Bishops do not call the
shots
By GERRY McCARTHY
Special to the National Catholic
Reporter Toronto
For Catholics in the United States, one of the great unknowns in
the voucher debate is how much control the church might lose over its schools
if they accept public funding. A comparison with the situation in Canadas
largest province, Ontario, may be instructive.
Taxpayer support of Catholic schools in Ontario means that the
schools are run autonomously by boards of trustees elected by voters on
municipal ballots. Under constitutional law, any attempt by the hierarchy of
the Catholic church to control Catholic schools in the province would infringe
on the independence of what is known as the separate school
system.
While the notion of independent Catholic media or advocacy groups
-- organizations neither funded nor sponsored by the institutional church --
may be a familiar one in the United States, the vast majority of U.S. Catholic
schools are formally governed by the hierarchy. Not so, however, in Canada.
In 1984, Ontarios Bill 30 provided Catholic schools in the
province with full public funding. Since that time, Catholic bishops have not
been able to control the religion curriculum nor the hiring of religion
department heads. The largely lay staffs work for the school boards, not for
the church.
No constitutional principle, however, prevents the churchs
hierarchy from exercising tremendous influence behind the scenes. Political
observers in Ontario say that the bishops are consulted by school trustees
before most major decisions, and public ruptures between the hierarchy and the
trustees are rare.
For example, in a recent case involving an openly homosexual
chaplain employed by the Catholic School Board for York (situated on the
northern rim of Toronto), immense pressure was exerted by the archdiocese to
remove the chaplain, and shortly thereafter he was dismissed.
In another such instance, Ted Schmidt -- a columnist for the
Catholic New Times, and a former Catholic school teacher in Toronto --
said he was pressured out of a job teaching religion by the archdiocese in
1995. Schmidt, who was named Ontario Catholic Teacher of the Year in 1991, told
NCR It turns out [they] heard a talk Id given a few years
earlier and didnt like what they heard.
Schmidt says the Ontario Catholic Teachers union has
introduced new protocols to prevent similar cases from recurring.
Theres less interference now, he said, because there is
an understanding of the hands-off relationship between the Catholic church and
Catholic schools in Ontario.
Even before the Schmidt case, a school had the legal power to tell
a bishop to mind his own business. In 1986, for example, Bishop (now Cardinal)
Aloysius Ambrozic of the Toronto archdiocese asserted that the bishops should
have some rights over the hiring of religion department heads and be allowed to
unilaterally dictate the religion curriculum. The Toronto Catholic School Board
rejected the suggestion, limiting the official role of the archdiocese in
Toronto to partial control over the hiring of school chaplains.
Although full public funding of Catholic schools was welcome news
in 1984, it has triggered an intense debate in the Catholic community in
Ontario as to what Catholic schools now stand for.
For his part, Schmidt sees the present soul-searching as a
positive thing, including the labor controversies that public funding has
generated. Its forcing us to ask these fundamental questions about
our identity, he said. Im excited when I see a break between
the Catholic teachers and the trustees.
National Catholic Reporter, September 4,
1998
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