A student at a Catholic school was forced to remove a sticker from her computer and the school is oblivious to the irony. Proof we’re totally insane over politics.
A student at a Connecticut Catholic school was told to remove a sticker from her laptop.
A Catholic student was told by her school to remove her “I stand with Planned Parenthood” sticker from her laptop.
Administrators from a Catholic school enforce a rule about political advocacy.
All of these statements are true. Any could be the leading headline. But none really makes total sense of the issue.
Kate Murray, a sophomore at Sacred Heart Greenwich, a Roman Catholic school, has a laptop with a bunch of stickers. One of them said, “I stand with Planned Parenthood.” The administrators made her remove it.
At one level, we think “no big deal.”
But the sticker isn’t just a sticker.
The school saw the sticker as a political act. They failed to realize that their’s was also.
Removing the student’s speech on her laptop is a fundamentally political act. Even more so given the motivation to require her to remove it.
The Head of School, Pamela Hayes, wrote that the school discourages displays of anything “supporting or opposing political candidates, positions or organizations.”
In this case, it isn’t entirely clear whether they saw the sticker as an act of support for a position or an organization. And given the subject matter, the difference reveals the political truth.
If it’s about a political position, then it isn’t the “stand” part of the sticker that’s the problem for them; it’s the “Planned Parenthood.” Since Planned Parenthood is an organization, but to many conservatives, opposition to Planned Parenthood is their position.
For the school to read this sticker as advocating for a political position is to take a political position themselves.
And yet, if it’s about regarding Planned Parenthood as a political organization, then it politicizes the very nature of a healthcare organization devoted to women’s health. So interpreting the sticker this way likewise takes a political position.
So regardless of how the school read the sticker, the only way for the school to see it as violating the rules is for the school to violate the same rule.
But this isn’t only about hypocrisy. The school is expressing ignorance of their own theological tradition.
All Catholics are Political
How can it be that a Catholic school opposes the support or opposition of something like health care?
The political investment of the Roman Catholic Church often seems to overshadow its theological grounding. We all remember that this is a church with famous public stances on sex, marriage, abortion, and birth control. The church even weighed in on the infamous Hobby Lobby case to support the denial of birth control to employees.
This is also the home of the Catholic Worker Movement, Dorothy Day and Oscar Romero, and Nuns on the Bus.
Even if the school didn’t specifically do so, it’s very catholicity embodies that same character. A people who stand in solidarity with others and up to injustice.
It’s a ridiculous idea that a Catholic school isn’t a place for people taking a stand on anything political.
Being Christian is a political stance.
So what are they teaching children if not to take a stand? Taking a stand is a civic and religious responsibility!
Christians stand against injustice and with the poor. We march in solidarity in the streets and sit with the dying. We push for just laws and fight for the health and safety of all, including women and children.
And sometimes, we stand up to authorities which oppress and restrict us because of who we are.
The gospels each reveal this need to stand up in their passion narratives. As Jesus approaches his own crucifixion, standing up to the religious authorities and to the Roman leaders, siding with the poor and the outcast along the way, he tells his followers to do the same.
That when people come to punish them for stepping out of line, they are to stand up and proclaim the name of Christ. Even then, we don’t need to worry about what we’re going to say because the Spirit will provide the words.
In claiming “I stand with Planned Parenthood” Ms. Murray is taking a stand as a person of faith—the very thing a Catholic student should be doing. That it may challenge the church’s current teaching says more about the teaching than it does about her.
Because Planned Parenthood is no more or less a political organization than the Roman Catholic Church itself. To punish a student for standing with Planned Parenthood reflects a political stand against an organization.
And the very thing the Catholic School would claim that they would need to do to have her remove that sticker.