What happens when bigotry spreads to your child's school newsletter?

“The Catholic Church is not without sin, and it should not be telling school children and their parents who can and can’t get married.”

I don’t like being told what to think. Being a critical thinker, I have always prided myself on the ability to use the resources at hand to form my own opinion. So the other day when I clicked on the newsletter for my six-year-old’s school I was interested to find not just one, but two letters from the Bishops expressing their position on same sex marriage. As you’d expect, the position is still missionary!

Clearly it’s not a public school, Bishops tend only to have access to publishing their ethical propaganda in newsletters at Catholic schools. Maybe I’m being unreasonable, after all, I do send all my kids to catholic schools, (I’m not just lapsed, I’m a pro-lapsed Catholic) and while I love the education, and most of the values, I don’t appreciate having to scroll through dogma when checking the canteen roster.

I could understand if I’d received a flyer in my Hymn book at a Sunday service, but this is primary school. It’s a school newsletter. With news, about SCHOOL. To my knowledge there have been no same sex marriages performed at our primary school, although once Ivy did come home and tell me she and her friend Ella had a fairy wedding under the Fig Tree.

Both Bishops’ letters addressed the church’s stance on ‘same sex marriage.’ As you might have guessed, they’re not into it. That seems a bit hypocritical given they’re all married to God. I’ve seen the ring. One of them once let me kiss it. Popular portrayal of God has him as an old dude with long white beard. The Trinity confuses it somewhat, because he’s also young and handsome Jesus – ostensibly still a bloke. And then there’s the third part of the trinity – the holy spirit. The catholic clergy can marry an entity they’ve never met and two men or two women who love each other can’t join their lives in marriage. That doesn’t seem fair to me.

I was also confused as to why we needed two letters for the Sex Talk. The first letter was a more personal address on the issue from my local Bishop, and the other a more official circular, from all Bishops in general – something they knocked together at the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference (wouldn’t that have been a barrel of laughs?) titled ‘Don’t Mess with Marriage’.

As a writer myself I would have to say they were terribly repetitive and often unclear using phrases like ‘union’ when they actually meant ‘bonking’. I have never asked my husband to join me in the bedroom for some union. That’s creepy. Maybe that’s how Bishops think we live, when they talk about us having sex and what sort of sex they’ll sanction, at their conferences?

What terrifies the church, is what the rest of us are ready to embrace with open arms and even open legs….
‘Redefining marriage in the way now proposed would see marriage reduced to a committed, affectionate sexual relationship between any two people. All marriages would come to be defined by the intensity of emotion rather than a union founded on sexual complementarity and potential fertility. Husbands and wives, mothers and fathers will be seen to be wholly interchangeable social constructs, as gender would no longer matter.’

Um, yes, that’s why most of us support it stupid! I don’t know if you’ve noticed but there is this thing out there called feminism, and we’ve been trying to redefine gender constructs for 50 years now. It underpins the power relationships that have women being beaten, raped and murdered – but hey, why would you want to go changing that?

What right do Bishops have to talk about morality when it comes to relationships and human sexuality? Maybe I’m being a bit contrite but what would a Bishop know about marriage? Getting advice from a Bishop on our intimate relationships is like a childless person telling you how to discipline your kids. It’s just another smarty pants theory from a misinformed bystander.

In the midst of a Commission into institutional responses to Child Sexual abuse, where retired Catholic Bishop Geoffrey Robinson has told the Commission that abuse had been covered up by the church and suspect priests moved to other parishes, it seems to be very poor timing indeed to be delivering moral directives about the sanctity of marriage in my school newsletter. What about the sanctity of the children entrusted into the care of the church? I would have appreciated a letter saying ‘sorry you trusted us, and we really stuffed up, marry who you like, just don’t hurt anybody.’

There is a story from the bible where Jesus comes upon an angry mob about to stone an accused adulteress (yes of course it would be a woman being singled out for punishment, if they stoned men for being unfaithful they would have killed off the gene pool), Jesus, who I now like to think of some New Testament bearded knitted cardie wearing hipster, bends down and writes in the sand, let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

The Catholic Church is not without sin, and it should not be telling school children and their parents who can and can’t get married. So dear Bishop, stones down.

Have you ever been shocked by a school newsletter?