"Vatican erred in suspending US archbishop’s decision to strip ‘Catholic’ label from pro-gay school"

"Archbishop Charles Thompson of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis acted on principle and revoked the Catholic status of Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School, after two years of dialogue, when they refused to dismiss a teacher who had entered into a so-called homosexual 'marriage' with another teacher in the Archdiocese. Archbishop Thompson is one of those prelates Einstein would have respected for his courage to uphold the moral and natural law. Following the Archbishop’s action, the recriminations from the dissenting Jesuit community were immediate and predictable. The school 'declined to honor' the Archbishop’s directives, issued a press release decrying his actions, and immediately appealed the decision to the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education, the church equivalent of a civil lawsuit. The gay teacher remains in place at Brebeuf while his partner was fired from the other Catholic high school that was directly under the supervision of the Archbishop. Unsurprisingly, his partner is now suing the archdiocese for, among other things, 'discrimination,' wrongful termination and emotional distress. The ideological headwinds are buffeting the Church again. What happened next is more astonishing, however. Two weeks after the action of Archbishop Thompson, the Congregation for Catholic Education temporarily suspended the Archbishop’s decree to revoke the Catholic status of the Jesuit school... The Congregation, in a press release, hastened to assure the public that this was only a temporary suspension while reviewing the Jesuits’ complaint against the Archdiocese. But one may reasonably ask: What exactly needs to be reviewed? The long-standing position of the Catholic Church that homosexual acts are objectively immoral? The illegitimate 'marriage' of the two teachers? This is a position of the natural and moral laws, and there is nothing in them that a Congregation of the Vatican can change... One of the most immediate consequences of the decision by the Congregation is that it has deprived the Archdiocese of its main legal defense against the homosexual partner suing for 'discrimination.' While American civil law has long upheld the right of religious organizations to define and enforce their own moral codes, the solidarity of Church authority regarding our own teaching is essential to that recognition. Bishops without backing from Rome are now bishops without legal ramparts against pressure groups."