Most Catholic high schools in the U.S. have probably never been written about in a national publication. And that may be a good thing. No news is good news, as the old saying goes.
An exception is De La Salle High School, a Catholic high school for boys in Concord, CA. De La Salle had 12 consecutive undefeated seasons in football, from 1992 to 2004. The school’s 151 consecutive wins is a national winning streak record for high school football. This feat was so impressive a movie was made about it in 2014 – “When the Game Stands Tall.”
But usually if a Catholic high school is spotlighted it’s usually because something not so wonderful happened there. At least that’s the case with the Catholic high school I graduated from.
A New Coach
I read about my high school last September at the National Catholic Register and at the Catholic News Agency websites. The high school is Benet Academy, in Lisle IL, in the Diocese of Joliet. It was in the news because it hired a new coach for the girl’s lacrosse team. The new coach, Amanda Kammes, is in a same-sex ‘marriage.’
The story got a good deal of local attention. The Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun Times newspapers ran stories about it. Local television stations covered the story as well.
Benet initially offered the lacrosse coaching job to Kammes. Then it withdrew the offer when administrators discovered she was in a same-sex marriage. But then Benet went ahead and hired her anyway.
Some 40 or so students and parents apparently protested the decision to not hire Kammes. Also, “an online petition advocating for K[a]mmes’ hiring,” got some 4,000 signatures.” I have to wonder, however, how many of the signers were Catholic, alumni, or people who actually had a connection to Benet.
The girl’s lacrosse team was even “photographed wearing rainbow masks in support of the prospective coach.” Apparently having a top notch girl’s lacrosse coach is of critical importance. It’s even more important than upholding Catholic moral teaching at a Catholic high school.
As such, I have been wondering if the word Catholic is still an apt description of my former high school.
Discernment
The Benedictine Monks of St. Procopius Abbey, who founded the high school in 1887, apparently wondered about this, too. So they took some time to mull it over.
In January of this year, Benet Academy Chancellor Abbot Austin G. Murphy, O.S.B., announced that the Benedictine monks would “transition out of leadership at the school.”
Abbot Murphy was originally “deeply troubled” by the decision to hire Kammes. The school’s decision “calls into question its adherence to the doctrines of the Catholic faith,” he said.
After three months of discernment the Benedictines decided they could no longer be affiliated with Benet. The 135-year relationship would be ending.
On January 4, 2022 “After much deliberation, the monks as a community have discerned that they no longer have the resources needed for the governance and oversight of the academy,” Murphy and the academy board’s chairman Dennis M. Flynn said in a joint statement.
Abandoning the Mission
So apparently the five Benedictines who serve on the 24-member Benet Academy board have resigned or will be resigning sometime soon. Kudos to Abbot Murphy and the Benedictines. The Benet administrators and other board members, however, have shamed themselves and Benet. Maybe they allowed themselves to be swayed by misguided mercy. Or was it a desire for a Catholic League title in girl’s lacrosse and maybe some lacrosse scholarships?
As Patrick Reilly wrote at NCR, the initial decision to rescind the offer of employment was sound. It “was a courageous witness to our Faith and to authentic Catholic education, especially given protests in support of the candidate by some students, parents and alumni.”
But, said Reilly, when Benet reversed its decision and hired Kammes that witness disappeared. “[T]he board effectively abandoned the school’s Catholic mission.” (Reilly is the president and founder of The Cardinal Newman Society, which promotes and defends faithful Catholic education.)
The Joliet Diocese, however, apparently disagrees. A news release from the Joliet Diocese Office of Communications on February 2, 2022, was a bit of a shock. It stated that the Diocese is working to try to find a path to safeguard “Benet’s Catholic identity” [emphasis added].
Not Walking the Talk
I was somewhat taken aback when I read this. Then I checked the Benet Academy website. Sure enough, nothing had changed according to the “BENET ACADEMY AT A GLANCE” blurb on the main page. It says Benet is “a Catholic, Benedictine, college preparatory high school.”
Why the Diocese of Joliet still allows Benet to call itself a Catholic high school is a mystery. Benet Academy clearly no longer walks the talk when it comes to the Catholic faith.
Hiring a man or a woman in a same-sex ‘marriage’ for any position at a Catholic school is hypocritical. (It’s also not too smart from a legal standpoint.) It is akin to hiring someone who is openly cohabitating with a member of the opposite sex. One might even say it’s like hiring a teacher or counselor who is openly pro-abortion.
Such hires do not send a good message to students. The message is “The sinful activities these people are engaged in (or preaching) really aren’t that bad.”
There is a subliminal message too – “it’s okay for you, too, to be sinful.” Teachers are, after all, considered to be role models for students.
Catholicity
As the recently released instruction by the Congregation for Catholic Education, “The Identity of the Catholic School for a Culture of Dialogue,” states:
“24. The work of the lay Catholic educator in schools, and particularly in Catholic schools, “has an undeniably professional aspect; but it cannot be reduced to professionalism alone. Professionalism is marked by, and raised to, a super-natural Christian vocation. The life of the Catholic teacher must be marked by the exercise of a personal vocation in the Church, and not simply by the exercise of a profession.”
It’s too bad this instruction wasn’t released about six months earlier. Even so, why those at Benet who are supposed to be professional Catholic educators could not grasp this is a mystery. Why the parents of those young people currently attending Benet did not protest the hiring decision is also a mystery.
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