Posted on 04/06/2006 10:11:21 AM PDT by Cheverus
When he confessed to impregnating his new girlfriend, the Catholic Church refused to marry a devoted parishioner, then last week fired him from his teaching position at Bishop Feehan High in Attleboro for choosing fatherhood over abortion or abandonment.
“Obviously in my heart, I wish he had not fathered a child out of wedlock, but I’m very, very proud of what he’s done: to choose life and love over his job,” glowing first-time grandmother Tammy McCoy of North Attleboro said yesterday of her son Robb McCoy and his 2-month-old daughter, Jaelyn Ruth.
“She’s terrific,” Tammy McCoy said. “She’s gorgeous. She’s a gift. This child is going to be loved. Is there anything more the church wants?”
McCoy, 27, claims he was forced to tender his resignation as both a social studies teacher and head coach of Bishop Feehan’s football team last Thursday because he violated the Diocese of Fall River’s celibacy policy for single employees.
When he found out last year his 21-year-old girlfriend was expecting his baby, McCoy met with his priest, the Rev. David Costa of Sacred Heart Parish in North Attleboro, to discuss the possibility of marriage.
“He wouldn’t allow it,” McCoy said. “He said it wasn’t a union of love, that we weren’t getting married for the right reasons.”
Costa yesterday declined to comment, but McCoy defended him.
“He was right,” McCoy said. “Marriage is still a possibility. Right now, the important thing is both of us being loving parents.”
Diocese spokesman John Kearns declined to provide a copy of the celibacy policy to the Herald or to comment on McCoy’s situation. “It’s a personnel matter,” Kearns said.
Sarah Wunsch, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, said McCoy, unlike a woman with a baby bump, could have cloaked his love life in secrecy.
“In a sense,” Wunsch said, “they’re punishing honesty. They’re punishing someone for not having an abortion. It’s just another thing the Catholic Church is doing that makes you wonder.”
McCoy, whose family invested $200,000 in his Catholic education, is hoping to land another teaching job.
“I want to raise my daughter,” he said. “There’s no ‘mistake’ about her. She’s awesome. I still have to look at myself in the mirror every day. I still have to look at my baby’s face. And you know what? Everything’s OK.”
Bad comparison. First, Joseph was already betrothed to Mary. She was not his new girlfriend. Second, when he found out she was pregnant, he decided to leave the relationship. Joseph did not impregnate Mary. Finally, when Joseph found out how the child was conceived from an angel of the Lord, then and only then did he marry her.
Rather, this goes to show that, even when the archdiocese does something "right" in the midst of many, many mistakes, it gets publicly pilloried regardless.
As anyone reading the threads on FR's religion forum can tell you, I am *hardly* a fan of the way things are getting done overall in the archdiocese of Boston. Nevertheless, I applaud the cardinal for upholding the clearly stated, previously disclosed rules in this case. Perhaps this signals a turn-around of sorts from the former collective mindset.
I saw a lengthy interview with this gentleman two nights ago. While I am thankful that his daughter is alive and well, I came away noting several things.
First, he consistently said that "we chose life over abortion for her," as if abortion *might* have been considered. Thank God he and his girlfriend made that choice, but the way it was phrased hardly makes them candidates for the Right-to-Life Couple of the Year.
Second, even he admits that the morals clause in his contract was disclosed to him well before the pregnancy, so it wasn't sprung on him. I wonder how much he was thinking about that before he did his thing with his girlfriend.
Third, speaking of his girlfriend, she was *entirely* absent from the interview, and he didn't so much as *mention* her by name or allusion even once! I wonder if that is because she wants to marry the guy and he has thus far refused.
Fourth, he himself, in depicting his options, never once mentioned that the "option" of marrying his girlfriend and mother of his child has been available to him during the entire 11 months from the child's conception to the present. He makes this whole thing sound like the mean old Archdiocese of Boston is firing him without due recourse to a modification of behavior as an option first. Well, clearly, this is a self-imposed deprivation of options, he and his girlfriend have had the option of marriage all along!
The whole story was slanted in such a way as to highlight the puritanical, antediluvian morals of the archdiocese as demonstrably hypocritical in light of the recent and massive sexual abuse scandal. In a way, that's fair enough, coming from a secular organ disinterested in the Church's teachings. The Church has only itself to blame in the hamstringing of its role as moral teacher around here, and it will have to suffer the slings and arrows of hypocrisy charges for some time to come, I suppose. But this guy, aiding and abetting the chorus of "Hypocrisy!" through his whining about something he knew the consequences of in advance, deserves no sympathy. Let him marry the woman who gave birth to his daughter, and then I imagine the archdiocese would be willing to discuss his reinstatement (if only to get the secular world's approval).
Until then, we should thank God that the Cardinal is putting principles over pragmatics, even if, on the surface, it heightens potential embarrassment. Too bad he and his predecessors didn't disregard issues of public embarrassment earlier, in other matters...
There were no "no-fault" divorces until recently. If a new-boyfriend and new-girlfriend cannot show discipline and self-restraint in the first few months of their relationship, it shows they are not mature enough for marriage.
I would hand them Benedict's new encyclical on love and have them read it together. Ask questions and discuss it with them. If they appear to be devoted to living a marriage of true Christian love, then I'd ok the marriage.
They have to mature a bit. The girlfriend deciding not to kill her child and the boyfriend willing to raise the child is a good start. However, it is only a beginning. They need continue their growth in maturity.
I saw this in someone's profile...
I think we may be neck and neck on how little a fan of the workings of the Archdiocese of Boston we are (I do have the handicap of having worked in the Chancery office for 5 years) but this is the Diocese of Fall River which I know so little about.
The worst thing I have to say about them is that they didn't keep that Bishop that they had before Coleman.
Wrong! Marriage is a sacrament, and it is binding for life. You entirely miss the point of the passage. Paul speaks of betrothal, implying a passage of time during which the two parties grow sure in their love for each other. He is not talking about marriage in the context described in this story.
The couple here have been togather for quite a while, without marriage so much as crossing their minds, apparently. He knew his employment contract had a morals clause, and he omitted that consideration in their mutual using of each other one night about a year ago. If they don't want to marry, it is consistent with Christian teaching (and St. Paul's!) that they shouldn't be doing the Horizontal Mambo until such time that they *do* want to marry. Further, if they had married when she discovered the pregnancy, and did not blow trumpets before them about the hypocrisy of the archdiocese in light of the abuse scandal, no one would have been the wiser. It seems that, only after he realized that the archdiocese was serious about holding him to the morals clause of his contract, he was concerned enough to approach the priest he consulted. Under those circumstances, the priest was absolutely correct.
I would say that the $200,000 the story says was spent on his "Catholic" education was largely wasted. Thank God they're both young and have time to rethink things with a view to repentance, contrition and rectification of an unfortunate situation. But, as things now stand, neither of them has anything to complain about. Let him get a job coaching a secular school's team, where pre-nuptual boinking has no ramifications. But let's not give him a forum to whine about a consistent application of God's moral law at an institution that - however imperfectly - purports to exist for the teaching and upholding of that very same moral law!
Ya know, you're right! The Fox 25 story I saw Tuesday, by going on and on about the juxtaposition of this case with the abuse scandal, made me and the others with me think that this was an Archdiocese of Boston situation. Shoulda caught that such was not the case from the article! Well, since that is not the case, all the more reason for the Bishop of Fall River to satnd his ground, as he is not even morally connected to what went on here, and the cases of abuse in the Fall River diocese were far smaller in scope and far better dealt with.
Coercion, fear and force can all invalidate a marriage, because it has to be undertaken freely.
I don't get the sense that the priest "refused" to marry them under any circumstances, though, especially if you look at what the teacher says about it.
That's just unwarranted hyperbole by a clearly biased writer.
You only have the fornicator's word that his marriage was refused because the priest thought they didn't love each other. The social need to legitimate a pregnancy can be considered the psychological equivalent of a "shotgun wedding." The duress involved could possibly be grounds for nullifying any marriage. I'm no canon lawyer, but it looks like he and his girlfriend could very well be impeded from contracting a valid marriage.
You're right. It is the norm for a couple who has conceived out of wedlock to be made to wait until some period after the child is born before being admitted to the sacrament of marriage.
I think that the Catholic church has engaged in hypocrisy which is a management issue, not one of faith.
The Catholic Church has allowed for arranged marriages only in the cases where both the husband and wife agreed to it, outside of the pressure.
There is nothing wrong with arranged marriages, so long as both parties agree. One of my professors from college had his marriage arranged and it is a very happy marriage.
There is a huge difference in a relationship that began in lust and ends in a shotgun wedding (Oh no, I knocked up my girlfriend, I guess I have to marry her now...).
For a second, I thought it said "Teacher caned for fathering a child out of wedlock." That would be an improvement.
BS, in Paul's time, people were betrothed in arranged marriages, often in early childhood. Betrothals could be anywhere from decades to days. Then there is that better to marry than to burn bit earlier in the chapter.
Hasty marriages would have been just as common then as now, there is nothing new under the sun, Occam's Razor and all that. Paul lived in the real world and was speaking to it, not some hazy romantic world where chaste betrothed couples "grow sure in their love for each other".
I don't know who you think you are but I don't post to be nice. It's a forum for comments and that's what I give, my comment.
I don't doubt that you've seen me on other threads, I hate hypocrisy and for the Church to protect and sheltor child molesters and admit practicing gays into the priesthood while laying down the law to a couple trying to do the right thing with the mistake they made is ridiculously hypocritical.
As a Catholic with a "$200,000 Catholic education" McCoy should know that the Church will not grant him a Sacramental marriage for the wrong reason. Since Father Costa has spoken to McCoy and you have not, Costa knows better whether or not McCoy wants to get married for the right reason or not. Based on his behavior McCoy is immature and prone to behaving irrationally and spontaneously. A person like that shouldn't be married to anyone. He has to grow up first. By and large most Catholic parishes will not perform marriages until the couple have undergone a lengthy period of instruction. There are no spur of the moment nuptials.
McCoy agrees with the Priest which renders your absurd argument moot.
I was baptized one but left the faith long ago. Dogma is dogma and I have no issue with that for if people don't like it they can certainly go somewhere else.
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