The aim of a Catholic school is to promote, through the example and teaching of the entire educating community, the integral formation of its students in accordance with the beliefs, practices and ethos of the Catholic Church.  This involves the development of the whole person of the student, including, therefore, the physical, intellectual, emotional, social, artistic, moral and spiritual aspects of the person.  This integral formation has as its goal a coherent lifestyle in which all aspects are in harmony and balance.  An essential part of this process is that, in their parents, in the teaching staff and in the community, students be able to observe models of adult living of such a coherent lifestyle.

Teachers at a Catholic school have all the inalienable rights that every human being possesses simply by being a human being, and they have all the rights accorded to them by both the Church and the State.  However, so do the students, their parents and the Church community.   It is not lawful for any of these groups to exercise their rights in a manner that is harmful to the rights of the other groups.  The rights of the different persons involved in any situation must be balanced against each other.

Catholic schools exist because the Catholic community wishes to give an integral Catholic education to its younger members.  In the name of that community, and with the aid of significant amounts of money provided by it, Church authorities establish the schools and employ the teachers. Parents then freely choose to entrust their children to that school.  The teachers, therefore, have a classroom of students to teach only because the Church community and the parents have freely chosen to entrust the students to them.  Even after the child has entered the classroom, the parents, the students and the Church community all retain certain rights, including the right to expect that the teacher will teach in accordance with the aims of a Catholic school.

It follows that, if any member of a school staff acts in a manner that harms the integral formation of the students in accordance with the school’s Catholic ethos, the school may justifiably take whatever steps are necessary to prevent this harm, in extreme cases even by dismissing that member of staff.  To deny this authority to the school would be to deny the school the right to achieve the purpose for which it was founded and for which the parents entrusted their child to that school.

 

THE TEACHER AS A PUBLIC FIGURE

Within the school community the teacher is not just a private individual, but also a public figure.  Because of this a teacher’s private life cannot be divorced from his or her public teaching, for in the teaching of the young it is not possible to say one thing while doing the opposite.  If the students are aware of a contradiction between what is said publicly and what is done privately, a coherent lifestyle is not being presented to them and their integral formation is being harmed.  If the contradiction becomes a known fact within the school community, the school authorities may need to take steps to prevent the harm to the rights of others that could flow from it.

In line with this principle, all schools have professional standards, including moral standards, for their teachers.  No school would tolerate a teacher who corrupted the young by such things as selling or distributing prohibited drugs or by sexual abuse of children.  No school would tolerate a teacher having an affair with his or her own student, even if the student were over the age of consent.

In addition to such basic standards, teachers in a Catholic school may not, by words or actions, convey to the students a message that is contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church, for this would violate the rights of other persons.  Teachers may hold in their own minds opinions that are contrary to the teachings of the Church, but they may not use their public position as teachers in a Catholic school to convey these opinions to the students whom the Church community and the parents have entrusted to them.  If they wished to convey such opinions, they would need to find another forum in which other parents were willing to have these opinions conveyed to their children. 

The contradiction between private lifestyle and public teaching can arise from many sources.  It can come from things such as violence in personal relationships, attitudes of racism or sexism, the advocating of violence to achieve social objectives, the use and distribution of prohibited drugs, disregard for the rights of others or for the law of the land, any form of offence against children or any lack of respect for the dignity of children.

It is sad but true that many of the conflicts in Catholic schools arise in the area of sexual relationships.  Individual teachers are entitled to the opinion that this happens only because the Catholic Church has outdated and oppressive views on the subject, but the Church community and the parents have an equal right to hold that personal relationships are fragile and yet profound, never to be taken lightly, and that the dignity of marriage and the family must be strongly defended in a society which frequently and in many different ways appears not to value them as highly as it might.  It is important to understand that differences here are not solely about sex, but also about the place marriage should have within the church and society at large.  Persons who live together without marriage are in practice supporting the view that marriage is no more than one among several equal options.

While it is rare to meet disagreements between teachers and the Church on the other subjects mentioned, in the matter of sexual relationships it is more common to meet teachers who are willing to take an open stand on their own opinion.  For this very reason, the field of sexual relationships usually makes for poor examples from which to draw principles of action, for the issue can quickly become an emotional one and people tend to take sides on the particular case according to their opinion on the rightness or wrongness of the actions concerned.  However, the point is not whether the action is right or wrong.  The point is that the action is contrary to the Catholic formation of the students by a person who holds the public position of teacher within a Catholic school.

The private lifestyle of a teacher can not be in itself the basis for any form of disciplinary action against a teacher by the school, for this would infringe the rights of the teacher as a private individual.  The basis for action would have to be the fact that a private lifestyle contrary to the beliefs and ethos of the Catholic Church was in some manner brought to the school and made part of the teacher’s teaching of the students, for at this point the rights of other persons must also be considered,

Does this mean that the Church is encouraging teachers to be hypocritical by doing one thing at home, but saying the opposite at school?  No, it means that what a teacher does in private does not affect the rights of others, but what that same teacher publicly teaches at school does affect the rights of others.  It is the teacher who would have to consider whether there was hypocrisy in his or her actions.

To take an example, if a particular teacher privately held strongly racist views, but realised that these views were contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church and so made sure that such views were never expressed by word or action at school, there would be no basis for disciplinary action, however much the Church might detest such views.  It is the teacher who would have to decide whether there was hypocrisy in holding such views while teaching the opposite at a Catholic school.

On the other hand, if the teacher brought the racist views to school and taught them openly, or even treated students differently because of their racial origins, the school would have not merely the right but also the obligation to take any steps necessary to prevent harm to the students.

The most difficult case occurs when it is not the teacher but some other person who brings to the knowledge of the students the fact that a particular teacher holds views contrary to those of the Catholic Church.  The school would have to decide in the individual case between the harm caused to the rights of the teacher by acting on knowledge coming from a third person and the harm caused to the students by the knowledge that their teacher e.g. held racist views concerning themselves.

Whatever principles we draw from the example of a person who holds racist views must be applied across the board and may, therefore, apply also to a person living in a sexual relationship that is contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church.                                                                

 

1. It cannot be assumed that a person applying for a position at a Catholic school has a detailed awareness of the aims and ethos of the school and of the expectations that the school will have of the teacher.  To avoid accusations of injustice, it would seem necessary to spell out basic information to prospective teachers. 

At the same time, a claim of ignorance by a teacher can have only limited weight, for a teacher at a Catholic school must know that he or she is expected to teach in accordance with the beliefs of the Catholic Church and must also know that actions will always speak louder than words.  In the same way, whether a document spelling out information exists or not, teachers who take positions at a Moslem school must know that there will be serious problems if they offer alcohol to their students, either at school or at home; teachers at an Orthodox Jewish school must know that they are inviting an official reaction if they encourage their students to play football on a Saturday.

2. Every effort must be made to give teachers as much freedom as possible in their private lives, even though some aspects are not in conformity with Church teaching.

3. The only occasions when a school would be justified in taking measures against a teacher for actions that were not publicly known at the school would be when the teacher became involved in positive harm to the young, e.g. through selling or distributing drugs or through sexual abuse of children, or when the potential harm to students was very great, e.g. when a teacher became addicted to heroin.

4. In most cases it would appear essential that the teacher had in some way brought the lifestyle to school and made it part of his or her teaching of the students, for this is the point at which it ceases to be a private decision and impinges on the rights of others.

5. The more difficult case occurs when the teacher is not actively teaching a particular lifestyle, but it is publicly known at the school that the teacher is living that lifestyle.  There are two sides to this question.

On the one hand, teachers cannot be naïve about such matters.  To take a much discussed example, if a teacher starts living with a person of the other sex without benefit of marriage, it is unrealistic to expect that no one will ever mention this fact to anyone at the school, for there are perfectly legitimate reasons for passing on information about mutual friends and colleagues.  In many situations, especially in country towns, it would take a positive conspiracy of silence to prevent the knowledge from reaching the students at the school.

The mere fact that a male and a female are living under the one roof does not mean that sexual relationships are taking place, but it is misleading to claim, as is sometimes done, that the school authorities must in each case produce positive proof that the relationship is a sexual one.  In the final analysis, it is not a question of whether the relationship is a sexual one or not, but of whether harm is being caused to the Catholic formation of the students.  And harm is being caused if the students perceive a contradiction between the teacher’s private lifestyle and public teaching and are not acting unreasonably in doing so.

Teachers have an obligation not merely not to contradict their role as teachers in a Catholic school, but also not to create circumstances in which it is not unreasonable for students to see a contradiction.  If, in all such circumstances, the schools concerned simply turned a blind eye, reasonable people would conclude that the Church no longer attached any importance to its teaching in this field and considered students free to follow the example of the teachers concerned.  At this point teachers’ rights come up against the Church’s obligations to respect the rights of the other people involved.

On the other hand, teachers also have rights in these matters and the following points would have to be respected.

a) Only in an extreme case of positive, proximate and serious harm to students could a dismissal be an instant one.  In all other cases the perceived contradiction between lifestyle and teaching should be discussed, and both the teacher and the school given the opportunity to work through the situation.  In general terms, the requirements of due process should be followed.

b) Church or school authorities should never place themselves in the position of investigating police.  They should take action only when the matter is brought to the school and becomes, in practice, part of what is being taught.

c)  There are many grades of inconsistency between private lifestyle and public teaching, and there are many measures that school authorities can take in order to prevent a perceived harm to the students.  Dismissal should never be seen as an automatic penalty for all actions considered harmful to the formation of the students.

d)  In some matters it is legitimate to make distinctions between full-time teachers, part-time teachers and other school staff, between those teaching Religious Education and those not teaching Religious Education, or between teachers and executive staff.

e) It is legitimate to make distinctions between isolated incidents and frequent occurrences, between temporary situations and on-going situations, and human frailty should never be confused with ill-will.

f)  The total impact of a teacher on a school also deserves consideration.

g)  Since the most important factor is always the good of the students, it needs to be remembered that children can have a quite different scale of values to that of adults.  Incidents which do not affect adults can affect children deeply, while incidents which do affect adults do not always affect children in the same way.      

h)  Before deciding to take any action based on anonymous information or on the actions of a person who deliberately brought a private matter into the open, the school would need to remind itself that, in particular circumstances, to act on such a basis could cause a greater scandal than any caused by the matter brought forward.

i)  In deciding what action might need to be taken, it would not be legitimate to make any distinction between lay, religious and clerical teachers.

6.  In interviewing an applicant for the role of teacher, it is legitimate to ask those questions that would determine the suitability of the person to promote the integral human and Catholic formation of students within a Catholic school.  It is not legitimate to ask questions about private lifestyle, but it is legitimate to ask questions about a commitment to the ethos of the Catholic school both in word and example.

7.  It follows that it is legitimate to consider personal faith commitment in deciding whether to employ a teacher and, in particular, in deciding whether to promote a person to the roles of Religious Education Coordinator, Pastoral Care Coordinator, Deputy Principal or Principal.

8.  Dismissal is a very serious step and it is essential that there be consistency throughout the system.  For this reason, no teacher should ever be dismissed without reference to the Catholic Education Office of the diocese.