 In rabbinic Judaism, there is a phrase, the Hebrew is a chumrah, humrah. The chumrah is a fence. The rabbis propose an idea of putting a fence around the Torah. So the Torah, of course, was the law, the first five books of the Old Testament what God gave to his chosen people, the law by which you were to live to be a holy and chosen people. But eventually, the rabbis developed traditions and other prescriptions to help people to not break the law, to say, well, here's this rule designed to keep one holy, but here are things that can lead up to that bad thing. You probably shouldn't do those either. Now, of course, there's a danger is when you set up these other rules, they can become legalistic and they can stray too far and impose heavy burdens on people. Our Lord warned the Pharisees. They lay heavy burdens on others that don't even put a finger to lift them. But on the other hand, some of it does make sense that you can have a law, but someone who always tiptoes right up to breaking it leads others into scandal and of temptation. Think about it, why would we have a fence around the Torah if you have, well, I mean, I have little kids or little bandits trying to get in everywhere. I'm grateful we live in a little housing community that has a community pool because right now it's like 187 degrees in Dallas, Texas. And my wife walks our kids over to the communal pool. So I love that, that we get to use a pool and I don't have to deal with maintaining it for the rest of the year. But if we had a swimming pool, also I don't want one in my backyard because I'm always constantly worrying what if my non-swimming kids are also very curious. So of course, if I was a responsible parent, what would I do? I'd put a fence around it. It's not foolproof, but it keeps my children from just one tragic mistake away from catastrophe, that they have to make a series of mistakes to ultimately do something that would have awful consequences for them. I have to climb the fence, have to break the lock. I put a fence around it for their safety to understand that they're not just one mistake away. And I find that there are people in the church who scoff at this very notion. They think that you can have the teachings of the church but then the way you live, there's no practical consequences of that that you can live in a way that directly contradicts and undermines that teaching and allows people who can't swim to tiptoe up to the edge of the pool and to suffer dangerous consequences from that. And what I'm referring to would be what some people call liberal or progressive Catholicism. I'm not talking about outright dissent. We're familiar with that. People who say, oh, the church is wrong on abortion. The church is wrong on female priests. The church is wrong on homosexuality and we're going to stand vocally against it. I actually have somewhat more respect for the outright dissenters. They at least, I know where they're at. It's plain and clear and they put their arguments forth and we have an engagement. What I'm more concerned about are those who would say, no, I am a faithful Catholic. I affirm everything that the church teaches. I affirm, though they won't say they necessarily agree, I'm not against the church's teaching. I agree the church teaches homosexuality is sinful. I agree that the church teaches that abortion is wrong. And you'll notice often when these people couch the language, they don't say, I think this is wrong or God thinks this is wrong. They'll say the church teaches X. And I think they'll say that about these fundamental moral issues out of the vain hope that, well, maybe the church will teach not X at some point. So I'll just tow the line for now and then say things that will lead to undermining belief in that. So for example, yes, of course, the church teaches that homosexual conduct is sinful. But what's wrong with having a gay teacher teach at a Catholic high school? What's wrong with that? Well, sure, the church teaches that abortion is gravely sinful. But what's wrong with voting for a candidate who is pro-choice or giving the Eucharist to a pro-choice politician? Well, what's wrong in these cases is that it creates something called cognitive dissonance in lay people that can confuse them and unknowingly cause them to get around the gate, hobble over the fence, and walk right up to the pool where they're unable to swim. And they start to think these ideas in their head, cognitive dissonance is when you have two opposing ideas in your head and you try to hold both and it makes you sick inside and anxious and confused because you can't hold both. You're trying to squeeze them together. Like, you know, my kids have toy wooden trains that have little magnets on them. And a magnet, of course, has a north and a south pole, right? And if you try to stick, sometimes they'll attract. The other time you try to stick them together and they just won't do it. You can't. So you eventually realize, you know what? I can't make these fit. I have to get rid of one of them. And that can leave people to think, well, the church says homosexuality is sinful, but gosh, this gay teacher at my child's Catholic high school is just so nice and has been such a great influence. I can't get rid of that. Maybe there's something wrong with the church's teaching or we haven't developed that enough. And the examples go on and on. So I believe that this is more of an insidious threat in that it doesn't come right out and say the church is wrong, here's why. It says, oh, the church is correct, but what's so bad about this? Or what's so bad about that and leads to these things that can undermine people's faith without them really knowing it? Let me give you a few examples. One would be the first example I gave. You'll hear liberal Catholics and progressive Catholics be outraged when Catholic high schools, and you hear this, this always comes up in the news. Every May and June, when teachers contracts at schools are renewed or declined or these things happen, that you'll hear such and such Catholic high school fires teacher for being gay. And that's how the headline will always be, fire for being gay as if one's orientation, one's private dispositions made one unfit for teaching at a Catholic high school. And not for what is actually the case that one's actions were in contradiction to what the church teaches and leads to scandal for those little ones were being taught at those schools. Luke Janicki, who describes himself as a gay teacher at a Catholic high school writes an American magazine, he says, students receive a blunt lesson in what God's justice looks like when no mercy accompanies it. The practice of removing LGBT teachers must end in order for a dialogue to begin. Father James Martin says, the selectivity of focus on LGBT matters when it comes to firings is to use the words of the catechism, a sign of unjust discrimination, something we are to avoid. And once again, you'll find with liberal Catholics, it's very sneaky because there's a nugget of truth that is present there. It is possible to practice unjust discrimination against someone who has same sex attraction. If an employer, even a Catholic employer finds out and an employee struggles with same sex identity, maybe they attend courage and apostolate to help people live a chaste life who have same sex attraction and simply chooses to fire them, even though they live in word and deed full adherence and belief in the Catholic faith, that can be unjust discrimination over an orientation and disposition they have no control over. But actions are very different. People can be held accountable for actions and contradiction to the faith. And you'll hear other people say, oh, well, this is, it's discrimination or it's unjust discrimination. That's very key that the catechism uses the phrase unjust because when someone says to you, I can't believe that Catholic high school fired a gay teacher. That's discrimination that's wrong. Discrimination is not always wrong. Discrimination just means you pick one thing over another thing. Unjust discrimination is wrong. So for example, when a Catholic high school looks at an applicant for a teaching position and sees one applicant has a violent felony in their criminal record and another one does not, well, they will pick the one who is not a violent felon. They discriminate for a good reason. It's the having committed past criminal acts is relevant to your ability to teach at a Catholic high school. But if one applicant is black and another is white and the one who is white has chosen and the black one is passed over because of their skin color, that's unjust discrimination because your skin color is morally irrelevant to your ability to teach. And now others will say, well, how can this be? Do you have discrimination laws, for example, and even newer court interpretations have included sexuality, sexual identity, and orientation into anti-discrimination laws. How can these schools continue to discriminate in this way? Well, we live in a country that at least for now still promotes religious freedom. So you can't have, for example, radical feminists cannot sue the Catholic Church for the job of being a Catholic priest. Because of course it's not a job, but it's a vocation. But they can't do that because the courts have recognized that religions have the right to select their ministers free from government interference. If the government could tell a religious body who could or couldn't be its minister, well, as we see in some authoritarian countries around the world where this does happen, you would have religious freedom in name only. This was upheld in Hosanna Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church versus the Equal Opportunity Commission. And then more recently, that was in 2012, more recently in 2020, in our Lady of Guadalupe School versus Morrissey Baru, that the minister is not just the priest, the rabbi or the imam, a minister is anyone who is charged with sharing the faith and educating the faith in others within a religious body, which also includes teachers at Catholic schools. And this makes sense. And people will say, oh, well, what does it matter if the math teacher isn't Catholic and is a man married to another man? He's just teaching algebra, right? What does him being Catholic have anything to do with what he teaches? Well, it's never just algebra. Do you remember being in school that before the lesson start, your teacher will give an impromptu summary of what they thought about the news today or current events? You look to your teacher as a role model in Catholic schools. That's why I send my children to a Catholic school that makes sure that their teachers are ministers of the gospel. In fact, there are many Catholic schools that require their teachers to sign in their contracts. They're ministers of the gospel. And so they can be held accountable to for what the church teaches. Now, there are Catholics who agree with this, but add caveats to it. Father Matt Malone, who is the editor of American Magazine, he agrees, the ministerial exception makes sense, but then he goes on to say this, that churches, whether it's Catholic schools or a Catholic church hiring people, he says they should not exercise their freedom in hiring and firing in pursuit of indiscriminate purging of church employees simply because they hold unorthodox views or have made life choices that do not accord with Catholic teaching. That would be wrong. It would be a source of grave scandal for the faithful and for the country we seek to evangelize. Now, I don't think though that Father Malone really believes this. I've heard also Father James Martin says something similar that Catholic schools that fire teachers who are in so-called same-sex marriages that that's scandalous. You see here we shouldn't fire people just because of the quote, life choices they have made that do not accord with Catholic teaching. But would Father Malone say that for many other cases of teachers who are fired who live in a lifestyle that is incompatible with the Catholic faith apart from issues of sexuality? I can think of a case recently of a teacher who is promoting legal abortion on her Facebook and was shown the door. Good. Here's an article from Time Magazine in 2018 about a racist teacher that was fired from a Catholic high school. The article says a substitute teacher and coach at an all girls Catholic school in Maryland was fired because he works for a white supremacist think tank. Greg Conti who tweets on the alias Greg Ritter lost both of his positions at Academy of the Holy Cross for being associated with the alt-right. The principal of the school said prior to his firing he was successfully using an alternate identity in his work with this atrocious group. As for his potential impact on our girls, I conducted an investigation and determined there was no reason to think he negatively influenced any of the girls at our school. So notice what's interesting here. Here was someone who promoted racist views in contradiction to our faith but he lived in contradiction to the faith in a way that people at the school didn't even know about. But the school rightly saw that if you live in your life you are publicly contradicting the faith even if our students don't find out about it, well you cannot work here at a Catholic school but especially if your work at a school is publicly known you live in contradiction to the faith and is discovered by students. That's why the National Directory for Catechesis says all teachers in Catholic schools share in the Catechetical Ministry all members of the faculty at least by their example are an integral part of the process of religious education. Teachers' lifestyle and character are as important as their professional credentials. Frankly I think they're more important so but that is a discussion for another time. But you have individuals though who will create confusion around this. Father Martin will say, well if you fire a teacher for being gay, of course not just for an orientation, remember it's for an action. He says this, are you going to fire teachers? He says to be consistent, shouldn't we fire people for not helping the poor, for not being forgiving, for not being loving, for being cruel? Yes I would fire a cruel teacher. Of course I would Father. Should we fire people for not helping the poor? Well of course no one is perfect. I'm going to be a bit saucy but as I get older and more tired and seeing the evil in the world and debating somebody a few days ago who said there was nothing wrong with absolutely horrendous things and other people on the internet defending him in that, I'm saying to Father, we're not saying Catholic teachers need to be perfect, they just shouldn't be perverts and I'm sorry I will stand by that because there are so many good people who strive to live in accord with the church's teachings who would be wonderful examples to Catholic students. So yes somebody who maybe didn't give their full tithe, they are not going to lead students astray. Now if they're teaching if they were blogging online about social Darwinism to let the poor die off, that would be a different story but there is something that's completely different here. Now Father Martin does have a stronger argument. He says well we don't, should we Catholic schools fire Protestants and Jews and atheists that work at the schools? Why do we focus just on one group that doesn't adhere to teaching? Aren't those theological issues just as important? I agree that they are and I would say that yes Catholic schools should not hire non-Catholic teachers. That's why the code of canon law says formation and education in a Catholic school must be based on the principles of Catholic doctrine. The teachers must be outstanding in true doctrine and uprightness of life. That's 803.2 and the directory of Cateches says to recruit teachers who are practicing Catholics who can understand and accept the teachings of the Catholic Church and the moral demands of the gospel and who can contribute to the achievement of the school's Catholic identity. But we don't live in an ideal world. Sometimes you may not have a Catholic, I agree, it would be unfair for a school and frankly in a lot of these cases being a parent I think what happens in Catholic schools this is what often happens. You have a principal who knows that a teacher lives against the faith, winks at it, doesn't think it's a big deal, maybe because the principal does the same thing and hires his teacher and allows us to go on for so long until the bishop finds out and needs to step in and looks like the bad guy. It's like at home where at my house I tend to be the more permissive parent. I let things go. Then like my wife comes in and has to lay down the rules. She says, you're making me look like the bad guy here. You need to be able to lay down the law for them. I'm like, but they're so cute when they have all their otter pops. Could it be really so bad? Eating 10 otter pops before dinner couldn't be intrinsically disordered, could it? It's just imprudent. But that's what happens in these cases. So I don't fault, I think it would be unfair for a teacher to be hired who is non-Catholic and then being fired for that status when they were hired and with that being known. But if you have a teacher who's Catholic who becomes an atheist and publicly admits that, well, they're not a good example of an enduring faith for students. But of course, like as I said, the directory of Catechesis acknowledges that it's not an ideal world. Maybe there's no Catholic applicant who's able to teach math or French. So you might hire a Protestant teacher who's willing to at least not publicly challenge the teachings of the faith. But here it's also the issue that when it comes to issues like marriage or being in a so-called same-sex marriage, these are foundational social issues that cause people to reconsider the divine foundations of the faith to think, well, if this is good and the church says it's bad, maybe the church is wrong on this. That in these cases, it's more hiring a presbyterian to teach math is not like hiring a polygamist. It's completely different to the example that would be set for the students. I'll give you another example in this regard of confusion that takes place. In 2022, Robert McManus of Worcestershire, if you're from Boston, you'll know, you look at this word, Chester, no one saw this, Worcestershire, pack your car in the back, Worcestershire, go to Fenway Pack, all right. The bishop in Massachusetts stripped a Jesuit middle school of its Catholic status because they refused to take down a rainbow LGBT pride flag and also Black Lives Matter flag, something entirely different topic. I cover my upcoming book on liberal Catholicism, but let me just focus on the LGBT pride flag because you'll see Catholics who will say, well, I affirm the church's teachings on homosexuality, but you can also celebrate LGBT pride. There's no contradiction there. Cognitive dissonance, once again. Well, if I celebrate this and the church says it's bad, how can I really do both? Well, you really can't. And this is obvious in other instances. So Father Martin, once again, he says, Pride Month is mainly about supporting the fundamental human rights of the LGBTQ community, the right to live in safety, the right to be treated as equals, and the right to be fully welcome in society. So the idea is, Father Martin and others, you'll see Catholics online with rainbow flags saying, we're not saying homosexuality is a good thing when we as a Catholic have the rainbow flag. We're just saying people who identify as LGBT ought to be treated with respect and dignity. The problem is we certainly agree with that, absolutely. But there is a contradiction here because that flag, the rainbow pride flag, does not only mean a person should be treated with dignity. It has many other messages baked into it that are directly contrary to the faith. For example, one of the fundamental rights that the pride flag symbolizes is the right for people in a same-sex union to marry, a so-called same-sex marriage. That's one of the fundamental rights that that flag is symbolic of. And yet the church says that that is in direct contradiction to the faith. Pope Francis and Amoris LaTizia says the following, only the exclusive and indissoluble union between a man and a woman has a plenary role to play in society as a stable commitment that bears fruit in new life. That's why he goes on to say in paragraph 52 of Amoris LaTizia that same-sex unions, quote, may not simply be equated with marriage. So the argument here, and what Father Martin and others will say is, well, just because some people use the pride flag to celebrate things that are contrary to the faith, just because they use it to endorse some messages, it doesn't mean the symbol is off limits for Catholics who use it to endorse another message. But this is directly contradictory to what many liberal Catholics believe, because then they will turn around and say that there are some symbols Catholics may never use because they are used to support some evils. So just to recap what Father Martin says, just because you celebrate Pride Month doesn't mean you necessarily agree with what every person, every organization, or even every float in a Pride Parade has to say. All right, let me give you another example of a symbol that liberal Catholics would be aghast about. The Confederate flag. Well, the Confederate battle flag, I should say. If you're a student of Southern history, you'd recognize that the original Confederate flag looked too much like the Union flag. And so there is a lot of confusion that would be around with it. So eventually the stars and bars that we're familiar with in modern day controversy is the Confederate battle flag. It's to be a very distinct flag to go into battle. Well, that was eventually altered over time, but you know the symbol that I'm talking about. And yet in recent years, people have come to see that it's association. Some people say this symbol only relates to Southern pride and heritage. But other people will say, you know it is something that is unique and affiliated with the Confederacy and a movement to use force to defend the institution of slavery and racism. So in 2015, the National Catholic Reporter praised a young activist who took down a Confederate flag at a state courthouse saying that the flag represents for many a war to uphold slavery and oppose civil rights. After the death of George Floyd in 2020, the Catholic school in Alabama removed images of the Confederate flag from their mural in their lobby of their school. And now think about the argument here. Someone says, well, the flag, it doesn't mean slavery to me, it means something else. So why can we say that it's wrong? The counter argument is, well, no, it does mean bad things for at least some people. Therefore no good Catholic can be affiliated with this image full stop. And yet if you hold, if you were a Catholic, a liberal Catholic or any Catholic who holds that argument, that view for the Confederate flag, then you must hold that same view for the pride flag because it also was used to defend evil ideas like sodomy or counterfeit marriages. You can't say it only means that for thee, but not for me. Let me give you another example here, switching topics a little bit. Talking about the Eucharist and the issue of abortion, that you'll hear people say this, well, of course I believe abortion is wrong, but it's politics, it's politics to withhold the Eucharist from politicians who identify as pro-choice or vote in favor of legal abortion. You'll hear some people say you're weaponizing the Eucharist in saying that in when bishops withhold communion from politicians who actively work to support the legality of killing unborn children in the womb. And so how should we respond to this confusion? Because it does create confusion. How can someone say, well, yes, I certainly agree with the church's teaching on abortion, but somebody who defends legal abortion in politics and the law, well, there's nothing wrong with them. They can come and receive the Eucharist. Well, you can't really start holding those two ideas together. You're gonna have to jettison one of them. And you might end up saying as a confused lay Catholic, well, I guess abortion couldn't really be that bad. Maybe it's bad for Catholics, but it couldn't be that bad that we demand that Catholic politicians uphold this. I mean, should Catholics be imposing their views on others? No, we shouldn't be imposing strictly Catholic ideas of morality, but when you arrest a shoplifter at a store, they can't say you're imposing the seventh commandment on me. No, stealing and murder. These are things that people can know from the natural law are wrong. That's why the Gospel of Life from Pope St. John Paul II says that Catholics have a grave and clear obligation to oppose laws promoting euthanasia and abortion. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said, a well-formed Christian conscience does not permit one to vote for a political program or an individual law which contradicts the fundamental contents of faith and morals. So when a Catholic politician, they cannot vote specifically for a law that contradicts the moral law and what is necessary for a just society. Now, John Paul II did say that a Catholic politician could vote for a less than ideal law on abortion. If their goal was to reduce evil, and as he says, as long as their absolute personal opposition to abortion was well-known, they could listen to support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done. So for example, a Catholic politician could vote for a law that bans abortion at 12 weeks if currently abortion is legal through all nine months for any reason. They're trying to limit an evil as much as possible. But imagine a politician who says, well, imagine people saying this. This politician, he doesn't personally lynch minorities. He just voted for a law saying that lynching should be allowed or that you can't outlaw it. He's never been personally involved in lynching. So how can you say that he shouldn't be allowed to receive communion? That's imposing one's faith. He's doing politics, that's different. We would rightly say that he is a racist politician living in direct contradiction to the faith and just what rational morality requires. In fact, in 1962, Archbishop Rummel of New Orleans excommunicated Catholic politicians who opposed segregation. Now, liberal Catholics do have a counter for this. They'll say that Archbishop Rummel, he only excommunicated politicians who opposed Catholic schools desegregating, not racist politicians in general. Father Thomas Rees says this, the only thing comparable would be if some Catholics started a movement to insist that Catholic hospitals do abortions. So Father Rees said that that has nothing to do with excommunication or at least withholding the Eucharist from a politician because the Eucharist can be withhold according to Canon 915 for those who persist and manifest grave sin. He says it'd only be comparable if there were some Catholics trying to make Catholic hospitals perform abortions. Gosh, it's not like there's anyone like that, Xavier Bacara, the Catholic Secretary of Health and Human Services, who tried to make Catholic hospitals do this until a federal appeals court, Franciscan Alliance versus Bacara stopped him in 2016. Right, there's nobody trying to do that. There's no one trying to make crisis pregnancy centers in California advertise abortion services until the Supreme Court in Nifla versus Bacara once again saying that their free speech rights mean that pregnancy resource centers in California don't have to advertise for abortion facilities. So in seeing all of this, the relationship that the church should have with political figures, the ideal relationship it should have would be the one that we can see between St. Ambrose and Emperor Theodosius in the fourth century. That Theodosius ordered his troops to massacre 7,000 men, women, and children in the Greek city of Thessalonica in response to a riot that had begun there. He killed innocent human beings. So Ambrose demanded that the emperor perform a public penance before he could be readmitted to the church, which he agreed to. At Theodosius' funeral, St. Ambrose said the following, he stripped himself of every sign of royalty and bewailed his sin openly in church. He and emperor was not ashamed to do the public penance which lesser individuals shrink from. And to the end of his life, he never ceased to grieve for his error. So tie all this together. I started talking about offense. Let me end talking about offense. There is a rhetorical argument called Chesterton's Fence. You'll have people who will say, well, why do we need to do this? This is just backwards. You can't have a gay teacher at this school or you're not going to give the Eucharist to pro-choice politicians. Like this is just backwards. We have to be more progressive and enlightened. When these things happen, I recommend that you ask people who disagree, why do you think the church would have these rules in the first place? Chesterton said this once. He said, let us say for the sake of simplicity, offense or gait erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes up to it and says, I don't see the use of this, let us clear it away. To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer, if you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it. So the idea is before we get rid of something, one should be able to articulate why it is in place, why the fence is there, and why we do not need it anymore. So when someone says, I don't see what's wrong with a gay teacher teaching at a school, always control the emotions that can take place. I find what's best is to ask a question and to show the person's worldview contradicts itself. I don't see what's wrong with that. Okay, can you give me another example? Would you say that a teacher's personal conduct never makes them unfit to teach at a Catholic school? What about a teacher who is publicly defending racism or abortion or some other grave sexual sin that we as a community generally recognizes wrong? What would make someone unfit to be at a Catholic school if their life is lived in direct contradiction to the faith? Is that happening in this case? Or when it comes to the Eucharist and abortion and politicians to say, I would ask the question, is there any law that a politician would vote for that you would say would make them unfit to receive the Eucharist? I posed this example once to a liberal Catholic online, a prominent one who speaks, and I gave him this example. I said, imagine there was a politician who voted for a law that says it should be legal, it should be legal for ranchers to shoot illegal immigrants on site who trespass on their property. Do you think a Catholic politician like that should not be allowed to receive the Eucharist for defending the killing of innocent human beings? And he bit the bullet and said, no politician should be denied the Eucharist. And some people do that because they realize if you would refrain from giving the Eucharist and call that person to repentance in that case, why? Because they're defending the legal killing of innocent human beings. You're not even one step away from politicians to defend legal abortion. You basically are gonna stumble and fall right back into it. And it shows that the view is ultimately incoherent in that regard. So let us, as we go forth and we engage others who act in ways that confuse the faithful, that we who are grounded in the faith to pray that we are always grounded, that we are not, as Pope Benedict XVI said, tossed to and fro by the storm and waves of relativism in our world, but to be grounded in the faith and because we are grounded in the faith, it gives us a sense of confidence and calm demeanor to be able to ask questions of those who create confusion so that they and others can ultimately see how confusing their view is that seeks to undermine the deposit of faith. So thank you very much and I hope you enjoy the remainder of the conference.