Chalk one up for the Catholic Church. More accurately, Robert J. McManus, the Bishop of the Diocese of Worcester, Massachusetts. After a local, private Catholic school ignored orders to remove BLM and Pride flags, Bishop McManus has announced that the school cannot continue to call itself Catholic, contending that the ideology behind the flags is not consistent with church doctrine.
The announcement came in the form of a decree McManus issued on Thursday, which was subsequently published in The Catholic Free Press, the official newspaper of the Diocese of Worcester.
The affected school —the Nativity School of Worcester — founded in 2003, is the only tuition-free private middle school in the region. It serves about 60 male students from low-income communities.
As reported by Daily Mail, while it took McManus over a year to respond to the flags, he ultimately said they “represent specific agendas or ideologies [that] contradict Catholic social and moral teaching.”
Via Daily Mail:
The objection to the pride flag is over rules regarding same-sex marriage in Catholic teaching, with the church saying that being gay itself isn’t a sin – but that gay relationships are.
McManus also clarified that the opposition to Black Lives Matter is in terms of the controversial organization, not the anti-racist sentiment behind the slogan.
McManus explained:
While the Catholic Church “stands unequivocally behind the phrase ‘Black Lives Matter,” the BLM movement “has co-opted the phrase and promotes a platform that directly contradicts Catholic social teaching on the importance and role of the nuclear family and seeks to disrupt the family structure in clear opposition to the teachings of the Catholic Church.”
However, as to be expected, all is not well within the Worcester Catholic community in response to the bishop’s declaration, as reported by the New York Daily News. Guillermo Creamer Jr., an openly gay alum of the school and current chair of the Worcester Human Rights Commission, said Bishop McManus is “on the wrong side” of the argument.
I’m a proud, openly gay alumnus of the Nativity School of Worcester. I am proud of the leadership the school has taken to promote inclusivity.
The Bishop’s outdated rhetoric has no place in Worcester. It’s time to continue promoting inclusion and acceptance in the church.
No word on which side Creamer thinks God is on.
I’m a proud, openly gay alumnus of the Nativity School of Worcester.
I am proud of the leadership the school has taken to promote inclusivity.
The Bishop’s outdated rhetoric has no place in Worcester. It’s time to continue promoting inclusion and acceptance in the church. pic.twitter.com/Ec4Il3hCNz
— Guillermo Creamer Jr (@GuillermoCJr) June 16, 2022
“Simply because one man wants to rip away its Catholic status, the school will not be bullied into changing its ways,” declared Creamer.
Look, I’m neither Catholic nor gay — and I judge neither — but contrary to Creamer’s condemnation of Bishop McManus, I’m pretty sure that the issues at hand between these two guys (and within the Catholic Church and the Christian community in general) are perhaps beyond either of their respective pay grades.
Again, has anyone checked with God on this? Just sayin’.
