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Catholic World News News Feature

Catholic League defends Church school's acceptance of gay couple's children January 07, 2005

Parents in the Diocese of Orange, California, have threatened to pull their children from a Catholic school and to seek the Vatican’s intervention after school officials have refused to meet their demands. Some parents have accused the diocese of violating Church teaching by allowing a homosexual couple to enroll their two children in a Catholic school. They say the boys’ attendance in the kindergarten of St. John the Baptist School in Costa Mesa is part of the homosexual community’s efforts to change the Church, reported the Los Angeles Times.

The group demanded that the school only accept children of families that follow Catholic teachings. But school officials rejected the demand. The superintendent of Catholics schools for the Orange diocese, Father Gerald M. Horan, said the parents’ demand is a “slippery slope” that could lead to the expulsion and ban of children whose parents divorced, used birth control or married outside the Church.

William Donohue, the president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, sided with Father Horan, adding that the most important element to consider is the spiritual welfare of the children in question.  “On a prudential level, it makes no sense to single out kids for retribution whose parents are gay,” said Donohue. “What should be done about kids who were born out-of-wedlock? Should we expel kids whose parents are cohabiting or are known adulterers? 

“Priests have often been asked by morally delinquent parents to baptize their children, and in most instances the priests have rightfully obliged,” Donahue continued. “Now just as the priest is in no way condoning the moral delinquency of the parents, school officials at St. John the Baptist are in no way condoning the lifestyle of the gay parents."