The CNN headline reads “Fired Pregnant Teacher Sues Catholic School.” Here’s the link: Teacher Sues School.
The story is familiar enough. The teacher is a 26-year old single woman who works in a preschool operated by the local parish and the Diocese of Brooklyn. The church says she broke a condition of employment that she “must convey the teaching of the Catholic faith by her words and actions.”
The Civil Liberties Union claims employment discrimination, and the case will be tried on the details of the law and employment practices of the church and school. One hopes that the teacher had read her personnel handbook before accepting her position.
The news story offers too little by way of legal detail for any of us to comment intelligently. More interesting for us is the teacher’s comment at a press conference announcing the lawsuit: “I don’t understand how a religion that prides itself on forgiving and on valuing life could terminate me because I’m pregnant and choosing to have this baby.”
The story raises issues of grace and law; the call to holiness and the call to forgiveness. Among the texts we might choose in seeking a biblical perspective on the story are John 8:1-11, the story of the woman caught in adultery, James 3:1 on the high standards of judgment for those who teach (though preschool teachers are not imagined by James’ admonition), and Hebrews 12 on God’s discipline in our lives.
The John text (John 8:1-11) ends with Jesus’ words to the woman after all those who would condemn her have slithered away, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”
James tells his readers, “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.”
The Hebrews (Hebrews 12:3-17 ) passage comes right after the great “cloud of witnesses” image that opens Hebrews 12. It speaks of God’s discipline in our lives and the plea that no one fail to obtain the grace of God. “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant,” the writer says.
So should the school model the grace of forgiveness and is that dependent on the teacher’s willingness to “go and sin no more?” Or should they insist that the call to a holy and faithful life is both serious and realistic? Does the church act with grace when it allows itself to be an agent of God in administering loving discipline?
What do you think?
1 comment so far
The story also raises the issue of proof-texting, which is what this teacher has done with her comment, “how a religion that prides itself on forgiving and on valuing life…†That “religion†or, more accurately, church, also prides itself on teaching sexual purity and the sanctity of marriage. Picking and choosing values that validate our own behavior is essentially an attempt to hold one’s faith captive to one’s actions, instead of the other way around.
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