And here is another article accompanying it.
BTW, good recap, but I need to add a few things:
1. It was wrong to allow the father of the baby to attend, while not allowing the mother. They are both party to the sin of sex outside of marriage; they should both undertake the consequences.
1a--We do not know who the father is or anything about him other than this heavily biased article claiming he walked when the ill-behaved, pregnant teen did not, and the claim the father walked is likely on the word of an ill-behaved, pregnant teen. We do not know this to be true, and it's doubtful, if only because the article would have named the father were that alleged AND believed true by its author. The pregnant teen's name was used--there is no reason the father's would not have been had any evidence of paternity been credible. This is essentially accepting the word of a liberal's anonymous source, and we know how reliable those are.
2. This is a private school, and they have a right to enforce the rules as they see fit.
2a--The school was almost childishly inconsistent with their application or promulgation. If the rules were that graduates must accept a moral code to graduate, and only now was this made clear, not informing them of this double-secret probation and ducking under a 'safety' claim was stupid. If the rules are clear and stated, then the school should have stood by them. And if the rules are not stated, but the Catholic hierarchy there makes the decision, it should have had the guts to make it instead of the safety cop-out.
Nonetheless, what the school DID say, should have been accepted and enforced by the parents. That it was not remotely accepted, by the parents or the child, is further testimony to the obviously poor parenting this child received.
2. If there are *no* consequences to her actions, then it encourages others to believe that there will be no consequences for them, either.
2a--If the consequence is that her aunt and mother are removed from the church by police, that is not even a slap on the wrist. An administrative solution that would have avoided this mess would have been to completely deny her the right to walk in graduation and not give her a diploma until after the graduation walk. Instead, the school administration proved its incompetence again, gave her license to abuse their weak assertion of school rules, and neglected to announce to the students that the walk of graduation was not the same as the actual graduation, that getting a diploma mailed to them later hinged upon satisfactory behavior at that event as well.
As a result, there will be NO consequence to her for her misbehavior, at least, as evidenced in this article. The proper consequence should have been the same as if a graduating student down a quart of whiskey on stage or ripped up a picture of the Pope as they walked across--expulsion for violation of the school's moral code, and failure to graduate. Again, if there isn't any such code, the administration is at fault. They are 100% at fault for their mixed message; she is 100% at fault for her misbehavior both before and after it. She should suffer for it; the administrator should be REMOVED as unable to inculcate a set of moral values in his/her students. If you cannot hold a hard line with teenagers and be honest about why, you should not be a Catholic high school administrator.
3. We can be supportive of her decision to have the baby without applauding or being accepting of her having sex. This is the silver lining in the cloud, but we dont' have to embrace or celebrate the cloud.
3a--Everyone acts as if disapproval of her walking meant the only solution for the girl would have been an abortion, as if discouraging the casual acceptance of bastardy at a Catholic school is the equivalent of encouraging babykilling. It is not. I disapprove of kids sneaking free bus rides, but if a kid goes and steals a car because he can't ride the bus free, I'm not responsible, and I didn't make him steal that car. That immoral act is his alone. The immorality of the act of abortion falls on that act of the abortionist and the people who do nothing to stop it, not that of the people that condemn abortion, and the improper sexual relations that could lead to it as here they might have. If she was not pregnant and had handed out condoms on stage during graduation instead of running up pregnant afterward, the vitriol here would be pouring out; but put a baby in the equation and suddenly, every post is a damn Afternoon Schoolbreak Special about how wonderful she is for keeping the baby and how accepting we should be, and how it's hypocrisy for pro-lifers to discourage bastardy.
The fact is that the broad societal acceptance of illegitimacy has resulted in it skyrocketing. The acceptance of teenage sex and its result, with no stigma attached for either, has resulted in MORE abortions and even MORE bastardy. It may be better for her to have this baby, and put the baby up for adoption, but 5 will get you 50 there will be no adoption here with parenting like this. This child will beget a bastard who will beget another or abort another. Discouraging bastardy discourages repeated bastardy, not just one child, but a host of them. Those who fail to see that are blinding themselves to the fact that more often than not, early discipline prevents later delinquency.
And by the way, not committing another mortal sin does not absolve you of committing a mortal sin, in the eyes of the Catholic church. If you refrain from fornication, it doesn't mean you get off for aborting your baby. The same should be true here--a sin is a sin, and while the Church has an obligation to accept sinners, granting this girl (and the baby's father, assuming she IS being truthful) the privilege of graduation while non-pregnant girls walk along is tacitly approving the behavior. Should the church approve a boy walking with them when all know he has no clothes under his robe because it discourages him from streaking entirely?
6. If it were me, and I tried to do that: my MOTHER would have tanned my hide all the way across the stage and chewed me a new one for shaming the family in a public display of petulant selfishness; my FATHER would have made me apologize to everyone for being so disrepectful; they both would have left me to find my own way home, and when I got there, my stuff would have been on the front lawn.
---That would never have happened to my sister. My father and mother would simply have kept her home after they found out she was pregnant. She would have been chained to a radiator for the remainder of her pregnancy (maybe not literally, but certainly figuratively), and given up the baby for adoption (or married the father, if he survived the beating my father and I gave him). And had I been the father of a bastard, you can bet I'd have been marrying the mother, and nowhere near a graduation line, either, but at work instead, after I healed my broken tailbone, since my father would have kicked my ass to China.
But neither of those things happened because our parents told us this before we were even old enough to know how pregnancy worked and that we would be meeting Jesus much sooner if we were the cause of one. And we knew that if our parents ever even heard about us screwing around, we'd be grounded until we were too old to breed or shipped off to a nunnery/seminary.
I doubt that the parents of this little darling ever even told her "no," let alone told her that under their roof, she was under their rules. Assuming their rules weren't 'use a condom.'