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Opening Arguments

Dumb rules are still rules

Talk about rubbing salt in the wound. When Emily Herx was fired from her Catholic school teaching job for getting in vitro ferilization treatments, she had to listen to this:

Herx says the school's priest called her a "grave, immoral sinner" and told her she should have kept mum about her fertility treatments because some things are "better left between the individual and God," the complaint said.

The church is absolutely stupid on this issue. If you believe fertility treatments are wrong because they get between the individual and God, you might as well shun all medicine -- or all science, for that matter. How dare you have the audacity to use the mind God gave you!

BUT. Catholic school, Catholic rules. Supreme Court's said so before, will again. It might make a difference that she taught only English and wasn't involved in the school's religious teachings. And I don't know whether she signed a contract that explicitly said "and, hey, no fertility treatment," but she surely can't have been shocked at the school's reaction.

Comments

littlejohn
Fri, 04/27/2012 - 9:43am

I don't know why a lawyer took this case. The Catholic Church apparently can't decide if it favors motherhood or not, but these kinds of cases have been tried before and the church always wins.

Christopher Swing
Fri, 04/27/2012 - 1:14pm

The church is free to believe in whatever dumb things they want. They already believe in an imaginary-absentee-father-figure-in-the-sky, so it's not like much else is a stretch.

But if they're going to employ secular employees for secular jobs, they don't get to complain about those employees actually using the health insurance they pay into, or for having medical procedures the church doesn't like.

Then again, this sort of thing reminds people what a backwards organization the church is, and hopefully moves it that much closer to dying out. Religions have died out before, it's not like the catholic version is somehow immune. (If they weren't worried about it, they wouldn't be running those "please please come back, you know you need me!" commercials that sound like the pleas of an abusive ex.)

Tim Zank
Fri, 04/27/2012 - 6:13pm

"But if they're going to employ secular employees for secular jobs, they don't get to complain about those employees actually using the health insurance they pay into, or for having medical procedures the church doesn't like."

 

One small problem with that Junior, they are a Parochial School System, not a public (secular) school system. They don't employ "secular employees" or offer "secular jobs", they employ Catholic employees and offer Catholic education. Not exactly a difficult concept to grasp one would think.

Christopher Swing
Fri, 04/27/2012 - 6:36pm

Tim Zank: RTFA, moron:

"But Gregory Lipper, senior litigation counsel at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, disagreed, saying that deeming an English teacher "a minister" in a religious school constitutes "Exhibit A of what goes wrong if the exception becomes too broad."

"If a teacher of purely secular subjects is considered a minister, then the implication of that is that everyone who works for a Catholic school would be considered a minister," he said. "It becomes an open license to discriminate.""

It's why it's called a "ministerial exception," knucklehead. Are the janitors expected to be ministers as well?

But hey, let them have the right to kick out everyone that's not religious enough. They won't have a functional school, but that's their problem.

Tim Zank
Fri, 04/27/2012 - 6:53pm

I did RTFA and despite the legal machinations of her ambulance chaser, it's really quite simple and she will lose. If you're a teacher in  catholic (read: catholic, that's the key here Einstein) school (run by the Catholic Church (read: church) you will teach what the Catholic Church proscribes and you will live your life in a manner which is in accordance with the Catholic Church or you will not work there.

 

Tim Zank
Fri, 04/27/2012 - 7:13pm

Really can't pass on this gem either:

"But hey, let them have the right to kick out everyone that's not religious enough. They won't have a functional school, but that's their problem."

Yeah, kick out those religious nuts and make parochial schools just like those "super duper functional public schools" ...

You don't think very far ahead when you're typing do you? (here's a hint: Catholic Schools have a much higher graduation rate than public schools)

  

Christopher Swing
Fri, 04/27/2012 - 11:47pm

Tim Zank, you're not even smart enough to have any business calling her lawyer an "ambulance chaser," so you'll understand if I don't give much weight to your opinion of the legal question at hand. Which is basically all you've given, since you didn't address why the ministerial exception from the precedent should apply to non-minsterial employees.

You're also confusing "functional" with "successful" and assuming just graduating is the same thing as success.

Also, apparently you couldn't deduce what I was thinking ahead about, when you don't seem to remember my last paragraph from my first comment at all:

"Then again, this sort of thing reminds people what a backwards organization the church is, and hopefully moves it that much closer to dying out. Religions have died out before, it's not like the catholic version is somehow immune. (If they weren't worried about it, they wouldn't be running those "please please come back, you know you need me!" commercials that sound like the pleas of an abusive ex.)"

Tim Zank
Sat, 04/28/2012 - 9:27am

Sane people understand the left and their ambulance chasing trial lawyers  penchant for destroying anything and everything that allows free people to accel and not adhere to the mediocrity of the marxists (in this case parochial schools).  We completely understand your ideology is adamantly opposed to freedom.   

You can keep trying to win an argument here by dissecting, obfuscating and twisting sentence by sentence and arguing over minute "bullet points" but it's futile, especially here at the equivalent of the "adult table".

You lose everytime.

 

   

 

 

Christopher Swing
Sat, 04/28/2012 - 2:06pm

Yes Zank, your rambling about marxist conspiracies and such makes you look comlpetely sane.


I'm not worried about winning arguments here, Zank. I do that any time I don't veer into the rightwing-nutbag territoryyou so gleefully occupy. XD

BTW, still haven't looked up "fisking," have you? I'm sure others have and are entertained. XD

Tim Zank
Sat, 04/28/2012 - 2:43pm

No Marxist conspiracies on my part, I simply call a spade a spade. You are a Marxist, that's obvious and that's fine. What's baffling is why a devoted Marxist with an obvious personality disorder would spend so much time just antagonizing people on a small town conservative blog knowing full well you'll never change anyones mind about anything, you'll never "win" an argument, you'll never earn anyones respect, and you'll forever be thought of as an idiot.

Baffling....

 

I think Harl is right, you need to see Dr. Rick, even if it doesn't help at least you'd have some real human interaction besides just "you want fries with that?"....give it some consideration...

Christopher Swing
Sat, 04/28/2012 - 2:53pm

Ran out of actual responses to the topic and now you're just trying to make me feel bad, Zank?

Now we know you've lost. ;D

Tim Zank
Sat, 04/28/2012 - 3:01pm

Nothin' to respond to, seek help.

Rebecca
Sun, 04/29/2012 - 2:02pm

Wow, any discussion with "The Cap'n" seems to turn into the intellectual version of Gresham's Law.

Christopher Swing
Sun, 04/29/2012 - 6:57pm

Somebody's got to stand up to Tim Zank's aggressive stupidity.

But it doesn't really get stupid until Rebecca Mallory stops by to throw in a personal attack and nothing else.

Andrew J.
Tue, 05/01/2012 - 10:09am

So this is a "small town conservative blog?" Last I checked, Fort Wayne was the second largest city in Indiana. I believed the City of Churches is constantly trying to market itself as a big city destination, hence a downtown minor league ballpark, among other attempts to shed itself of this "we are a conservative small town" stereotype.

Than again, maybe that's why this site has only the half dozen or so people regularly responding to it.

AJ

 

Tim Zank
Wed, 05/02/2012 - 11:20am

Andrew, are you surprised we agree on Ft Wayne being a conservative small town? I know from your previous posts you consider Ft Wayne to be the armpit of the world, what with it's double coupons and all, so I assume someone with your sensibilities must be quite satisfied living in the cultural mecca that is Ft Myers? 

Andrew J.
Wed, 05/02/2012 - 3:25pm

Yes we agree. Fort Wayne is a big city when it suits our arguments; a little one when it doesn't.

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