Is the Pope a Catholic? You have to wonder, these days, given how averse so many Catholic schools are to basic Catholic teachings.
Late last year, the Australian Catholic University issued a grovelling ‘apology’ to graduating students who staged (in every sense of the word) a mass walkout. Because guest speaker Joe de Bruyn made a speech that, in part, referenced standard Catholic teaching on abortion.
Rather than affirm de Bruyn’s views as indeed Catholic doctrine, or asking students why they were attending a Catholic university if they so vehemently disagreed with Catholic doctrine, vice-chancellor Professor Zlatko Skrbis grovelled. He expressed his “regret”, acknowledged “hurt and discomfort” and offered a refund of their graduation fee. Even more extraordinarily, he offered counselling to both students and staff.
That’s right: people who work and study at a Catholic university are so traumatised by Catholic doctrine that they need coddling and counselling.
The aversion to Catholic teaching at so-called Catholic institutions starts long before they get to university, though.
A mother claims her 10-year-old daughter was expelled from her northwest Victorian Catholic school over her own “religious and political views” after she raised concerns about parts of the curriculum relating to gender and the body, and the appropriateness of what she called “LGBTQI-themed books” in the school library.
Like Skrbis at the ACU, the school responds with a wall of hurty-feelings psychobabble.
Sacred Heart Primary School in Mildura denies this, saying there was an “irretrievable breakdown” of the mother’s relationship with the school, a “psychosocial risk” to staff members, and that her daughter’s ongoing enrolment was no longer “in her best interests, or tenable”.
Narelle, who did not want to use her surname for the privacy of her daughter, made an application to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal late last year alleging unlawful discrimination against her daughter. She also lodged an injunction in case the local diocese attempted to terminate her daughter’s enrolment.
She claimed in her application to VCAT that she “disagreed with a number of (the school’s) religious and political views and complained to them”, and that the Diocese of Ballarat Catholic Education are “punishing my daughter in a cruel manner to punish me”.
What had Narelle done to so offend the school?
In a document sent to the tribunal in December, Narelle said she raised concerns about “the lack of consideration for Catholic teachings in implementing” the Acknowledgement of Country in school assemblies, requested “clarification” on how puberty and reproduction were taught in the curriculum, questioned the appropriateness of “specific books in the school library” including one comedic children’s book called The Boy in the Dress, as well as a video shown to her daughter which led her to ask whether you could “stop puberty”.
If she’d wanted her daughter to be subjected to such nonsense, she could have chosen any government school. Most people send their children to Catholic schools precisely because they want them to be educated with Catholic values and certainly not dangerous nonsense like transgenderism.
In October, she met with school principal Mark Gibson to discuss her concerns about the library books and the video, and expressed “disappointment and concern over the direction the school is taking especially regarding upholding Catholic values”.
Mr Gibson said he had reviewed and deemed all those library materials as appropriate.
After further back and forth, the Diocese of Ballarat wrote to her to defend the school’s educational program as “determined by the professional judgment of its experienced educators” and suggested there was a “misalignment between the educational program offered by the school, and your expectations”.
Not to mention a grotesque misalignment between “the educational program offered by the school” and the teachings of the Catholic church.
The Diocese of Ballarat Catholic Education schools said it was “committed to creating a safe, respectful, and Christ-centred learning environment for students”.
I must have missed the part in the gospels where Jesus turned girls into boys.
