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Religion Teachers' Jobs at Maria Goretti High - Orthodox Catholics Need Not Apply

What happens when a freshly minted graduate from an authentically Catholic college tries to teach true Catholic doctrine and morality in a Baltimore archdiocesan high school?

Carley Stedman found out, and it wasn’t pretty.

Carley came to Hagerstown’s St. Maria Goretti High School last September, fresh out of Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, with a B.A. degree in philosophy and theology.

Carley loved his majors.  In fact, at first, he had wanted to be a priest.  He had attended St. Pius X Seminary in Pennsylvania, but left after a year, unhappy with certain conditions there.  Transferring to Franciscan University, he still planned to be a priest.

“But then the idea of being married came on me.  I said, ‘Okay God, where’s the woman?’” he recalls with a grin.

In his junior year, while training for a marathon, he turned a corner, “and there she was!  It was perfect timing.”

“She” was Molly, also a junior.  They were married last December.

At Maria Goretti, Stedman was hired to teach Morality and Social Justice to juniors and World Religions to seniors.  Early on, he realized  that what he was trying to teach was on a collision course with what the students had been taught up to then.

“I guess I really got under the students’ skins, because they hadn’t heard any of this before,” he says.

Maria Goretti students are not unique:  students in Catholic high schools in general are not being taught the true precepts of the Catholic faith.

This is not a whacky allegation by some right-wing, extremist group.

Last November, New Orleans Archbishop Alfred Hughes told the U.S. bishops at their General Assembly that the Ad Hoc Committee to Oversee the Use of the Catechism, which he chairs, found that nearly two-thirds of the high school religion texts they reviewed, which are widely used throughout the country, are so out of sync with The Catechism of the Catholic Church that they need to be completely rewritten.

Students have been taught, the archbishop reported, that one religion or church is as good as another, that Catholic doctrines are just one set of legitimate opinions among many others, that miracles are not really all that miraculous, that premarital sex isn’t all that sinful, and on and on.

But now Mr. Stedman was contradicting these notions with some hard truths.

“I said to the kids, ‘All I’m teaching is from the catechism.  This is not me; it comes from the Church.’”

The students were not happy.

“The kids would ask any questions—I let them ask them.  But they didn’t like the answers” on subjects such as premarital sex and contraception, says Stedman.

Indignant students carried tales home to parents about their new teacher’s shocking pronouncements.

The tales, which usually lost something in the angry translation, were often passed on by irate parents in phone calls to the principal.

“Certain things I said would be taken out of context or pulled in a direction I never intended to go,” said Stedman.

“But what really did me in was the abortion issue.  We were talking about abortion and politicians, and I said that to be a Catholic you have to be pro-life.  

“One of the girls said, ‘My grandparents are pro-choice and Catholic, my parents are pro-choice and Catholic, and I’m pro-choice and Catholic!’”

“I told her that you really can’t pick and choose your doctrine.”

The girl complained to the principal, Christopher Siedor.

“Chris seemed to back me up,” says Carley.  “He and I made a banner saying, ‘I’m not here to judge you,’ which we hung in the back of the room.”

A day or two later, however, Tim Buckowski, chairman of the Religion Department, called Carley in for a meeting.  Carley recounted the classroom incident.

“He said, ‘But many Catholics are pro-choice!’  I said, ‘But you can’t be pro-choice and a Catholic in good standing.’

“He basically said that we can’t tell people what to believe; we can’t tell people you’re not Catholic because you’re not pro-life.”

Carley felt that the class debate over abortion was a “watershed” incident:  “I’m not willing to lose my job over just any issue, but abortion is one issue I won’t back down on.”

In March, about three weeks after the classroom exchange on abortion, Stedman received an evaluation from Mr. Buckowski.  Although it was not really critical of his teaching content, it was very negative.

“He gave me a month to shape up,” says Carley.

But, he says, “I knew I was going to lose my job.  It was no surprise when they called me in, right before spring break, and said we’re not going to renew your contract.”

Mr. Siedor was away on vacation and unavailable for comment.  However, Mr. Buckowski, in a phone interview, stated that it would be unprofessional for him to discuss an employee’s evaluation without his permission and presence.

But he said that Mr. Stedman’s allegations that he was let go because of complaints from students, parents and faculty that he was teaching intolerant and extremist viewpoints was “not accurate.”

He suggested that Stedman show Defend Life his written evaluation.

“We have an excellent program here,” said Mr. Buckowski; “it is in line with the guidelines of the archdiocese.”

The religion texts used at the high school are on the Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee conformity list, he said:  “We are fully in line with The Catechism of the Catholic Church.

“We are totally pro-life,” he added, noting that the school has hosted a Defend Life speaker.

“I guess I should say that I am really offended that our teaching of religion would be questioned,” he concluded.

“Tim would be in vain trying to pinpoint why I was fired according to the evaluation, because it was extremely vague,” Stedman countered.

The evaluation consisted of three parts, he said.  The first part commended him for things such as maintaining discipline and saying prayers at the start of class.

The second part cited things he needed to work on:  making sure he had lesson plans covering the entire period and that things were written on the board properly.

The third part named four areas which required his immediate attention:  (1) making a classroom atmosphere that is conducive for learning for everyone (“What they meant by that was to create a tolerant atmosphere, but the word ‘tolerant’ was not mentioned,” Carley commented); (2) meet with the head of the religion department more often; there was a lack of communication; (3) avoid fraternizing so much with one person in the religion department; make his presence known to everyone; (4) keep in-house matters in-house.

While Stedman was in the midst of uncertainty over his teaching position, he wrote a long letter, intending to send it to members of Maria Goretti’s school board and religion department, the principal, vice-principal, and parents.

In it, he quoted St. Paul’s exhortation to “preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching.

“For the time will come when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths” (2 Tim. 4: 2-4).

“Nothing could sum up better what I have experienced in my short time as a religion teacher at St. Maria Goretti,” he wrote.  “For it is quite certain that Catholicism is ‘out of season’ and people would much rather hear ‘myths’ than ‘sound teaching.’”

Carley never sent the letter.

“I doubt if it would have changed anything,” he says.