The Catholic Church is not special and its silence on St. Isidore offers no confidence
Murray Evans, who proves each day old sportswriters can adapt to pretty much anything, and who’s reason enough to keep your Oklahoman subscription active for his work on the education beat, had a piece in this morning’s paper explaining attorney general Gentner Drummond’s opposition to the U.S. Supreme Court taking up the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s decision barring formation of St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School.
St. Isidore, as you may know, were it to be given the go ahead from the nation’s highest (and quite conservative) court, could become the first religiously oriented public school in all the land, not just Oklahoma.
There’s some interesting stuff in Evans’ piece, including a bit of the legal justification from the pro-St. Isidore cause, offered in this quote from Phillip Sechler, senior counsel of Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group representing the Statewide Charter School Board, successor to the Statewide Virtual Charter School Board, that approved St. Isidore’s contract in the first place:
“The attorney general’s opposition brief fails to address what’s at stake: hundreds of Oklahoma families living in economically disadvantaged areas will lose access to the school they decided was best for their children if the Supreme Court does not hear this case. The attorney general also fails to justify excluding religious groups from a charter school program open to private secular groups. This is blatant religious discrimination.”
It’s a slightly eye-opening point.
Absolutely, separation between church and state is enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution and, absolutely, the Oklahoma Constitution is even clearer than the federal document and still I can understand why St. Isidore’s defenders think they have a legal leg to stand on.
Other groups may petition to build and operate a charter school, virtual or otherwise, but a religious institution can’t?
I get it.
Federal and state constitutions must still hold sway, but I get it.
Yet, the point at which I had to stop, shake my head and laugh a bit was in response to this line from Evans’ story:
A spokesman for the Oklahoma City Archdiocese said it would have no comment on Drummond’s filings.
Perhaps that spokesman was John Helsley, the archdiocese’s director of communications, yet another old sportswriter, who I’ve always liked and who, long ago, though he may not remember it, gave me a crash course on how to both keep stats and chart play-by-play of a high school basketball game.
Evans, by the way, has been very helpful himself on such matters. By far the best I know at keeping a game, any game, on paper.
I digress.
I can only presume the majority of Helsley’s duties involve internal, rather than external, communications, because lack of comment has been the archdiocese’s move ever since St. Isidore first became an object of interest and controversy and whenever I see it I have the same thought.
Even if we accept the church’s conceit as the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church,” and bow to it on matters of faith and metaphysics, why does it think it should have nothing to say when it’s actively participating in tearing up the U.S. Constitution or, at the very least, utterly and completely reinterpreting it?
Though the church may advocate for all it believes to be right, moral and holy, claiming its roots all the way back to the disciples, it nonetheless bears no divine right to be above it all when the question is educating Oklahoma’s children or, for that matter, involving itself with any children at all from a place of authority.
It’s stunning.
If one’s to involve itself into the marketplace of ideas, education, discipline and leadership, how does one also decide it should have nothing to say about the cultural and institutional consequences of something so basic as turning the First Amendment on its head.
To say nothing of allowing folks like Ryan Walters, Alliance Defending Freedom, and others it almost certainly (hopefully?) does not agree with on a majority of positions, do its dirty work and talking for it.
Or, just maybe, my experience with Catholic education, as a Bishop McGuinness student and graduate — Class of ’86 baby!! — was entirely misleading as to what the church, at its outward facing best, told itself it was all about.
There, discussion, argument and the type of critical thinking inspired by St. Thomas Aquinas were applauded and encouraged.
Yet, in the here and now, the church chooses silence, even as it seeks changing or reinterpreting law that’s stood in this country and state since formation.
What does it say of an institution attempting to disrupt other institutions that chooses not to defend its disruption but to hide in silence as the disruption occurs, waiting for its cultural coup to become complete?
Nothing good.
So here we are.
Drummond would have you believe were Oklahoma to avail the Catholic Church of the resources required to run a charter school with public funds, it would necessarily open itself to having to fund other religiously affiliated charter schools, some possibly abhorrent, with additional state funds and it’s difficult to believe he’s not right.
Meanwhile, the St. Isidore advocates who are speaking claim their religious liberty is being held up as long as the state’s willing to approve secularly organized charter schools, but not St. Isidore.
While the actual church that would actually run St. Isidore, create St. Isidore’s curriculum, offer the experience that St. Isidore would become, the Catholic Church, which is to say the Oklahoma City Archdiocese and Tulsa Diocese, say nothing.
What are they afraid of?
It makes no sense.
Perhaps high and holy.
The church is not special.
Thanks for your perspective on this. The Constitution has been battered over and over since 2016.
Really appreciate your columns and this one is on point. Keep up the good work.