Standing by the Wrong Standard

In January 2021, Nativity, a 5th-8th school founded in 2003 by the Jesuits at the College of the Holy Cross, began flying the Pride flag and the Black Lives Matter flag. The school’s president Thomas McKenney said in a statement on the school’s website that it was initiated by the students “to express our support for making our communities more just and inclusive.” 

The Chancery of the Worcester Diocese got wind of the flag and entered into the fray beneath the Catholic standard. The Most Reverend Robert McManus told the school in March 2022, according to The Catholic Free Press, that it must remove the flags as they represent a standard contrary to Catholic principles. This was followed by an public statement from Bishop McManus in April, asking, “Is the school committing itself to ideologies which are contrary to Catholic teaching?  If so, is it still a Catholic school?” One month later, the bishop wrote an open letter to the community entitled “Why Symbols Matter,” again attempting to persuade the school of its duty to uphold Catholic standard, the true nature of marriage and the family, and to oppose those ideologies hostile to these essential, natural and catholic realities. 

“As a Catholic institution, no symbol can portray better all that we hold dear to us than the holy cross,” Bishop McManus wrote. “The meaning of that symbol is contradicted by ideologies which are promoted by the BLM flag and the gay pride flag. The board of Nativity School has to decide if it wants to continue to be a Catholic institution or not. Being sponsored by the Jesuits does not alone make a school Catholic. Many non-Catholic institutions perform great humanitarian works, but to be Catholic means espousing, not denying our Catholic identity. That identity is not defined by any individual bishop or pope but by 2,000 years of theological reflection and tradition deriving from the Apostles….It is my fervent prayer that Nativity School will decide to display only banners which will complement the Cross of Christ which tells them why they are loved.”

The bishop’s rebuke fell on deaf ears. The school remained unmoved.  Nativity chose its standard. And so, after several corrections, the bishop’s hand was forced: could he himself to turn a blind eye to obvious scandal in his diocese or must he uphold virtue and Catholic teaching? On June 10, Bishop McManus did what his duty required of him as a guardian of souls. In accordance with Canon Law, which gives the bishop of the diocese the authority and the duty to nominate which schools in his diocese are or are not Catholic, he ordered, among other things, that Nativity remove Catholic from its name and its description, nor can it be listed in the directory among the Catholic institutions; and that “Mass, sacraments, and sacramentals are no longer permitted to be celebrated on Nativity School premises or sponsored” by the school in other churches or chapels in the diocese.

Bishop McManus’s point was clear. The Pride flag obviously symbolizes what is impossible and sinful: marriage or conjugal unions between people of the same sex. And the Black Lives Matter flag, while it primarily seems to signify something laudable (the promotion of the notion that racism is itself contrary to love of neighbor), is the standard of an organization that stands in stark contrast to the natural and Catholic reality of the family.

It was reported that the Black Lives Matter movement had originally posted “What We Believe.” Their creed included their goal to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.”

Rather than realize the error of its ways, Nativity has remained obstinate and seeks to appeal the bishop’s rightful decree. In the meantime, McKenney says in his statement, “Nativity will continue to display the flags in question to give visible witness to the school’s solidarity with our students, families, and their communities.” McKinney adds, in another touch of irony, “Commitment to our mission, grounded and animated by Gospel values, Catholic Social Teachings, and our Jesuit heritage compels us to do so.”

“This is a mental representation of the place,” wrote St. Ignatius in the Spiritual Exercises.  “It will be here to see a great plain, comprising the whole region about Jerusalem, where the sovereign the Commander-in-Chief of all the good is Christ our Lord; and another plain about the region of Babylon, where the chief of the enemy is Lucifer.” The standards are chosen; the flags are raised.