Volunteer Catholic teacher fired for writing LTTE regarding women's equality

[theHandpuppet]

Mind you, this teacher wasn't even sharing her views with her students but was fired for a LTTE. This report reminds me of many religious persons of conscience who, in the days before the Civil War, were censured by their churches for opposing slavery. (The Rev. James Gilliland of South Carolina & Ohio, a Presbyterian, is but one example of a hero whose singular courage has been lost to the passage of time.)

Parents of Dr. Egner's students should be appalled and outraged at the Archbishop's actions but considering this happened in Cincinnati, I'm not holding my breath.

http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20090914/NEWS01/309140040/Teacher+ousted+for+support+of+nun
Teacher ousted for support of nun

By Dan Horn • [e-mail] • September 14, 2009

A volunteer religious education teacher was dismissed this weekend for publicly voicing support for Sister Louise Akers, who has been ordered by Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk to stop teaching because her backing of women priests contradicts Catholic doctrine.

Dr. Carol Egner, a life-long Catholic and gynecologist, got into trouble when she wrote a letter to the Enquirer supporting Akers.

When Egner’s pastor read her letter, he asked her to write another that either renounced her position or made clear that she “yields to the wisdom of the church.” When she refused, she was told she could no longer teach her Old Testament class for sixth-graders at Our Lady of Lourdes parish in Westwood.

<snipping>

In her letter, Egner said she could find no biblical reference barring women from the priesthood and that allowing women priests could help ease the priest shortage that now afflicts the church. “Some self-reflection on the part of church officials may be beneficial,” she wrote.... MORE

[crim son]

1. Apparently the doctor believed she had the right to an opinion.

Wrong.

[BolivarianHero]

2. That's funny...

I went to a Catholic school with a religion department headed by a lovely woman who speaks four languages fluently, has two master degrees (theology and Latin American studies), and whose interests and activism are centred around liberation and feminist theology. Some people didn't get her (big-L Liberal agnostic classmates who found her too radical and insufficiently individualistic in her outlook), but she enjoys so much respect within and outside of the school that nobody would ever dream of removing her from per position. Like the many who didn't get her when we were all 17 or 18, I too am not a believer and am not involved in the Church, but I recognize it as being to galvanize its activists and channel its institutional powers into a force for an enormous amount of good and social justice if only it were to give primacy to these voices

[BoneDaddy]

3. I have had similar experiences

seems this Archbishop is off his rocker. I was raised with a Jesuit appreciation for intellectualism and free thinking. This decision was neither.

[Stevenmarc]

4. Renounce her position? What is this Pope Urban VIII and Galileo

[theHandpuppet]

9. Fear and loathing of women is one thing that hasn't changed

It's a common denominator of fundamentalist religions. Time doesn't seem to have changed that fact.

[goddess40]

5. The Catholic church is not a democracy it's a theocracy

so they were within their rights to do this.

I knew by first grade that the Catholic church didn't like me as I was female and a child. Since I knew I'd always be female I cut from the church as much as a first grader could. I was still forced to attend but I didn't go without a battle.

My mother and I are now UUers.

[saltpoint]

6. The higher-up Catholic heavy-hitters' resistance to women's

equality generally and the ordination of women especially constitutes a spectacular misread of history, IMO, and does very significant long-term damage to the role of the Catholic Church in its various healing missions.

Many anonymous Catholic women toil in the various charities run by the Church without whose labor the Church would be dramatically lessened.

They are owed equal turf, having been long cheated of it.

[PVnRT]

7. Religious groups are allowed to discriminate like that

Just one of the many special privileges granted to religion in this country.

[midnight]

8. The Catholic church can't admit that their very success is because of the hard work

of women.