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The Diocese of Worcester in Massachusetts, under the leadership of Bishop Robert McManus, has recently unveiled a new gender policy impacting over 5,000 students across 21 Catholic schools. Here’s the whole story. Bullying, Harassment, or Violence Based on Sex, Sexual Orientation, or Gender Identity Will Not Be Tolerated By enforcing a policy that mandates students to comport themselves in a manner consistent with their biological sex, the Church aims to uphold its longstanding teachings and principles. The comprehensive policy issued on August 15th stipulates that any form of bullying, harassment, or violence based on sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity...

A group of furious Ohio parents want a high school teacher fired after their children were given a historical book to read, which they claim is filled with 'sex and wickedness'. The 10th grade students at Milford High School, in Milford, were required to read passages of 'In The Time of Butterflies' by Julia Alvarez aloud in class, according to one parent. The book is a fictional account of the Dominican Republic's Trujillo dictatorship in the 1960s, and follows the Mirabel sisters. The novel was adapted into a film in 2001, and was rated PG-13. In a Facebook post, irate...

We all know the stereotype, of the nun teacher wrapping a student knuckles, but my dad had a story from his Catholic school days in the 40's. One of his friends made a nun cry. Mother Superior was called and my dad's friend back talked to Mother Superior, and she she slapped him so hard that he hit the blackboard and broke his arm. My dad was surprised that his friend didn't have another broken arm, when his parents found out.

A student of color is reportedly behind racist graffiti found Monday morning in a bathroom at a private Catholic all-girls school in Brighton, New York. Our Lady of Mercy School for Young Women, a grade 6 through grade 12 school located within the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester, announced Thursday that its investigation into the graffiti containing a racial slur has ended with a student coming forward and taking responsibility for writing the offensive message. "This school is filled with a bunch of n*ggers. Get out or else!!" the graffiti said. .....

“Events in recent months have been an occasion for the Benedictine monks of St. Procopius Abbey to examine their future relationship with Benet Academy.”Story at a glance * A group of monks have decided to cut ties with a Catholic high school in Illinois after the school hired a lacrosse coach in a same-sex marriage.* The school, Benet Academy in Lisle, Ill., had originally rescinded the coach’s job offer when she listed her wife as her emergency contact. She was extended another offer following backlash. * Benet’s chancellor said in a statement in September that he was “deeply troubled” by...

Hundreds of students at Archbishop Riordan High School staged a walkout Friday during an all-school assembly that featured a prominent antiabortion speaker. About five minutes into the presentation, during which staff members patrolled the doors, students at the Catholic high school exited the theater and walked into the gym, since school rules don’t permit them to leave campus. A few dozen of the school’s more than 800 students remained in the theater for the entire presentation. The speaker, Megan Almon, works with the Life Training Institute, a program that focuses on teaching people who are opposed to abortion to “persuasively...

A top Missouri high school football team forfeited all wins from an undefeated 2019 season and the program's head coach was fired as part of self-imposed sanctions after it was discovered the squad was using an ineligible player wearing a different jersey. **SNIP** Cardinal Ritter self-reported the use of an ineligible player to the state’s high school sports governing body Tuesday, according to the Post-Dispatch. The issue stems from the school using a player who was supposed to be suspended for the first game of the season but played anyway using a different name. Junior Bill Jackson, who was ejected...

FULL TITLE: Los Angeles DJ Calls For Covington Catholic School to be Burned Down – With Kids Locked Inside – TWITTER SAYS HE DIDN’T VIOLATE RULES ================================================================== Michael Buchanan, who goes by the stage name ‘House Shoes,’ is a Detroit-born hip hop producer and DJ working and living in Los Angeles who made a series of terrorist threats from his bluecheck, verified Twitter account over the weekend. Mr. Buchanan, 45, took to his Twitter account this weekend and called for the Covington Catholic children to be burned alive: “LOCK THE KIDS IN THE SCHOOL AND BURN THAT BITCH TO THE...

It appears that most of the teenagers in this video are from a Catholic high school near Covington, Kentucky, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. They mock a serious, frail-looking older man and gloat in their momentary role as Roman soldiers to his Christ. “Bullying” is a worn-out word and doesn’t convey the full extent of the evil on display here. For some of us, the gospel stories of Jesus’s passion and death are so familiar we no longer hear them. The evangelists are terse in their descriptions of the humiliations heaped on Jesus in the final hours before his...

Here's a rule of thumb I came up with a few years back, and maybe you've noticed it too: By the time I learn enough about a huge news story to realize I don't care, it turns out to be bull$#!+ anyway. The press latches onto something, focuses on it like a laser, and then it turns out to be nothing. This keeps happening, again and again. And over the weekend, it happened twice in as many days. First, BuzzFeed gave us the impeachment-justifying scoop of the century that, er... wasn't. The bombshell was a bust. Then, for some reason,...

Next time there’s a viral story, I’ll wait for more facts to emerge. ... If the Covington Catholic incident was a test, it’s one I failed—along with most others. Will we learn from it, or will we continue to roam social media, looking for the next outrage fix? Next time a story like this surfaces, I’ll try to sit it out until more facts have emerged. I’ll remind myself that the truth is sometimes unknowable, and I’ll stick to discussing the news with people I know in real life, instead of with strangers whom I’ve never met. I’ll get my...

In the hours and days since those first snapshots of the encounter made the rounds, however, it has become crystal clear that the original narrative was hugely misleading. Additional videos from different angles began to emerge, proving that the students did not swarm or try to block the drum-toting man; rather, he proactively approached them. We also learned that a small group of African-American men were hurling racial and homophobic insults at the boys, singling out the small number of non-white students in the group for especially grotesque abuse (including creepily telling a black student that his classmates would harvest...

One aspect of the Covington controversy has received very little coverage, let alone condemnation: the outright racism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism of the (very small) black-nationalist group confronting the teenagers. If you watch the nearly two-hour YouTube video, filmed by a man who seems to be a member of the Black Israelites, you will see the black men, all adult, hurling insult after insult at the students, for well over an hour. It seems accidental that the students and the black nationalists are at the same spot on the mall — the former waiting for their buses back to Kentucky and...

Some parents are speaking out after a popular first grade teacher was fired after she posted pictures of her same-sex wedding on social media. Jocelyn Morffi taught first grade at Saints Peter and Paul Catholic School in Miami for seven years. Last weekend, she married her girlfriend and posted pictures of the ceremony to Facebook. On Thursday, Morffi was fired. In a letter to parents, Principal Carlota Morales called it a “difficult and necessary” decision. Nearly a dozen parents who had children in Morffi’s class came to the school to protest her firing. The parents called her a “great teacher”...

One of the newest “social warriors” is a 13 year old seventh grade girl who currently attends a private Catholic school in New Jersey only because a judge has ordered the school to rescind its order expelling her. Of course the media sides with a selfish family that doesn’t care about anything but its own satisfaction; but when do the constitutional rights of a religious institution prevail? Here are the facts. The girl, who is described as an excellent basketball player, was not able to play for her school this year because it was not fielding a girls’ team in...

After seeing teen star Sydney McLaughlin place 5th in her heat in the opening round of the women's 400-meter hurdles at the Olympic Games, many of the close to 1,000 people that jammed themselves into Union Catholic's gym to watch the race began to head for the exits.  For some, the heat inside the gym was beginning to take its toll, but many others left feeling that the 17 year-old McLaughlin, a rising senior at Union Catholic, had probably come up short in her attempt to advance to the semifinal round at Olympic Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. But not brothers...

High schooler Sydney McLaughlin makes her Olympic debut Sydney McLaughlin, who just celebrated her 17th birthday eight days ago, made her Olympic debut, finishing fifth in her heat of the 400m hurdles. McLaughlin made it through to the semifinals on time.

Sydney McLaughlin, New Jersey's 16 year-old sensation, will attempt to become one of the youngest U.S. track and field Olympians when she competes in the finals of the women's 400-meter hurdles at Sunday's U.S. Olympic Trials at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon. McLaughlin, who turns 17 on Aug. 7, needs to finish in the top three in her race to make the Olympic team, which will compete in the Olympic Games next month in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The 400 hurdles race is scheduled for Sunday at approximately 7:03 p.m. EST. and will shown on NBC. McLaughlin, who will be...

At least two religious schools said they will stop buying uniforms from the clothing company Lands’ End this week because it honored abortion activist Gloria Steinem in its spring catalog and created a campaign to donate to Steinem’s organization. Tolton Catholic High School and the College of the Ozarks, both in Missouri, said they were disgusted that the company would honor the well-known abortion activist who once said women “need” abortion. Earlier this month, Lands’ End published an interview and photo-shoot with Steinem on its website (see images below) and in its spring catalog, highlighting Steinem’s work to pass an...

The e-mail left many parents at the private Catholic school upset and confused. The well-respected director of religious education had just been fired. Nell Stetser, principal of Waldron Mercy Academy, an elementary school in Merion, sent the e-mail Friday to say that Margie Winters was out of a job after eight years. The reasons were confidential, Stetser wrote. But the "context" she went on to offer included clues to what the school saw as a problem: Winters is in a same-sex marriage. Stetser praised Winters for her "amazing contributions" to the school. "In the Mercy spirit, many of us accept...