Protesters gathered in seven cities across Ontario for “pray-ins” at Catholic school administrative buildings, urging boards to refrain from supporting the LGBT movement and flying the Pride flag.
True North attended one “pray-in” at the Durham Catholic District School Board in Oshawa that drew 20 participants on Monday. The school board headquarters had a pride flag hoisted and waving above a statue of the Catholic Saint Francis of Assisi.
The DCDSB voted to prohibit public delegations at trustee meetings opposing the flying of the Pride flag on school property.
“It’s really important for people to wake up to the fact that we’re losing our rights,” Thomas Partlow, a retired Catholic school teacher, told True North Monday. “To shut down any discussion sounds very communist to me. I’m sorry to say, I think we’ve been heading that way for many, many years.”
Partlow recalls protesting Bill 160 in the late 90s, anticipating a “major shift” that would result from provincial governments and trustees having more power over education, and parents having less of a say. He said Catholics at the time protested, knowing the shift would lead to a watering down of Catholic education.
Partlow and others at the protest affirmed that those at the protest and within the Catholic Church don’t hate LGBT people, but that the Church’s teachings on sin should not be rejected by Catholic school boards participating in the Pride movement.
“It’s our responsibility as Catholic teachers and people who support the Catholic system to support the difference that’s there. I remember we used to say ‘we’re a system with a difference, so people should be able to see that difference.’
He said Catholic schools ought to take the Pride flag down as it divides people when the word catholic means “universal.”
Along with protesting Catholic school boards that have opted to fly the pride flag during June for “Pride Month,” the “pray-ins” also called on Church leadership to play a more active role in affirming the church’s stance on pride, homosexuality and gender ideology.
On Thursday, the Archdiocese of Toronto, which oversees six Catholic school boards in its jurisdiction, including the DCDSB, released a statement urging those under its pastoral leadership to use exclusively Catholic symbols, and not those borrowed from political movements.
The statement affirmed that June was the Catholic month dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and called on Catholics to avoid statements that proliferate confusion about the Church’s teachings.
Several protesters expressed intense gratitude to Cardinal Frank Leo for his leadership and clear teaching on the matter, as many Catholic school trustees hold un-Catholic views when it comes to the Pride movement and its symbols.
Josie Luetke, the director of education and advocacy for Campaign Life, echoed the gratitude of many protesters. She led the Toronto contingent of the pray-ins, first at the Toronto Catholic District School Board, followed by prayers outside the Archdiocese of Toronto headquarters.
“We are so grateful for the message that he put out for the month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It was a really strong message. It could have been slightly more explicit in terms of mentioning the pride flag by name, because trustees are going to use every loophole they can get,” Luetke told True North. “but it was still the strongest statement that he’s put out thus far on the months the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and everyone who’s reading that message in good faith knows what he’s talking about.”
She restated how appreciative CLC is for the leadership demonstrated by Leo, but says her organization will continue to call on the Church leadership to be more explicit and active in the Catholic school system.
Pickering City Councillor Lisa Robinson attended the protest in Oshawa, carrying one of the several signs that read, “Make Catholic schools Catholic again.” After the organizer of the Oshawa protest led the group in prayer, Robinson gave a speech.
She said much like a Christian school shouldn’t promote promiscuity and sex before marriage, schools which purport to hold Christian values should not be flying a flag which represents similar sins.
“It just starts from the smallest little seed, and it keeps escalating,” Robinson said, noting the increased presence of sexuality and even pornographic books in schools. “So if you stop it at the schools when they’re children and let them just be children, then I don’t think we would have to be standing here out on this side of the road.”
She said LGBT people have the same rights as everyone else in Canada, their lifestyle is accepted as adults, but that the ideology shouldn’t be “pushed” on children, especially in a Catholic school.