Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX 5) – Students and parents from schools controlled by the Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco protested at Saint Mary’s Cathedral on Ash Wednesday, saying the church should stay out of teachers’ bedrooms and drop proposed morality clauses in teacher contracts. On Ash Wednesday, one of the holiest days on the Catholic calendar, the students and parents are hoping Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone will change his mind on the clauses, as the church heads into 40 days of Lenten reflection. "We’re here because if Jesus were alive today, he’d be standing right next to us,” Mairead Ahlbach, a student...

Charlotte Catholic High School in Charlotte, N.C., recently informed one of its substitute teachers that he could not work at the school following the public announcement of his impending same-sex marriage, according to Catholic News Herald. The school’s decision is yet another instance of Catholic schools around the country taking measures to protect and ensure their Catholic identity. The teacher, Lonnie Billard, worked for 11 years at Charlotte Catholic High School as a dramatics teacher until his retirement in 2012. He was reportedly scheduled to begin substituting in January. But when officials at the high school learned of Billard’s public...

ROCKWALL — Cathy Samford, a volleyball coach and science teacher, was fired from Heritage Christian Academy for getting pregnant and not being married, the school acknowledged. "I looked it up and thought, 'They can't do this,'" said Samford, 29. For almost three years, she coached volleyball at the private school. Samford was named "Coach of the Year" and recently began teaching science. But when she got pregnant last fall, the school fired her because she was not married. "We all have different views and interpretations," Samford said. "It's not necessarily the Christian thing to do to throw somebody aside because...