Very interesting document. I’ll have to share this with …

Comment on GC document holds LSU professors accountable by Sean Pitman.

Very interesting document. I’ll have to share this with my local pastor and with my E-mail list…

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

Sean Pitman Also Commented

GC document holds LSU professors accountable

News Item of Interest

A math teacher who said in an online survey that she did not believe in God has been fired by an Iowa Catholic school after her views were discovered on her Facebook profile and after officials found she had posted a comment at an atheist website.

Last August the teacher, 27-year-old Abby Nurre, who had just been hired to teach eight-grade math at St. Edmond School in Fort Dodge, checked “no” in a Facebook survey about whether she believed in God, heaven and angels. Then in November she posted a link to a news article about federal funding of research on prayer in an online discussion forum run by atheists.

In December, five weeks after that posting, a student brought printouts of the websites to school officials, and Nurre was fired. The Catholic school, backed by the bishops of Iowa, also sought to deny Nurre unemployment benefits, which prompted a court hearing that concluded in her favor this week. She will still not be able to return to St. Edmond School, however.

“Each one of our teachers signs a contract when they are hired and one of the first things on the contract is the condition that they have to uphold our faith and teachings,” Kristie Arlt, director of communication for the Diocese of Sioux City, which covers Fort Dodge, told Politics Daily. Arlt said it did not matter that she taught math and not religion or a subject directly related to faith or morals.

“We have wonderful teachers who are not Catholics — some are Lutherans — but they cannot willingly and publicly take a stand against the Catholic faith. So this should not have been a surprise to her [Nurre].”…

“There were printouts of the Facebook page and of that Nexus group that the kids actually had,” he said. “When students in a Catholic school are running around the school with this survey and it says, ‘Do you believe in God?’ and it says, ‘No,’ well, that’s in conflict with what we are teaching.”

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/05/28/catholic-school-fires-math-teacher-who-may-not-believe-in-god/print/

The Week, June 11, 2010, p. 6

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


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I fail to see where you have convincingly supported your claim that the GC leadership contributed to the harm of anyone’s personal religious liberties? – given that the GC leadership does not and could not override personal religious liberties in this country, nor substantively change the outcome of those who lost their jobs over various vaccine mandates. That’s just not how it works here in this country. Religious liberties are personally derived. Again, they simply are not based on a corporate or church position, but rely solely upon individual convictions – regardless of what the church may or may not say or do.

Yet, you say, “Who cares if it is written into law”? You should care. Everyone should care. It’s a very important law in this country. The idea that the organized church could have changed vaccine mandates simply isn’t true – particularly given the nature of certain types of jobs dealing with the most vulnerable in society (such as health care workers for example).

Beyond this, the GC Leadership did, in fact, write in support of personal religious convictions on this topic – and there are GC lawyers who have and continue to write personal letters in support of personal religious convictions (even if these personal convictions are at odds with the position of the church on a given topic). Just because the GC leadership also supports the advances of modern medicine doesn’t mean that the GC leadership cannot support individual convictions at the same time. Both are possible. This is not an inconsistency.