The complicated fight to keep Catholic schools Catholic

A California archbishop’s proposal to add sexual morality guidelines to the employee handbook for the area’s Catholic high schools has led to accusations of discrimination from both city and state legislative bodies.

On Feb. 3, Salvatore Cordileone, archbishop of San Francisco, proposed an addendum for the faculty and staff manuals at four high schools serving about 3,600 students. Negotiations between the diocese and the teachers union, representing 317 teachers whose collective bargaining agreement expires July 31, prompted the change.

Under the new guidelines, all administrators, faculty, and staff, including non-Catholics, will be required to refrain from saying or doing anything publicly that contradicts church doctrine. Specifically, educators must “affirm and believe” that sex outside of marriage, pornography, homosexual relations, masturbation, and reproductive technology are “gravely evil.” In addition, Cordileone seeks to change employees’ designation to “minister,” placing them under the Supreme Court’s exemption from federal anti-discrimination laws for church and religious-school employees working in ministerial roles.

The new language doesn’t add anything new to the contract agreement, Cordileone said. Rather, it clarifies Catholic tenets for teachers to further the mission of the schools, he said in a YouTube video. He also wrote a letter to teachers, stating the new document would inform employees who do not agree with the guidelines so they can “avoid contradicting church teaching on these issues either in the school or in some public way outside the classroom.”

Backlash against the changes came swiftly from students, parents, faculty, and lawmakers.

Dozens of protesting students and parents dressed in all black and lined two blocks outside a Feb. 6 mass and meeting where Cordileone addressed the issue with hundreds of employees. The press was not allowed to attend, but one teacher told the San Francisco Chronicle that 80 percent of those present were dressed in all black to show their solidarity against the new policy. Someone made a secret recording of the meeting in which Cordileone is said to have stated employees could face consequences for participating in a same-sex wedding, “escorting a woman into an abortion clinic, handing out contraception to students, or for being a member of a white-supremacist group,” according to the Chronicle.

Eight state lawmakers wrote a letter to Cordileone, asserting his proposal went beyond regulating workplace behavior and infringed upon the personal freedoms of employees. Cordileone responded by using an analogy: Would you rather hire a campaign manager who was from the same political party but publicly advocated policies contrary to yours, or a manager from the opposite party who publicly supported your policies?

“If your answer to the first question is ‘no,’ and to the second question is ‘yes,’ then we are actually in agreement on the principal point in debate here,” he wrote.

Mark Farrell, a Catholic-school educated, San Francisco native, has served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for the last four years. At the March 3 board meeting, Farrell introduced a resolution for the city’s legislators to urge the Archdiocese of San Francisco to “respect the working and individual rights of its teachers and administrators in contract negotiations.” The resolution passed 11-0.

“We have nondiscrimination laws here in San Francisco that have been established for years, including protecting the LGBT community,” Farrell told the Chronicle. “And by mandating that teachers conduct their public and private lives in a manner contrary to our laws in San Francisco, it becomes a civic and legal issue.”

But Cordileone insists he has no intention of prying into teachers’ private lives.

“What is private remains private, and no one is privy to that,” he said in a YouTubevideo. “Teachers are entitled to their private lives, as we all are.” And in another video, Cordileone promised, “No teacher will be required to sign any kind of a statement or any kind of an oath.”

Yet in the age of social media, the line between public and private life is muddy at best. The New York Times asked Cordileone if a teacher could post photos on Facebook of her gay son’s wedding. He said, “if someone was upset and reported it,” then “the person with the Facebook page would have to be talked to.”

The Associated Press contributed to this article.