the comparison of cases—remains a very
useful method. It enables the agent to discover the moral solution to a
quandary by comparing and contrasting the case in question to a paradigm
case about which there is wide moral agreement regarding the right
action.
How might casuistry aid in the adjudication
of the scenarios presented at the outset of this essay? Administrators
could, for instance, compare and contrast the case of the unwed pregnant
couple to cases that have led to termination of employment, like sexual
contact between a faculty member and a student. They could also look to
cases in which an offending faculty member was retained, for example
after an especially angry outburst. What were the common factors in the
cases of termination? Were they incidents in which students, faculty or
staff were directly abused somehow? Were they cases involving illegal
actions on school grounds? Or were they cases in which the faculty
member’s action could scandalize children? What were the common factors
that led administrators to retain faculty members who had violated their
contracts? Were their actions morally blameworthy but with little or no
effect on students? Were faculty members retained if their offense
consisted of a momentary lapse of judgment, as opposed to a habitual
character trait? Finally, is the case of the unwed pregnant couple
closer to cases involving termination or to those in which the faculty
member was retained?
Virtue ethics. Perhaps the most
useful and important tool is virtue ethics. The cases outlined above are
quandaries precisely because administrators are concerned about the
effects that the presence of married gay persons and unwed parents will
have on the moral character of students. Thus, the overriding question
that administrators must ask and answer is: What are the formational
effects on students if the school dismisses or retains the faculty
person under consideration? This question can be answered only by those
who know today’s students well. As Pope Francis acknowledged in January
in his remarks to leaders of religious orders of men, it is a challenge
to “proclaim Christ to a generation that is changing” in its attitudes
toward marriage. He also cautioned that the church should “be careful
not to administer a vaccine against faith” to those who live in
nonconforming relationships or hold views that conflict with church
teaching.
The moral formation of students transpires
more through the example set by teachers and administrators than by the
students’ abstract knowledge of the moral doctrines of the church. This
fact is clearly acknowledged in recent papal writings. Pope John Paul II
underscored the importance of that effect in “The Mission of the
Redeemer” (No. 42), when he noted that “people today put more trust in
witnesses than in teachers, in experience than in teaching, and in life
and action than in theories.” The primacy of action does not undercut
the importance of educators; rather it points to the need for educators
to be witnesses as well, as Pope Francis argued in “The Joy of the
Gospel”: “We need to remember that all religious teaching ultimately has
to be reflected in the teacher’s way of life, which awakens the assent
of the heart by its nearness, love and witness” (No. 42). And who among
us is a suitable witness for a faith that calls us to universal love,
mercy and justice? Recall that even Pope Francis responded, “I am a
sinner,” when asked who he was.
Still, administrators must discriminate
between those imperfect people who can serve as witnesses for young
people and those who should not. The dividing line may be found in the
concept of scandal. Genuine scandal involves leading others to believe
that immoral actions and ways of life are actually morally licit.
Scandal is important because it has the potential to malform the
conscience and character of young people. But not every immoral action
or mistaken belief is scandalous. Unfortunately, it is notoriously
difficult to discern what might “give scandal.” Does an unmarried
pregnant teacher undermine the church’s teaching on premarital sex in
the eyes of students, or does she provide a quiet witness to the value
of bringing all children, even those conceived in less-than-ideal
situations, into the world? Does the presence of a married gay man on
the faculty undermine the church’s teaching on matters of sexual ethics,
or is this outweighed by the man’s practices, for example, of love and
mercy toward the suffering, the sick and the unborn? These are some of
the difficult but essential questions that administrators must ask and
answer.
Justice for Faculty and Staff
While most of this essay has
focused on justice toward students, one cannot ignore the legitimate
claims of faculty and staff. I highlight two here.
Promulgation. First, if certain
offenses are worthy of termination they should be promulgated as such in
the teacher’s contract or handbook. The Diocese of Cleveland recently
released a revised teacher contract listing prohibited behaviors in
detail, like procuring or supporting abortion, having sex outside of
marriage and drug use. While one can debate the substance of the
morality clause, schools owe teachers this level of disclosure so that
they can make informed decisions regarding their employment.
Harm mitigation. While in some
instances administrators may find it necessary to terminate a faculty
member’s contract, they should attempt to mitigate the harm this causes.
Recently, the just war tradition has added the category of jus post bellum or “justice after war” toward those who have been defeated. Administrators ought to exercise jus post terminationem,
which normally would include such support as an extension of health
insurance benefits, severance pay and a letter of recommendation to
future employers regarding the faculty member’s teaching ability and
character.
Catholic schools should be institutions of
love and mercy, and the temporary support of terminated faculty members
and staff is one way the school can witness to its mission. Many of
these cases involve innocent third parties who are harmed when the
offending faculty or staff person is fired. The expecting couple in
Massachusetts were fired and lost health insurance precisely when it was
most necessary. In “The Joy of the Gospel” (No. 213), Pope Francis
lamented that “it is also true that we [the church] have done little to
adequately accompany women in very difficult situations, where abortion
appears as a quick solution to their profound anguish.”
The lack of accompaniment of unmarried
pregnant women by Catholic schools is scandalous and may create
situations in which abortion presents itself as an option. This does not
require administrators to retain persons who have violated their
contracts. It does require schools to avoid abandoning those who were
once a part of the academic community. Because of their Catholic
identity, schools have responsibilities not only for their students, but
also for the lives and well-being of the children, born and unborn, of
their faculty and staff. This concern for innocent third parties clearly
extends to the children of gays and lesbians.
How do we teach and model the Gospel to a
generation that is changing? And how can Catholic school administrators
balance all the competing interests in a just way? Therein lies the
quandary for those who administer schools that have been built in the
name of Jesus Christ.
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