Teacher canned for fathering child out of wedlock

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.”

“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.”

while laying down the law to a couple trying to do the right thing with the mistake they made is ridiculously hypocritical.

Do you realize that the pathetic leaders on the clergy sex abuse cases are not the same people making the decisions about firing teachers who violate their teacher contract?

I want tough practical people leading the Church. I don't want wishy-washy anything goes "leaders".

I hate hypocrisy and for the Church to protect and sheltor child molesters and admit practicing gays into the priesthood

Bishops did not generally move abusing clergy around because they were very often not aware of the abuse taking place. In recent years, a torrent of accusations of sexual abuse of minors by clergy has inundated the Church and society. It is natural to assume that Church authorities were aware of all these accusations and that they ignored them. The press certainly tends to affirm that belief. However, it is far from true.

As we acquire a deeper understanding of sexual abuse, we realize that one of its insidious characteristics was that abusers pressured their victims to keep the matter secret. Moreover, victims were often afraid to talk about it, because they were ashamed or were rightly fearful that no one would believe them, and that they themselves would be suspect.

The result was that a majority of abuse remained secret from Church authorities as well as civil authorities. Unfortunately, in much reporting, today's understanding of the problem of sexual abuse is projected back and used to judge incidents of the remote past.

Were abusive priests shuffled among parishes?

Let's see if I have got this:

While the church does not approve of out-of-wedlock sex, when he offers to make it right by marrying the mother, hte church refuses to marry them. Then because they chose to have her carry the child to term rahter than abort, the church, which says it's pro-life, fires him from his job. Apparently, he could have kept his job if he had helped his girlfriend get an abortion. Great.

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