A New Federal Test for Discerning Religious Identity at Catholic Universities

Catholic Culture ^ | 12/22/14

[marshmallow]

The Cardinal Newman Society (CNS), a Virginia-based group that works to protect Catholic identity in Catholic colleges and universities, has warmly welcomed a decision by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which ruled last week that a college’s claim to religious identity should be judged according to whether individual employees perform religious functions.

In recent years the NLRB has involved itself in the hiring decisions of faith-based schools, devising complicated criteria to judge whether a particular hiring decision is protected by religious-freedom claims. But in a noteworthy decision last week the NLRB said that the relevant criterion should be whether the employees perform religious funcitnos.

“For the most part, this is a huge victory for The Cardinal Newman Society, religious colleges and all who have challenged the NLRB’s violations of religious freedom over the past 25 years,” said Patrick Reilly, the president of the Cardinal Newman Society. He pointed to the NLRB’s recognition that it “must not impinge on a university’s religious rights.”

[GreyFriar]

Ah, the priest and sister get exempted from having to have birth control and abortion in their health plans, but the catholic professor of history or literature or of “science” courses are not.

[G Larry]

Cute....

Now some BUREAUCRAT gets to decide what constitutes a “religious function”...

I teach Adult Catholic Education...is THAT a “religious function”?

Exactly what qualifies a BUREAUCRAT to make such a determination?

[Salvation]

Exactly!

[dangus]

>> Ah, the priest and sister get exempted from having to have birth control and abortion in their health plans, but the catholic professor of history or literature or of “science” courses are not. <<

That is the test that the Obama administration wanted and the Newman Society opposed. Unless the Newman Society is spinning a loss as a win, (I haven’t read the details of the new rules), the new test says that since the university as a whole serves a religious purpose, anyone who contributes to that religious purpose is covered. If the university doesn’t see science, history or literature as contributing to a religious purpose, than that’s a problem, because the Catholic church has made abundantly clear that the liberal arts and the pursuit of scientific knowledge is a religious purpose.

My guess is that Georgetown has a problem, the colleges endorsed by the Newman Society don’t.

[dangus]

FROM NLRB:

Moreover, the NLRB’s new approach is likely to encourage an important conversation that The Cardinal Newman Society has pressed in Catholic higher education: Should all professors at a Catholic college have a specifically religious function, with the expectation that they will uphold Catholic values and doctrine and advance the college’s Catholic mission? The Newman Society has argued they should.
“For the most part, this is a huge victory for The Cardinal Newman Society, religious colleges and all who have challenged the NLRB’s violations of religious freedom over the past 25 years,” said Patrick J. Reilly, president of The Cardinal Newman Society. “The NLRB has been forced to retreat from an unconstitutional practice to an even weaker position—acknowledging our First Amendment concerns but still failing to comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling in NLRB v. Catholic Bishop of Chicago.”
- See more at: http://www.cardinalnewmansociety.org/CatholicEducationDaily/DetailsPage/tabid/102/ArticleID/3822/%E2%80%98Huge-Victory-%E2%80%99-%E2%80%98Opportunity%E2%80%99-for-Religious-Colleges-in-Labor-Board%E2%80%99s-Ruling.aspx#sthash.xlk4ts2I.dpuf

[dangus]

“This also presents a wonderful opportunity,” Reilly said. “The conversation that the NLRB has forced—considering whether all professors at a religious college hold an essentially religious function—is one that we enthusiastically welcome in Catholic higher education.”...

In its amicus brief with Catholic colleges, The Cardinal Newman Society called on the NLRB to follow federal court precedents and rely “on the institution’s own statements and behavior, rather than on the Board’s evaluation of it,” to determine whether a college is religious and exempt from federal oversight.

[GreyFriar]

My posting “science” was a sarcastic dig at those who say that science and Christianity don’t mix; and that could be added to all of a college’s non-theology courses by those whom bh0 consorts with.

It is good to know that about the Newman Society. Hopefully my alma mater, Saint Joseph’s College of Indiana, is on the list.

[Ohioan]

Nothing qualifies a bureaucrat to make these determinations. Nothing dependent upon an act of Congress--as the NLRB most clearly is--can ever have a say in religious functions. The First Amendment does not say the anti-reliegious things that the ACLU has managed to get some Federal Courts to agree to; but it most certainly prevents Congress from being able to interfere with religious establishments.

William Flax