Denver Newsroom, Jun 22, 2020 / 08:19 pm (CNA).- Leading education expert Father Ronald Nuzzi will head a task force for Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Seattle, with a special focus on the “ministerial covenant” that helps Catholic teachers witness to and pass on the Catholic faith.
“Catholic schools are rooted in the Catholic faith. It’s what makes them different from other private schools,” Nuzzi told CNA. “Therefore, our educators are asked to teach from this faith-based foundation.”
“At the core of the faith are the great mysteries, which root both parishes and schools in the Incarnation, the Trinity, the Paschal Mystery, and the Eucharist,” he said.
Nuzzi is a priest of the Diocese of Youngstown in Ohio and professor emeritus of the University of Notre Dame. He is senior director emeritus at the university’s Alliance for Catholic Education, which aims to support, improve and expand Catholic K-12 schools, especially schools lacking resources.
“Catholic schools had their origin in the immigrant Church, providing a safe and faith-filled place where newcomers to this country could learn, grow, and prosper,” Nuzzi said. “They served a vital social and religious purpose, providing waves of immigrants the opportunities to fully participate in American society. Today, Catholics are part of the mainstream, but schools are still providing a counter-cultural witness, addressing the secularization, consumerism, relativism, racism, and hyper-individualism that are so common today.”
“In some ways, a Catholic school education, rooted in Gospel values and the example of Jesus, are even more important today than they once were,” he continued.
Nuzzi’s task force is set up to secure three key goals. These include a review and study of Church documents about Catholic teaching and tradition, especially the formation of conscience, free will, and human social and sexual development. The task force will assess, analyze and summarize the convictions, beliefs and opinions of archdiocesan stakeholders about the ministerial covenant and its use in employment decisions.
They will make a recommendation based on “an informed and thoughtful approach” to renewal of the ministerial covenant in a way that respects both of the previous goals and “embraces the fullness of church teaching while honoring and appreciating the sense of the faithful,” the Seattle archdiocese said.
The archdiocese did not respond to CNA’s questions about the meaning of “the sense of the faithful,” or what would happen if public opinion conflicted with Church teaching.
“The Ministerial Covenant ensures that our 73 Catholic schools reflect our Catholic faith. How it is applied across our Catholic schools is of great interest not only to me, but to all our principals, teachers, parents and students,” Archbishop Paul Etienne of Seattle said in a June 16 statement from the Seattle archdiocese.
He voiced gratitude for Nuzzi’s leadership in “this important body of work.”
“He is a well-known leader in Catholic school administration and has a wealth of experience as well as a great passion for the faith and Catholic schools,” Etienne said.
Nuzzi will review nominees for task force membership. Nominees include principals, pastors, parents of children in Catholic schools, Catholic school teachers and members of the archdiocese’s Office for Catholic Schools. The nominees will be announced in July.
“The ministerial covenant is signed by all employees of the Archdiocese of Seattle. It hasn’t been updated in several years, so this taskforce will review its language and how it is applied at Catholic schools across the archdiocese,” Nuzzi told CNA. “What is important about the title ‘ministerial covenant’ is that every Catholic school in the country, including all in the Archdiocese of Seattle, considers teachers to be ministers of the Gospel and witnesses to the faith.”
Ministerial language is not intended to “clericalize” lay teachers or obscure the lay state, he said.
“Lay leaders not only help run our Catholic schools, they help run our entire archdiocese,” Nuzzi said. “This taskforce is focused on Catholic teaching and the Catholic faith – not on clericalization. In calling our teachers ministers, we are saying they are public, contractually committed, inspired examples, worthy of emulation, not clerics.”
The task force will meet 12 times from August 2020 to June 2021. Members are asked to maintain confidentiality about all deliberations.
In a statement from the archdiocese, Nuzzi described Catholic schools as a “vital part” of the Church’s mission. He said he was “enthusiastic” about the task force and “its potential to help shape a brighter future for youth, children, and families.”
The Seattle archdiocese covers the territory of western Washington State. Almost 580,000 Catholics are registered with a parish and make up over 15% of the area’s population.
The people of Washington state tend to be more secular than other Americans. Those without religious affiliation make up the largest group, about 32%, if small sections of atheists and agnostics are grouped with 22% who self-identify as “nothing-in-particular.” However, 61% self-identify as Christian. Evangelical Christians make up about 25% of Washingtonians, 17% identify as Catholic, and 13% as mainline Protestant, the Pew Research Center reported in 2019.
The task force was announced in February after the Seattle archdiocese saw a controversy in which the facts are disputed. Two teachers at Kennedy Catholic High School in Burien, Washington either resigned voluntarily in order to contract same-sex civil marriages with different partners, or were forced out of their positions.
Michael Prato, president of Kennedy Catholic, said in a February statement that the two teachers approached him in November 2019 to share their desire to civilly marry their same-sex partners.
The teachers had voluntarily signed a covenant agreement to “live and model the Catholic faith in accord with Church teaching,” Prato said. In light of the agreement they signed, both chose to resign, he said. The school worked out a transition plan and financial package for the teachers.
“I hired these teachers and I care about them very much. I still do,” Prato said. “I wanted to make sure they felt supported, and so we discussed several options including the possibility of finishing out the school year.”
Groups of students staged protests in support of the teachers. Students, as well as parents and alumni of the school, also staged a protest outside the diocesan chancery in Seattle.
The two teachers’ attorney, Shannon McMinimee, said the teachers were forced out. She said they “were hoping to have a dialogue with the school about their desire to be their authentic selves and not hide that they were engaged and not hide who they were engaged to.”
“And that — what they thought would be a conversation with their principal turned into being called into the presidents’ office and being told that the superintendent of the archdiocese school system wanted their keys the minute they found out they were gay and engaged,” McMinimee said, according to KING 5 News Feb. 21.
Archbishop Etienne addressed the situation in a Feb. 19 statement.
“Pastors and church leaders need to be clear about the church’s teaching, while at the same time refraining from making judgments, taking into consideration the complexity of people’s lived situations,” he said, stressing that the end goal of accompanying people in faith is “to help people embrace the fullness of the Gospel message and integrate the faith more deeply into their lives.”
“Those who teach in our schools are required to uphold our teaching in the classroom and to model it in their personal lives,” he said. “We recognize and support the right of each individual to make choices. We also understand that some choices have particular consequences for those who represent the church in an official capacity.”
The Catholic Church teaches that while homosexual inclinations are not sinful, homosexual acts “are contrary to the natural law… under no circumstances can they be approved.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church goes on to say that people with these inclinations should be “accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.”
In 2003, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said that “in those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty.” It said Catholics must refrain from any kind of formal cooperation with such laws and, insofar as possible, any material cooperation.
“In this area, everyone can exercise the right to conscientious objection,” the CDF said.
In the United States, various Catholic schools and dioceses have faced lawsuits from employees who have been fired after contracting civil same-sex marriages in violation of the diocesan or school policy.
Despite strong social pressure, the legal freedom of primary and secondary Catholic schools appears secure at present. In the 2012 U.S. Supreme Court case Hosanna Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the court unanimously ruled that religious organizations do not need to follow federal anti-discrimination laws in what was characterized as a “ministerial exception.”
At the same time, religious freedom has become a target by some LGBT advocacy groups and politicians who say it wrongfully protects actions they consider discriminatory.
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I’m sick of polls regardless of who’s conducting them..
Agree re the polls.
But when the Holy Eucharist is “handed out” so casually with little or no reverence by unnecessary lay ministers you have but one ingredient to the decline in this foundational belief.
I do grow weary of it all.
You sound very dejected yourself … do you not want to know how affected your work is as a Deacon? … no wonder Catholic are loosing faith when you seem to be losing your!
David Brown: I’ll let you know when your services as a psychologist or spiritual advisor are needed. Give me your contact information so that, if and when the need arises, I’ll know where to reach you. You’re obviously highly skilled since by reading one sentence written by someone you’re able to devine so much about him. Remarkable!
I’m sick of reading about polls, and most especially polls about Catholics. Tell me one instance when a published poll had any effect on this degenerate culture other than to amuse for approximately 30 seconds. Tell me, instead, about the individual hearts and minds that have been converted through God’s grace and the evangelization efforts of Catholics..
After some pondering, I think I agree with you. I recalled how our Bishop (a good sincerely believing Bishop) cracked in his Christmas homily the fact that, according to the recent survey, more than half of Australian Catholics do not believe in the Real Presence. Somehow, he made it a point of his homily. It was one of my early years of worshiping with Catholics and I was stunned and became depressed. I could not understand why so many Catholics do not believe but even more than that – if they don’t why do they come to the Church? In a word, it was all I could think about on that night in the Cathedral.
And truly, why should I know those statistics? They achieve nothing. Our task is to live that Real Presence, nothing else. Whether others believe in it is between them and God. I think those surveys have something vulgar about them.
A quibble, but not really:
It’s amusing when people say “the Church.” That is a very sloppy and imprecise way of looking at things. Who, exactly, is “the Church”? Is it Pope Francis? Should we accept his teachings on global warming? Is it the people who put together the last catechism, with their teachings on nuclear war somehow being more evil than war with arrows and swords? Is it St. Augustine? Is it the people who wrote the Catechism of Trent? Is it the moderns who honor/worship Mary?
I think all intelligent Catholics need to get out of the habit of saying “the Church” and should, instead, be very specific on who in the Church is teaching what. It would be very enlightening.
BTW, if the writer of this article is the same Matthew Bunson who used to do the Catholic Almanac, then I say “thank you, thank you, thank you for all your work on those books!” I used many of them!
With such a watered down faith and the mindset of many which is, “Come let us worship each other”, or like the famous burger joint’s motto is “Have it your way”, which I call the Burger “K” Gospel, is anyone really surprised?
Another Catholic article focusing purely on externals and peripherals and calling it “spiritual”.
How about, “How many Catholics have sought God?”, “How many have loved God?”, “How many have found God?”, and “How many clergy have taught you how to find God?”.
The answers would show a generally dead spirituality from top to bottom, and explain quite handily the collapse.
This external-only observance was what the Christ spoke so stridently against, and that is pretty much all we have today, People Of The Book who have lost sight of to what the rules are supposed to lead.
Gloom and doom, an unhappy forecast by Real Clear’s poll the numbers reflecting in comparative accuracy Pew and other polls. Despite the slivers of resurgence by the Eucharist Congress and other attempts at revival of the faith they’re small in comparison.
Perhaps Catholics who are beginning to return to Mass and confession read the signs of the times. Many of us do sense this although others point to previous crises that eventually ended, doomsday syndromes that occur periodically in which people were convinced the Second Coming is at hand. Of course that would be a happy turn of events, except perhaps not for some who may have a desire for highly spectacular entertainment.
From observation as a priest it’s likely that the disaffection is centered on belief in the real Prince in the Eucharist. Several decades of distorted liturgy at the altar priests suddenly transformed into showmen, entertainers, and the more subdued flight attendant. Solemnity vanished along with the fire except for the resurgence of the TLM and those of us who offer the Novus Ordo Mass with reverence and love. They’re other factors: the explosion of sensuality in conjunction with the pill poor and frequently heretical catechesis and so forth and so on. Although it all comes back to that real belief in the real presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist.
It’s been argued then that we suffered and survived similar. Here is where there’s strong disagreement from some including myself. We’ve never had heresy flow down to the faithful from the apex of hierarchy. Example the Arian heresy began with a priest and assumed by hierarchy. All the major heresies I’m aware of were singular issues, theological misinterpretations. The other marked difference is that the current heresy seriously affects all Apostolic doctrine, the fundamental premise that intrinsic moral principles are not permanent, in effect that truth and permanence are not congruent, that human behavior need not be moderated in accordance with Christ’s.
What we may infer from this heresy is that if there are no permanent truths, the fallacy is revealed in declaring that itself to be a truth. In other words, the premise cancels itself. For the vast majority we’re basically talking over their heads when we argue this point. What the Catholic public perceives is a Church in which all is questioned now permanently by a process called Synodality. And a clergy bishops included who are basically, except for the rare few who are quickly suppressed, rendered catatonic. Anyone in the house with smelling salts?
Amen Father. Heretical Modernist have destroyed so much beauty and worse of all led so many souls to Hell.
The young will save the church from those that say in the pews and said nothing in the early 70s.
Yes. There’s reason why hope is a theological virtue, as evident in times like these when there seems no hope.
The Novos Ordo can sometimes be celebrated with dignity. TLM can never be offered with indignity. Which is most pleasing to God?
As much as I would like to believe these results, there is absolutely no way the results are close to accurate – unless the people polled are CWR readers or were leaving Mass on a Sunday morning. CARA has been doing polling since 1964. From their 2023 poll: “Prior to the pandemic 23% reported attending weekly. By comparison 21% said they were attending this frequently now. There are also slightly fewer saying they attend almost every week (10% now compared to 13% prior to the pandemic).” https://nineteensixty-four.blogspot.com/2023/ As for the “12% that attend daily” I think they need to move the decimal point one place to the left.
I do not believe that this poll agrees with the CARA polls (Center for Applied research on the Apostolate. It makes a difference whether the poll was in person, phone, or questionnaire. People tend to exaggerate their performance. when talking to a live person. Was Mass attendance done on a survey or by head count? Different methodologies produce different results.
Crusader – full agreement. If these numbers were even close to the facts, then we should see traffic congestion on Sunday mornings.
Harris’s support for a constitutional amendment that would legalize abortion without any restrictions, including allowing an infant surviving an abortion to die, is barbaric. This woman also supports gay marriage and the mutilation of children through transgenderism. Thus, she openly opposes basic moral principles thar are foundational to Catholic teaching. This woman is an arm of Satan. These policies along with her economic and immigration policies will destroy this country
The US has a problem of passing ANYTHING as law so long as it got duly voted. Is that in the US Constitution? It is asserting that “we the people” clause is MEANT to give such a reading to the whole document but without actually saying so.
In typical law-making down through the ages except the 20th Century, abortion is crime as it always is and should be; PLUS, merely SPEAKING about certain things so as to promote them, is subversion, i.e., is treated as subversion as it always was and should be. The idea that law is found ONLY through a vote is unjustifiable.
Please do not use the term “gay” to mean homosexual.
As the Stonewall Institute has told us, homosexuals prefer not to be called homosexual, and to use the term “gay” is to be an ally of the LGBS community.
I disagree, as a priest, I see first hand the state of things, we in the US have about 12% of Catholics coming to Mass every Sunday. If you count REGISTERED CATHOLICS, who are registered in a parish, that number goes up, but when you consider a huge number of Catholics who never register in a parish, that number goes down.
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I would be interested to know the reason why Catholics go to Mass (when they go), if they don’t believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist? I would also challenge the accuracy of that 52% belief number in light of the low weekly Mass attendance. If people really believed in the Real Presence, they would go to Mass at least weekly. How is it they see the importance of Christ in the Eucharist, but fail to see the importance of going to meet Him?? And what, to them, is more important?? This is a problem within the Church, when people become accustomed and conditioned to thinking that going to Mass is just something we do and there’s no reflection on how this might affect my life spiritually. Not to mention how the dismal confession numbers indicate that the vast majority of people presenting themselves for communion are not properly disposed to receive it.
I applaud the comments of Fathers Dan and Peter Morello. I hope more and more priests will adopt their manner of thinking.
Jesus Christ must be treated with all dignity, respect, reverence and solemnity. Unfortunately, since Vatican II and the Novus Ordo Mass many of the above characteristics were taken out of the Mass and the structure of Churches. The altar became a supper table and Communion became a communal meal. Many priests and lay people adopted a casual, nonchalant attitude toward the Eucharist which diminishes the importance of the Eucharist. The concept that The Holy Mass is a sacrifice was forgotten. I’ve talked to some priests that actually said that the Eucharist distracts from the Mass. The congregation was there to worship God in one another.
Protestant concepts were introduced into the NO Mass which helped to undermine the belief that the Eucharist is God. Churches lost their beauty and became very ordinary. The tabernacle was move from an elevated position in the front of the church to a “Eucharistic Chapel” which essentially was a walk-in closet. No wonder people lost the belief of the Real Presence.
Fortunately, the TLM and conservative NO Masses are being said more often and with growing attendance. God will eventually give us back our churches and our true Mass.
One more item: A number of people dress very casually for Mass. One should at least wear dress clothes to Mass and not t-shirts and shorts. Imagine, if a lawyer showed up in a courtroom to litigate a case, dressed in a t-shirt and shorts. What do you think the judge would do to that lawyer? Doesn’t Jesus Christ deserve even more respect than a civil judge?