US: Archbishop’s 'morality clauses’ chill rights of teachers

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone's new anti-gay "purity test" for Catholic high school teachers will be added to the faculty handbooks, and outlines the church's teaching that using contraception is a sin and that sex outside of marriage, whether it is in the form of adultery, masturbation, pornography or gay sex, is "gravely evil."

Cordileone is insisting that administrators, faculty, and other staff “must refrain from public support of any cause or issue that is explicitly or implicitly contrary to that which the Catholic Church holds to be true, both those truths known from revelation and those from natural law” — not just in the classroom, but in their off-duty hours as well. 

The archdiocese has proposed contract language that describes faculty & staff as “ministers engaged in this religious mission regardless of individual job description or subject matter.” As 'ministers' are exempt from anti-discrimination law, teachers will have no recourse if they're dismissed. Read More