Patricia and the State Religion

I've been asked to say something about the Catholic school teacher Patrica Januzzi. There's an article in First Things about her here.

What can I add?

First, I think teachers should think twice before having a public access Facebook page. Doing so is tantamount to leaving a notebook entitled My Deep Thoughts on a school desk beside a photocopy card. Prudence is a virtue, particularly for teachers. I was a night school teacher for three years, and although I may seem to be out-there now, it was a different story then.

Second, Catholic schools are as Catholic as the parents who send their students to them. If only 30% of the parents of children in a soi-disant Catholic school go to Mass, it's not a Catholic school. Sorry. I would bet today's bus fare to Polish class that parents do not send their children to Immaculata because it is Catholic but because it is not a public school. When I lived in Boston, only a tiny percentage of white children there went to public school. Yeah.

Up north in Canada, my home province of Ontario has a fully funded Catholic school system. The only school in it I would suspect of really being a Catholic Catholic school, with all the students, most of the teachers,  and above average numbers of parents going to Mass on Sunday is this one, and only because the whole point of the school is to train boys to sing at the Cathedral. Note that, alone of the Toronto Catholic Board schools, it has a small tuition.

Third, Sexual Choice has become the state religion in Canada, the USA, Britain and who knows where else. As a teen pro-lifer in Toronto, I watched in amazement once as pro-choice activists at a rally chanted "Choice! Choice! Choice!" with tears running down their faces. As a lot of them were also wearing gay power badges, it struck me that there was something more about this Choice obsession than offing unborn babies. At the time, I thought it had to do with being Mommy's Little Girl no matter what. These chicks didn't want abortion rights--they had them already--they wanted Mommy's Approval for whatever dumb thing they did. Now I am considering whether or not it might have been a kind of religious ecstasy. Choice, choice, great god choice!

Personally, I am beyond needing anyone's approval for any of the decisions of my private life*, and I also know perfectly well that if I came out of the closet for this or that, various friends and family would be uncomfortable and wish I had kept my mouth shut. Fair enough. Meanwhile, I do my very best not to let my fallen-creation sexual inclinations run all over the place, reading this, watching that, pinching this person, hitting on....Oh, mouth shut. Right.

And indeed, I am above sulking and complaining because my dear friend Calvinist Cath does not accept that the Roman Catholic faith is the One True Faith and that Catholics are right and Calvinists are wrong, and  when she wrote that stern post telling Pope Benedict he wasn't welcome in Scotland, we agreed to stop quarreling almost as soon as we started. I don't take it personally that Calvinist Cath belongs to a faith tradition that historically and actually dislikes my own historical faith tradition (how far back I am not sure) intensely.

How nice it would be if those of the Sexual Choice faith tradition were as tolerant of my faith tradition, which looks askance at many sexual choices, as I am of Cath's faith tradition, which makes pointed remarks about the so-called Errors of Rome.

Fourth, Christians died horrible deaths rather an burn a pinch of incense to Rome's god-du-jour. Woe to those Christians  who burn pinches of incense to bitch goddess Sexual Choice and demand that other Christians do the same.

*Marriage as a public relationship is not private, so naturally I wanted all kinds of approval for that: the state to recognize it, the Church to bless it, my family to weigh in on whether they wanted to be related to B.A. or not, and my friends to prevent it if they thought I was nuts.