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.
23 thoughts on “When a Catholic High School Doesn’t Walk the Talk”
I wish I’d known about the petition to hire Kammes so I could have signed it at the time, thus giving it 4001 signatures. To address the author’s “wonder” about who signed it, I am an alumnus of St. Procopius College Academy, predecessor of today’s Benet.
Russell Vandenbroucke
Class of ’66.
I would like to correct Abuelo de Muchos error concerning homosexuals.
The Catholic Church opposes homosexual acivity, not homosexuals. It does this in the same way that it opposes sexual activity among all unmarried people, homosexual and heterosexual.
Gay marriage is another fallacy.
An apt description of most “catholic” high schools today:
– Blessed are those who can afford the tuition.
– Blessed are those who play sports.
– Blessed are those who go on to an elite school.
– Blessed are those who have no more than one sibling.
– Blessed is The Pill.
So tied are the schools to money, fame and being accepted as an elite in today’s world that one should not be “surprised” at an their acceptance of so called same sex marriage.
90%+ of catholic high school age children are forgotten and not catechized because all thought and funding goes to these schools. If they would just disappear; The Church would be better off.
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Actually Jehanne, I have been trying to answer you questions:
Any reason to think that could not be God’s sentiments in this day and age?
Be reasonable, there isn’t a person on earth who knows God’s sentiments.
What apparitions / visionaries do you put credence in?
I did make a pilgrimage to Medjugorje 20 years ago and found it to be holy and inspiring.
You insist on saying gay marriage or other sexual “deviancies” (if I may?) are likely not that big of a deal to God?
I do not insist on anything, I just don’t perseverate on a subject as those people who seem to find prurience a fascinating and insatiable topic.
To Jehanne: “What greatly angers our Lord, especially of those in Christian nations, is their shameful immorality and foul ingratitude.”
Our Lord really said that !?! Or is this a paraphrase ? Maybe she / He meant all nations.
I’m not impressed or beholden to visionaries who escape your notice. I think God is more
broken hearted for those Texas school children than all the married gays in America. Try
keeping your focus and thoughts higher, rather below, other peoples navels.
There are no catholic, sacramentally married persons in America who freely choose to engage in sin. Guy, Texas
Actually ordinary papist, I read this years ago and never forgot it, but I cannot produce it as evidence because I cannot find it on the internet and I do not remember which visionary. It is a paraphrase by me, but the “shameless immorality and foul ingratitude” is a direct quote and hard to forget. Any reason to think that could not be God’s sentiments in this day and age? What apparitions / visionaries do you put credence in? God sends His prophets throughout history, but when the message is unwelcome, that is when Christians really want to ignore it or dismiss it.
Be that as it may, I see you still refuse to answer the more straight forward question posed below. Ok, but that is really the hill you appear to be willing to die on. You insist on saying gay marriage or other sexual “deviancies” (if I may?) are likely not that big of a deal to God? A choice I would never personally ascribe to.
Jehanne – I have had a lot of experience with people putting stock in visionaries. The best that can be said is they come to nothing, but often the followers end up in a bad place: mentally ill, grievously disillusioned, mislead into making really bad choices. One thing I have noticed is I’ve never heard a Catholic visionary decrying the gross immorality of slavery over the 250 years we had it in the New World. Or the hundred or so years of Jim Crow – silence from the visionaries. Instead, the visionaries are almost preoccupied with the themes and concerns of the village or town they come from, including who’s sleeping with who. It’s almost as if the visionary is reflecting what they hear around them. I don’t think the Blessed Mother is a devotee of Payton Place.
Really, why were there no visions of the Blessed Mother in New Orleans in 1820 condemning the subjugation, murder and dehumanization of the millions of black slaves throughout the South?
Sorry Mary McCormick, I cannot ascribe to your reasons for doubting God because of human suffering. But nor am I am here to disagree with you on a plethora of devout or radical Christians who claim to have visions or words directly from some saint or soul from heaven. I am well aware of the profound need for the Church to stay clear and only investigate when it becomes necessary. And then, almost never approve, but they do certainly denounce some to stay clear of. On the other hand, I am enthralled by the Catholic Church approved apparitions or miracles, so few in number, yet so compelling. The 14 year old Bernadette saying the lady said her name was “The Immaculate Conception” astounded bishops and theologians of her time. Why? Because it was merely four years earlier it the Immaculate Conception was declared by the pope infallibly as a dogma of the Church. And it was contested greatly by Protestantism. And here we have and illiterate girl in a rural French village revealing from the Blessed Virgin that was her name. How can anyone ignore the truth? This came directly from heaven.
Here is another just as arresting. >>> Las Lajas, Colombia. There you will find a large Catholic Church built over and around a cave with an incredible image of Our Lady, Baby Jesus, St Francis and St Dominic plastered on the rock wall of the cave. Except it is not painted. Science confirmed this vivid image is the rock itself. They have drilled in the rock several feet and the same colors on the image are the colors they get from the drill samples. This happened in the 17th century and, oh, it is a remarkable story involving a widow and her deaf child. But here is the part I find so telling; in the couple of centuries prior to this the Dominicans and Franciscans kind of had a back and forth little “conflict” as to who deserved credit for the present day rosary that was widely practiced by this time. Wouldn’t you know it?, on that rock image the Baby Jesus is handing a holy cord to St. Francis and the Virgin Mary is handing a rosary to St. Dominic. If that is not an argument being decided directly from heaven above, then whoever denies this one is truly someone who refuses to believe anything supernatural.
The one apparition I greatly embrace is Garabandal. I am not interested in their prophecies, I am convinced it is from God for what those girls experienced and the inexplicable manifestations they produced during their young lives. It was surely supernatural and gave off nothing by holy signs from heaven, not from the evil one.
The students and faculty who know Ms. Kammes reflect what is becoming the overwhelming sentiment among self-identified Catholics: that the qualities of being a good person, being a caring teacher, and having a happy, committed, long-term relationship, outweigh Catholic teachings that are irrelevant to these qualities.
The students and faculty knew very little about Ms. Kammes before she was hired. Regardless, because “overwhelming sentiment” says “A” is true, this does not make “A” true. Some 69 percent of the Catholics in the U.S. who are not going to Mass regularly also do not believe Jesus Christ is present in the Eucharist, yet they are wrong. Sentiment cannot overturn divinely revealed truth.
Gene
For her this job is a homecoming and probably an emotional one.
There might have been be outside involvement but she’s an alumna of that high school and I assume she grew up there. One guesses that many of those who signed the petition and showed up for the protest were childhood acquaintances. Probably you’re “one degree of separation” from her yourself, in that you know someone who knows her.
All irrelevant. An administrator/teacher/coach at a Catholic school must be a role model for the students. That means living the teachings of the Faith.
So, according to your logic, a person can have an abortion if the parents are in a loving and committed relationship and both agree that we just can’t afford a child at this time? Sounds like you just want to pick and choose your sins.
To be an actual Catholic, you must believe in and support all of the teachings of the Church. (In spite of what Pelosi, Biden, et al. seem to think.) Scripture clearly condemns sexual ACTIVITY between those of the same sex. Since the primary purpose of sexual activity is the continuation of the species, common sense and reason also condemn such activity.
Additionally, the Catholic Church–and Jesus Christ–are not “anti” anything but sin. Whether we like it or not, the Church is the moral compass of the world, not feelings. “If it feels good, do it” would be no way to run a planet.
Thank you for sharing your feelings Leonard.
I’m sure if you walked around campus and found teachers and administrators who were OBVIOUSLY puffed up and tainted with pride, curt or angry, over zealous in public on the dating scene, especially lazy in their in performance, obese from love of food or voracious in their pursuit of honor – tenure, that would be acceptable.
Therefore, what? Because we are all sinners we cannot disallow anyone for any reason to be on the faculty?
Living openly in a gay “marriage” or cohabitating with an unmarried partner is tantamount to saying “what I am doing is not wrong, or at least, not that offensive to God.”
I do not see those who lie, cheat, gossip, drink excessively, or possibly look at porn promoting their sin in such a way. Nor is anyone condoning any of it either, just the same.
To Jehanne: It would seem like I was suggesting that – but no. The overweight teach who makes an occasion joke about food is being fed on by an overweight student who likes and admires him. The teach who dates and cavorts with enough peeps in the community to get found out until it reaches the ear of students who admire his moves with the babes. The over ambitious teach who climbs every ladder, presses any and all palms as he climbs over colleagues for a prize position is emulated by a popular student who sees a slicker way to advance. The teach who requires little and averts his eyes to much becomes a hero to someone who stops struggling to slide. The teach with a chip and ready with a quick caustic word becomes cool to someone with anger issues. – well you get the idea. so get off the sex box and realize Scandal by example is as deadly as the other six.
To An Ordinary Papist:
Some sin is more deadlier than others, some matters far more influential or consequential than others. Having an openly gay teacher who is “married” to another of the same sex is a very strong message of tacit acceptance by the Catholic school. It is sexual mores that has dramatically changed in cultures in the West and has more impact on the soul than any of your examples, apparently given to try to justify it.
So you really never answered my question. You draw no lines of ostensible sinful behavior that the Church should overlook and allow a teacher to continue. As the Virgin said to a visionary (whose name I cannot now recall) —- “What greatly angers our Lord, especially of those in Christian nations, is their shameful immorality and foul ingratitude.” Maybe that will help you understand the gravity of the sin and the problem.
I have 12 children, and for most of my life, I blindly accepted that being gay was inconsistent with Catholicism. But in recent years, I’m not so sure. First, I learned while working for the Church that a high percentage of priests are gay, including some most revered by conservatives. More importantly, the people most vehement in gay-loathing are the same people who seem to double down on worship of firearms in the face of repeated mass shootings. And who are the least likely to want to share the Lord’s wealth with the less-advantaged, the mentally ill, the downtrodden. Who wouldn’t recognize racism if it slapped them in their (white) faces. And who are likely to view immigrants from the south as human vermin or invaders. Who really do view women as subordinate to men, or at least not equals in social participation and leadership. I could go on. The most anti-gay people are the ones most likely to adhere to selfish, fearful, vengeful, tribal values – the opposite of magnanimity and confident trust in the Lord. So grace and experience are teaching me that neither I nor anyone holds any monopoly on truth. The Church blessed the African slave trade to the New World for 200 years and made human subjugation on a massive scale acceptable. So we know the Church errs. I suspect the Church’s view on being gay will evolve – slowly, with lots of rationalization and opposition – just as it did on slavery. Even today, there are old-line Catholics who still believe Europe and the Americas would be better off with a caste system in which the small number of wealthy, landed and “educated” dominate and dictate to the vast majority who are organized into rigid social strata for their lifetimes in the service of Christendom. After all, the Bible seems to approve of slavery, and the Church used that rationale to approve it for more than a millennium; but over the last few centuries, the Church has evolved to a position of condemnation. Quite the sea change, and a very commendable one.
Your comment makes use of numerous induction fallacies, rhetorical fallacies, outright false accusations, and wishful thinking that are the usual stock in trade of progressives – far too much to address in a single comment. But, in all charity, I do have to correct two of your statements. 1) The Bible does not approve of slavery. It acknowledges that slavery does exist in the world and exhorts mankind to overcome such evil with good. 2) Your statement “The Church blessed the African slave trade to the New World for 200 years and made human subjugation on a massive scale acceptable” is a absolutely false. A number of popes strongly condemned the slave trade and slavery. You might want to pick up and read the book “The Real Story of Catholic History: Answering Twenty Centuries of Anti-Catholic Myths” by Steve Weidenkoph.