Posted on 01/03/2006 6:16:33 AM PST by NYer
Professors Ellen Kennedy and Leigh Lawton had traveled together before for the University of St. Thomas. Where they slept was never an issue.
But last month, as they prepared for a long-planned trip with students to Australia, they got a call from a St. Thomas official asking about their "living" arrangements for the trip.
Kennedy, 57, and Lawton, 61, live together as unmarried, heterosexual partners. The university decided they could go to Australia only if they took separate rooms. They refused, considering it deceitful.
The flight left Friday with other faculty on board. The controversy won't be leaving any time soon.
Kennedy and Lawton's story is the talk among faculty and staff at the Catholic university. It comes months after St. Thomas told a lesbian choral director she couldn't officially bring her partner along on a trip to France with a university choir.
That story, playing out the past few weeks in the campus newspaper, and the emerging account of Kennedy and Lawton have spawned a complex campus debate over Catholic doctrine, the teachings of Jesus and the university's legal reach.
There's no doubt where the church stands on homosexuality and unmarried couples living together. Others ask how far the university intends to go to enforce Catholic values.
"If sin and vice become disqualifying factors for university employees, then students might have to start teaching themselves," theology professor David Landry wrote in a recent faculty newsletter.
University officials acknowledge that the travel policy is ambiguous and say they hope to fix it in the coming months. It's unclear, for instance, whether it's OK for unmarried couples in relationships to attend a professional conference or if it matters whether students are part of the trip.
It's complicated, too, because the university was willing to let Lawton and Kennedy travel together as long as they pretended not to sleep in the same room. Officials told the pair just to get two rooms; no bed checks were planned.
There's been talk on campus that Archbishop Harry Flynn, chairman of the St. Thomas board, played a role, but university officials say that's not true.
"The bottom line is it's not appropriate, we don't feel as a Catholic university, for unmarried partners, homosexual or heterosexual, to travel together" officially with students, said Doug Hennes, vice president for university and government relations.
The issue surfaced earlier this year after Ann Schrooten, a temporary music instructor and interim director of the Liturgical Choir, planned to have her female partner and their son accompany her on the choir's trip to France. The administration stepped in after a couple of students raised concerns about the arrangement.
The university told Schrooten it wouldn't be appropriate for an unmarried partner, gay or straight, to travel with the choir. The university, however, was willing to help Schrooten pay for her partner's travel as long as the arrangements were separate from the school program. She chose not to go on the trip. (Schrooten said Friday that St. Thomas first argued her partner presented a "moral dilemma" to students and only later focused the issue on not being married.)
The campus newspaper Aquin reported the story in November, prompting a flurry of responses. Some students applauded the university's defense of Catholic values; others accused the university of bias. A university employment committee rejected Schrooten's claim that she was discriminated against because she is a lesbian.
Kennedy said university officials were always polite and at times seemed embarrassed about the questions. She and Lawton are longtime professors on campus who have lived together for 12 years and whose relationship is no secret. They led a St. Thomas-sponsored trip in 2002 and accompanied St. Thomas students on a 2003 Semester at Sea program; no one asked them then where they would sleep.
Kennedy began planning the month-long Australia trip two years ago. It included four departments and studies ranging from refugees to human rights. Lawton initially planned to come at his own expense but eventually took on an administrative role.
Neither is Catholic. They believe they got tangled in the hard line the university took with Schrooten. They say they're not angry with the university but want to know what the legal boundaries are.
"Where does the line get drawn?" Lawton asked.
Legally, St. Thomas seems to be on firm ground.
Religious institutions have had employment decisions based on moral conduct upheld, as long as that was the real reason for the decision and the rules were evenly applied to men and women, said Marie Failinger, who teaches law at Hamline University and edits the Journal of Law and Religion.
These conflicts have been an issue with religious Protestant universities more often than Catholic institutions, but "it's a growing trend for Catholic universities to take their Catholic identity more seriously," she said. "Maybe you'll see more of these cases in the future."
St. Thomas officials hope to draft a new travel policy this month. Faculty members are expected to discuss the issue at a meeting Feb. 3.
Landry, the theology professor, recently asked the question, "What would Jesus do?" and noted that in the Gospel of John, Jesus did not judge an unmarried Samaritan woman with a partner.
"He does not seem excessively concerned about the bad example she sets for her hearers, only that she is doing good and bringing others to faith," he wrote. "I thought I worked for the kind of institution that followed the example of Jesus."
Landry wrote in an e-mail that the response to his essay from faculty and staff has been overwhelmingly positive: "There are a lot of people who are worried and/or angry about this."
I agree. This is a private institution and should make rules as they wish. If it was a public universtity I would have a completely different outlook on the situation even though morally I would still consider it wrong, I would side with the school if it were public.
Imagine that! A Catholic University standing up for Catholic vakues!
Too bad the selfish narcissistic professors can't do the same.
Just wondering why these two upstanding citizens will not marry. Could it be that one or both have a spouse they have not yet divorced?
I promise that if the church was aware of the situation (that they were having sex before marriage), that is they were honest with the priest, there was some pennance to be done and some counceling that they had to go through.
I know this because I went through it. I never purported to be perfect. My fiance and I lived together in San Fransicso when we both lost roomates within a week of each other and could not afford rent at either place alone. Whether are reasons for living together were acceptable or not was not the point. We did have sex before marriage and it was wrong. We were honest whit our priest in our interview to be married in the church. We obstained per our priest orders and our pennance until we were married.
Go ask your friends about their pennance, confessions or discussions with the priest(s) regarding how the church let them get married. A family member of mine and her husband "fibbed" to the priest because of embarrasment, fear, etc. I did not approve of that either.
But again, I am not one to judge.
The Catholic Church could learn a whole lot from the Mormons, though sometimes (Mitt Romney comes to mind) I'm afraid the Mormons are "learning" from us.
The problem is that these people have relatives, friends and local clergy who do not love them enough to let them know that they are living in a state of mortal sin.
Any priest worth his salt, upon learning during pre-Cana that this couple is co-habitating, would have instructed them that they need to go to confression before they can receive the Sacrament of Matrimony.
It reminds me of a story told by a parish priest in Florida where my in-laws vacation. A couple was meeting with him to schedule their wedding in his church. When he asked each of them their addresses, they both gave him the same address. He asked them if they were living together. The woman responded, "Is that still wrong?"
Catholic Encyclopedia.
"Adultery is defined as carnal connection between a married person and one unmarried, or between a married person and the spouse of another. It is seen to differ from fornication in that it supposes the marriage of one or both of the agents."
About 4 years ago my wife's sister and her boyfriend came to visit us from out of town for a few days. My daughter was at the time about 12.
My wife asked if they didn't mind sleeping in separate rooms while they were at our house as we were/are raising our daughter to be a good Catholic.
You would have thought we had asked them to clean the septic tank. They got all huffy and left immediately, and the relationship has never been the same.
Snip... The names are Ellen and Leigh. I read that as both females, heterosexual . . . and I just don't see a problem.
Uh oh, you have a case of posting a comment and not reading the article.
From the article:
Kennedy, 57, and Lawton, 61, live together as unmarried, heterosexual partners.
It's always a good thing to read before you post.
;o)
And if flouting sin and vice becomes a badge of courage for university employees, then students might be better off teaching themselves.
It's better to have no role models than to have bad role models.
Hmmm, they have a very interesting take on the episode of the Samaritan woman.
What do you consider the Church's teaching on, say, the death penalty. Because as far as I know, the Church's teaching is that a government has the legitimate right to use the death penalty, as long as it does so justly.
"And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness:All these evil things come from within, and defile the man." Mark 7:20-23 (KJV)
Leigh can also be a man's name. More common in the UK than here.
If they don't follow Catholic teaching, why the heck would they want to get married in the church anyway?
Your wife did the right thing. Your house, your rules.
kinda like saying we're all swimmers here, therefore we should all try to swim across the ocean.
Okay, thanks for the explanation. I have only had the guts to ask one couple how they did it because I am pretty close to both. The rest, well, I think it would have been rude of me. Anyway, it just strikes me as hypocritical of the Church and its always bugged me. What couples do is their business, but the Church allowing this stuff is just weird to me, penance or not.
I don't understand... which one is the man?
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