Portland Archbishop Reclaims Catholic Schools

A Catholic bishop is reclaiming Catholic schools in the face of leftist revolt. Two Portland, Oregon, Catholic school principals have resigned after Archbishop Alexander Sample issued guidelines on gender and sex earlier this year, mandating students use bathrooms and wear uniforms in correspondence with their biological sexes and banning teachers and other students from using “preferred pronouns.” Several employees have been let go after refusing to sign an agreement to uphold the archdiocesan directives. Now, Sample has shut down the Department of Catholic Schools, placing schools more directly under his own supervision through chancery officials.

Sample’s guidelines state, “Catholic institutions and programs should not endorse gender identity theory nor enable any form of gender transition, whether social or medical.” This is in line with Catholic social and moral teaching. Earlier this year, shortly after Sample published his guidelines, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a similar document, clarifying the Church’s position on transgenderism. The USCCB wrote:

The human person, body and soul, man or woman, has a fundamental order and finality whose integrity must be respected. Because of this order and finality, neither patients nor physicians nor researchers nor any other persons have unlimited rights over the body; they must respect the order and finality inscribed in the embodied person.

While the USCCB’s document is intended to address the transgender agenda’s invasion of healthcare and to remind Catholic healthcare providers of their responsibility to uphold the “natural order,” the reasoning employed to reach that conclusion is applicable to the pro-trans narrative at any stage. If, as the Catholic Church proclaims, God created everyone in His own image as either a man or a woman, who are we to usurp His role as Creator and remake ourselves in some other image?

The reported rebellion of Catholic school officials and teachers against Archbishop Sample’s doctrinally-sound declaration is indicative of a malady perhaps far more fatal to Catholics than the trans agenda: it reveals a woefully inadequate understanding of the Catholic Catechism. In a statement to The American Spectator, the Archdiocese of Portland clarified that the Department of Catholic Schools was shut down not due to the backlash against Sample’s guidelines, but in an effort to “integrate schools more fully into our mission.”

This absence of catechesis may then be the root cause of the Catholic Schools closure. If principals, superintendents, teachers, and even parents do not understand and openly rebel against the Church’s clear teachings on such an obvious topic as transgenderism, how can they be expected to teach and transmit the Catholic faith to students? How can they form students’ consciences in accord with the truths proclaimed by the Church? Simply put, they cannot.

Archbishop Sample is doing what numerous other bishops — across the US and across the globe — should be doing; he is doing what conservative school board members, governors, and parents should be doing, too. Call it autocratic if you like, but the Church functions as a hierarchical autocracy. Sample is ensuring that yet another generation of would-be-faithful Catholics isn’t poisoned with bad catechesis, he is shepherding his flock and keeping the wolves (of transgenderism, of liberal nihilism, of moral relativism) from mauling the lambs entrusted to his care. He isn’t playing politics, either, and seeking the support or approval of self-described Catholics with poorly-formed consciences. In short, Sample is being a good bishop and a good spiritual father.

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