As a lifelong Catholic and member of a religious community, I feel so disheartened when I see leaders of the church I love using my religion as a reason to deny someone the right to work (“Fired for Being Gay,” Vol. XXXV, No. 2). Francis DeBernardo laid out a comprehensive description of both the problems faced by LGBT people who work in Catholic institutions (firings and threats to employment) and also the beginnings of a just solution for workers (fair nondiscrimination policies).

It seems almost ludicrous to think that the ability of a food service director to perform his job in a Catholic high school would be affected by his being legally married to a man, as happened in Massachusetts this year. How is supervising the lunch menus of students affected by one’s private life?

Equally incomprehensible is the claim that a computer teacher like Christa Dias is a “ministerial employee.” Does an instructor teach math or computer skills in a Catholic way or a Jewish way or a Buddhist way? Christa sued the Archdiocese of Cincinnati after she was fired for becoming pregnant through IVF, and won. Now some Catholic dioceses are rewriting contracts to designate teachers as “ministers” so that Catholic institutions can then claim a religious exemption if they are sued.

Some proposed contracts even spell out breaches of Catholic doctrine that would jeopardize a “minister’s” job, including public support for the hot button issues of abortion and same-sex marriage. I wonder if the US bishops are acquainted with Pope Francis’ views on ministers and doctrine. In his apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium or “The Joy of the Gospel,” Francis states that ministry is not be “obsessed with the disjointed transmission of a multitude of doctrines to be insistently imposed” (paragraph 35).

I object to using “religious liberty” as a weapon of mass destruction against the right to employment.

JEANNINE GRAMICK, SL
Executive Coordinator, National Coalition of American Nuns
Mt. Rainier, Md.