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This month, even before the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, the Court’s importance to Catholics was made apparent — and Catholic educators especially should take notice.

The Supreme Court’s summer rulings are now being tested in Indianapolis, where a teacher who was rightly dismissed from Cathedral High School because he entered into a same-sex civil marriage has filed a federal discrimination complaint. His case will likely rest upon the Court’s Bostock ruling in June, which forbids employers from considering homosexuality or transgender identity in employment decisions.

The same teacher has also sued the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, claiming that Archbishop Charles Thompson improperly interfered with Cathedral’s personnel decisions by requiring Catholic schools to uphold moral standards for teachers. The policy complies with the Church’s Canon 806:

“The diocesan bishop has the right to watch over and visit the Catholic schools in his territory, even those which members of religious institutes have founded or direct. He also issues prescripts which pertain to the general regulation of Catholic schools….”

Thankfully, Archbishop Thompson has an ally in the Trump administration. On September 8, the U.S. Justice Department filed a brief in Indiana court supporting dismissal of the lawsuit by Cathedral’s former employee. The brief relies in part on the Supreme Court’s July ruling in Our Lady of Guadalupe School, which upheld the “ministerial exception” for Catholic schools. The exception prevents discrimination lawsuits against Catholic schools, when they are brought by employees who teach the Catholic faith.

Moreover, the Justice Department’s brief makes a First Amendment case for the right of Catholic schools to choose employees according to their Catholic mission. This effectively calls for a religious exemption to the Supreme Court’s Bostock ruling.

“Our ancestors arrived on our shores to establish a country where the people would be secure to practice their faiths and to gather freely with their religious communities,” said Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband for the Civil Rights Division when filing the Indiana brief. “To that end, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the right of religious institutions and people to decide what their beliefs are, to associate with others who share their beliefs, and to determine who will teach the faithful in their religious schools.”

Also this month, the U.S. Education Department issued a final rule to protect religious freedom in higher education. In addition to enforcing free speech and the rights of religious groups at public universities, the rule clarifies that a college with a clear religious mission is exempt from Title IX, the federal law banning sex discrimination in education. This is especially important in helping protect Catholic schools and colleges from the Bostock ruling, which directly concerns only Title VII regarding employment discrimination, but is expected quickly to impact interpretations of Title IX.

“Federal law provides that Title IX ‘shall not apply’ to educational institutions that are ‘controlled by a religious organization,’ to the extent that application of Title IX would not be consistent with the religious tenets of such organization,” the Education Department explained. But it has never been clear how courts should determine whether a school is “controlled by a religious organization.”

The final rule includes a “non-exhaustive list” of common factors that a school or college may rely upon for Title IX exemption. These include an “institutional mission” statement that “includes, refers to, or is predicated upon religious tenets, beliefs, or teachings,” which should cover schools and colleges that are openly faithful to the Catholic magisterium.

All of this is good news for Catholic educators, so long as the federal government remains supportive of religious freedom. We do not yet know the outcome of these interventions. But it is clear that Supreme Court rulings have serious consequences, and the direction of the Court is of great importance to Catholics.

Catholic educators need to do everything possible to protect against lawsuits, and that begins with a clear and consistent Catholic identity. The ability to maintain faithful Catholic education depends on a vigorous defense of religious freedom. Schools and colleges need to be prepared to go to court and demonstrate their uncompromised commitment to their Catholic mission.

This article first appeared at the National Catholic Register.

While avoidance of COVID-19 has forced many schools and colleges to shift to online classes this fall, a few faithful Catholic colleges are attempting in-person education — and they are making extraordinary efforts to preserve the spiritual life on campus.

Impressively, the fast-growing Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, doubled the number of priests on campus this year and added additional Mass times to help offset limited seating in the campus church due to COVID-19 restrictions. There are now four Masses on campus every Sunday and three every weekday, including a new 9:00 p.m. weekday Mass.

“At Benedictine College we are committed to providing a dynamic, faith-filled environment for our students,” says Father Ryan Richardson, associate chaplain at Benedictine College. “I like to advise students to be intentional about prayer, sacramental life and Christ-centered community.”

The campus ministry office at the University of Dallas in Irving, Texas, is also adjusting to best serve the spiritual needs of students. Since the university altered its class schedule this fall to better ensure student safety, it also changed its Mass and Confession times to be available to the most students. A Sunday Mass was added, and campus chaplain Father Thomas More Barba says he is open to adding more as needed.

Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia, decided that its education “can only truly be offered in-person, with our students studying together and challenging each other to be better leaders and better Catholics.” Its reopening plan received laudatory remarks from the Virginia State Council of Higher Education, and the college even proceeded with its week-long summer conferences for prospective high school students, immersing them in the faith and giving a taste of Christendom’s courses and faculty.

Also opening in-person this fall is Ave Maria University in Ave Maria, Florida, which had the distinction of never fully closing its campus last spring when the COVID-19 epidemic began. “Sacramentally, after only a six-day hiatus, our community returned to receiving our Lord in the Holy Eucharist,” reported President Christopher Ice. “We live-streamed Mass daily out of our St. Sebastian Hall Chapel and distributed Communion outside,” he said.

Belmont Abbey College in Belmont, North Carolina, is “ensuring students have access to the Sacraments and to Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, even though our spaces might look a little different with social distancing,” says campus minister Sarah Gohn. The college also plans to make frequent use of outdoor space and small-group Bible studies.

“In a time when people in our world are feeling very isolated from one another, we know that Christ still unites us as brothers and sisters and that we have communion with one another through the Eucharist,” Gohn says.

 

Prayer, sacrament and community

Such opportunities are important for young adults, whose faith is seriously endangered. After college graduation, nearly 75% of Catholics do not believe in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. And even among those who attend Catholic colleges, nearly one in eight Catholic students leaves the faith by graduation.

It is crucial that students preserve their faith in college. But even more, the college years are a time when students should be formed for sainthood, and that requires a lot more than simply “holding on.”

Prayer, the sacraments, and community are key to helping students keep the faith on campus, according to campus ministers at Catholic colleges across the country. And its very difficult to find the support students need, even at a Catholic center at a secular college. Faithful Catholic colleges like those recommended in The Newman Guide offer a truly Christian environment, where students are free of the toxic lifestyle at many colleges today.

“At the University of Mary, I see every week more and more students who are ‘catching’ the routine of prayer, visiting the chapel, attending Holy Mass, going to confession,” says Father Craig Vasek, chaplain for the athletic teams at the faithful college in Bismarck, North Dakota. “Even if people aren’t doing it, they are seeing people, hearing of people, and it brings God to mind.”

He recommends that college students “go to Mass and a chapel more than just your Sunday obligation. It changes things. Daily study of the Catechism with daily practical application, or even monthly ones, to establish a new virtue each week or month.”

“Surround yourself with others who are striving to live their faith,” he adds. “You are who you hang out with. Don’t be the best person in your friend group — I mean, strive to be — but if you are the best person in your friend group, who is going to call you upward?”

Gabriel Salamida, coordinator for household life at Franciscan University of Steubenville in Steubenville, Ohio, agrees. “Community is absolutely vital during one’s college years. Students are ‘on their own’ for the first time, and they are faced with an opportunity to grow into a better version of themselves.”

More than 900 students at Franciscan are a part of its faith household system, which connects students to accompany one another on their faith journeys. “Jesus didn’t draw us into relationship with him to keep our faith to ourselves. If we don’t share it, then our faith will die,” Salamida says.

 

Don’t be a statistic

At secular universities, students are often taught by professors who push ideologies that are contrary to the faith. They are surrounded by a binge drinking and hook-up culture on campus and in the dorms. Access to campus ministry offerings may be limited and vary in quality.

At a faithful Catholic college, students see the integration of the faith across campus. They are formed in mind, body and soul for this life and for the one to come.

“College is such a time of questioning and growth, and attending a faithful Catholic college allows young people to find the answers to their deepest questions in Christ and his Church,” says Gohn. “I have so many peers who abandoned their faith in college or allowed it to dwindle, because when challenged in their faith, they had no community around them to support them, and they were easily swayed by alternate ideologies.”

Students should “not simply have the mindset of keeping the faith, but growing it,” advises Austin Schneider, director of campus ministry at John Paul the Great Catholic University in Escondido, California.

“In the spiritual life, staying where we are at is stagnation and ultimately leads to a weak, tepid faith,” Schneider says. “Instead, Christ calls us forward and draws us by the beauty of his love. Holiness isn’t simply keeping or maintaining the faith. Holiness means gaining momentum, accelerating toward Christ.”

While many students will tragically lose their faith on campus this year, others attending faithful Catholic colleges have the support they need to grow into sainthood. A Catholic college that fully embraces its mission — and sadly many do not, so investigate carefully — can do so much good for the souls of students.

This article first appeared at the National Catholic Register.

There is an admirable concession to Catholic Church authority in the Supreme Court’s July 8 ruling on the “ministerial exception” for Catholic schools.

Justice Samuel Alito, in his majority opinion for Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Agnes Morrissey-Berru, defers to the authority of the Catechism and the Church’s canon law with regard to Catholic education.

In Guadalupe, the Court ruled that two Catholic school teachers, despite teaching secular subjects in addition to religion, are “ministers” of the Catholic faith whose employment is a religious matter that lies outside the jurisdiction of secular courts.

To justify this finding, Alito turns to the Catholic Church’s own requirements for Catholic school teachers:

In the Catholic tradition, religious education is ‘intimately bound up with the whole of the Church’s life.’ Catechism of the Catholic Church 8 (2d ed. 2016). Under canon law, local bishops must satisfy themselves that ‘those who are designated teachers of religious instruction in schools … are outstanding in correct doctrine, the witness of a Christian life, and teaching skill.’ Code of Canon Law, Canon 804, §2 (Eng. transl. 1998).

In other words, because Catholic school teachers must be faithful to Catholic teaching and witnesses to the Catholic faith by both word and example, their employment depends on criteria that only religious school leaders or church leaders can properly judge.

It would have been helpful if Alito also cited Canon 803, which applies to every teacher in a Catholic school — not only those who teach designated religion courses. It says much the same thing, which may support arguments that all Catholic school teachers should fall within the ministerial exception:

The instruction and education in a Catholic school must be grounded in the principles of Catholic doctrine; teachers are to be outstanding in correct doctrine and integrity of life. (Canon 803, §2)

Likewise Canon 810, regarding Catholic higher education, calls for professors “who besides their scientific and pedagogical qualifications are outstanding in integrity of doctrine and probity of life.”

 

Rightful authority

The Court’s willingness to respect religious authority over religious activities is fundamental to the First Amendment. Alito wrote:

In a country with the religious diversity of the United States, judges cannot be expected to have a complete understanding and appreciation of the role played by every person who performs a particular role in every religious tradition. A religious institution’s explanation of the role of such employees in the life of the religion in question is important.

Such deference was the core principles of the three-part test for applying the ministerial exception that was proposed to the Court in an amicus brief filed in February. It was authored by the outstanding attorneys of Alliance Defending Freedom and Troutman Sanders LLP on behalf of The Cardinal Newman Society, the Association of Classical Christian Schools, the Association for Biblical Higher Education, and William Jessup University. The brief argued:

(1) a “minister” is an employee who performs “religious functions”;

(2) the functions that the minister actually performs should be proven with evidence from the religious organization such as written organizational bylaws, position descriptions, and other such competent evidence; and

(3) the court should determine which functions are, in fact, “religious” by deferring to the religious organization’s own good-faith understanding of its own religion.

The Guadalupe ruling largely adopts these principles and offers additional clarity to religious employers. The Court relies on Catholic schools’ definition of an employee’s ministerial duties, as long as the employer shows “good faith” in seeking the protection of the ministerial exception.

What constitutes “bad faith” is something that will likely be litigated in future cases. One thinks of the many Catholic schools and colleges that have greatly secularized, yet claim religious freedom whenever it is convenient. If there is reasonable doubt about the religious identity of an employer or its sincerity about an employee’s religious duties — challenged by evidence that the employee does not in fact do what is stated in a position description or other employment document — then courts might restrict application of the ministerial exception.

The amicus brief cites the 1971 case Tilton v. Richardson, in which four Catholic universities were found to provide a primarily “secular education,” because religion did not “permeate” the coursework and was not promoted to students. For 27 years, the Newman Society has urged such institutions to strengthen their Catholic identity, and now their ability to claim the ministerial exception may depend on it.

 

Some schools need not apply

The Court’s ruling rests on whether an employee is a “teacher of religion” and therefore a minister of the faith.

This should be relatively easy for a faithful Catholic school or college, where the Catholic faith enters into all studies and teachers are required to be strong witnesses to the faith. It may even be possible to apply the ministerial exception to non-teachers — including school administrators, coaches, guidance counselors and support staff — if they are also expected teach religion by their words and witness, while advancing the Church’s mission of evangelization through Catholic education.

However, the ministerial exception further separates weak Catholic schools and colleges from faithful Catholic education. Only schools and colleges that intentionally form students in the faith are likely to gain broad protection from employment lawsuits. Secularized schools are more vulnerable than ever, if they fail to require teachers to catechize and uphold Catholic teaching.

Ultimately it is unlikely that any Catholic school or college will be entirely protected from the Supreme Court’s Bostock ruling and state laws adding homosexuality and gender identity to nondiscrimination provisions. The lawsuits, government coercion and social pressure to compromise the faith are only increasing the threats to Catholic education.

As before, the best protection for Catholic education is to be faithfully, thoroughly and consistently Catholic and to ensure that all school or college policies are firmly tied to Catholic teaching. In this way, a school or college is prepared to go to court to claim its natural and First Amendment rights.

 

This article first appeared at The National Catholic Register.

If ever there was a time to teach young people about human nature and our common human dignity, it’s now.

They need to know that race, sex and their very lives are willed by God. They need to know that marriage and family are also willed by God, and that the collapse of the family has contributed to many of the social ills that are on display today.

The timing is right, then, for newly published educational standards that help schools teach St. John Paul II’s “theology of the body” in a progression from kindergarten through eighth grade. They help transmit to students a “vision of the human person according to God’s loving design,” and Catholic education is uniquely situated to teach it.

“It’s a gamechanger for someone to be deeply convinced of their personal self-worth, dignity and purpose, knowing themself to be infinitely and unconditionally loved by God and called to live in a communion of persons in his image,” state the new “Standards for Christian Anthropology,” co-authored by Dr. Joan Kingsland of Ruah Woods Press and Dr. Denise Donohue of The Cardinal Newman Society.

“This self-knowledge includes respecting and revering oneself, others and above all God. It affects the choices made by young people about how they will treat others and expect others to treat them.”

The standards explore the foundations of personal identity and are a key solution to the problems we face in society right now. Just consider, what if every student in Catholic schools across the country was taught authentic Christian anthropology? How would society look different, if graduates of Catholic education could clearly articulate and defend the value of every human person?

“In recent years there’s been a surge in the ever-widening gap between the mainstream take on the identity of the human person versus a Christian vision rooted in Sacred Scriptures,” explain Dr. Donohue and Dr. Kingsland. Gender ideology, racial division, pornography, premarital sexual activity, contraception and abortion are just some of the challenges facing Catholic educators, and increasingly they are pressured to compromise Catholic teaching.

Understandably, then, many Catholic education leaders welcome the standards.

They “provide much-needed guidance for more deeply understanding who we are as human beings, made in the image of God,” says David McCutchen, coordinator of the office for catechetical formation in the Diocese of Toledo.

“These standards present, at age-appropriate moments, the foundational truths upon which an authentically Christian view of the human person must be built,” he continues. “The burning questions and confusing issues of our time regarding human dignity, sexuality and gender can be effectively addressed only in light of these fundamental truths.”

Jill Annable, assistant superintendent of Catholic schools in the Diocese of Grand Rapids, agrees. “It is a difficult task to articulate the Catholic worldview of Theology of the Body, yet the Standards for Christian Anthropology provide us key teachings for each grade level that will be understandable to families and assist teachers in critical aspects of this formation in a logical sequence,” she says.

Jim Rigg, superintendent of Catholic schools for the Archdiocese of Chicago, adds that the standards help ensure that “students are able to tangibly uphold the sanctity of human life.”

Ultimately, the goal of an authentic Catholic education is to form students with the foundation they need for this life and the one to come. Given the recent struggles in our society, it is imperative that young people know their own worth and the dignity of every human being they encounter.

This article first appeared at The National Catholic Register.