Don't Swell; Don't Tell
Michelle McCusker, 26, an unmarried pre-school teacher at St. Rose of Lima School in Brooklyn, N.Y., made the morbid mistake, one month after her full-time employment, of informing her principal, that s
he (McCusker) was pregnant. Although the news was originally accepted by the principal in the confidential teacher-principal conference, the principal, Theresa Anderson, terminated McClusker two days later from her $30,000/year employment, which also forced the cancellation of her health insurance policy, which McClusker would so desperately need for the birthing.
Less than two weeks later, the Catholic diocese of Brooklyn upheld the principal’s decision: “You’re single, unmarried; you’re terminated since you do not uphold and reflect the Catholic morals we expected you to and which you agreed to abide by” – the diocese’s official verbatim notification to McCusker before Christmas, 2005.
Interpretation? “Merry Christmas, McCusker. ‘Tis the season to be jolted. When the Catholic hierarchy sings Ho-Ho-Ho, it really means Hoe-Hoe-Hoe.”
One would think that a multi-billion dollar worldwide Catholic Church, so adept at handling comparable, perennial personal affairs among its members, would have effected a trite more understanding, and at the very minimum, allowed McCusker to at least finish out her first tri-semester, leave quietly, and possibly return to her position after some in-depth counseling on the matter.
Life’s journeys are filled with boardwalks. Things happen under them. How respectable it would have been of the Church to award a pink blanket instead of a pink slip. Its decision received little support from St. Rose’s parishioners and the school's parents.
Over 28 major national news media had a field day with the incident slamming McCusker with such notoriety on the case that she had to retreat into a hidden igloo of shame – but not for long. McCusker’s request to the New York Civil Liberties Union to file suit against the Church for discrimination was joyfully welcomed by the union.
Ann Schissel, the head of Reproductive Rights of the NYCLU stated it quite succinctly. Quoting from the principal’s letter of termination to McCusker, she said, “Your teaching ability and love of your children was of a high degree of professionalism.” McCusker herself added, “If I decided to abort the baby, the decision to fire me would not have been made because they would not have known. If the father of the baby is a fellow teacher or a priest, what happens to him?” Neither the principal nor the diocesan hierarchy attempted to determine who the father was, answering the query with a one-word response,“Irrelevant.”
The Church, regardless of its infinite denials, still persists in its unabashed discriminatory policies against its female members and employees. Nothing new.
The Church will alter its policies as it sees fit, constantly vascillating on its doctrines and dogmas. The faithful still reel from the Church’s national and worldwide sexual abuse scandal of its priests and bishops, most of whom were hidden, transferred, or outrageously defended via secretive out-of-court settlements. In all of these cases, no mention is made of the biblical verse: “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”
The Church’s non-advertised message remains: If you’re a quasi-sinless male under suspicion, we will support you in our own camouflaged ways. If you’re a sinful female, we will throw you into the public’s lion’s den to be clawed, ripped, and shredded to the bones.
The Church’s policy is not pro-life. It’s pro-wife. It is not pro-virgin. It is pro-virgin for unmarried females only. As with most of its policies, the Catholic Church leads the world in hypocrisy, deceit, and disgust.
WJK-1/06
