St. Joan of Arc

Bill Cork has been keeping us informed about the latest controversies surrounding St. Joan of Arc parish in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The latest bruhaha surrounds Archbishop Harry Flynn's decision to rescind a catechetical award which was to be given to St. Joan's DRE, along with 18 other catechists in the archdiocese. Why did the archbishop make this decision? Because it was brough to his attention that Kathy Itzin, the DRE in question, lives which her committed lesbian partner.

St. Joan's reacted to this decision with a great deal of anger and frustration, bemoaning the fact that the "official" Church is so hateful and intolerant towards homosexuals. Such is, of course, not at all the case. The Catholic Church has a clear and well-known teaching on homosexual acts, and those who teacher the Church's doctrine are de facto expected to actually teach the Church's doctrine! A parish DRE is responsible for seeing that what is transmitted to the parishioners is the deposit of faith, not one's own perspectives. Furthermore, a catechist is expected to live that deposit; while we are all sinners and hence are guaranteed to occasionally fall short, it is a completely different thing to deliberately and unrepentantly live in contradiction to that deposit. Ms. Itzin, by choosing to act out on her homosexuality and live with another homosexual, lives in what might rightly be considered perpetual contradiction to the faith which she is charged with handing in. This is unacceptable, and Archbishop Flynn is to be commended for acting as he did.