Published: June 7, 2003
Section: NEWS
Page#: 21A
Online parent group not the only voice of good Catholics
By Frank Reilly   

Twice in the past two months, an unofficial religious organization called Catholic Parents Online (CPO) has become a news item by successfully getting Archbishop Harry Flynn to enforce traditional Catholic doctrine.

After CPO had urged him to act, Flynn kept the Rev. Mel White from preaching at St. Joan of Arc Church in Minneapolis. After the group urged him once again, he blocked the presentation of an "outstanding Catholic teacher" award to Kathy Itzin, a parish member and religious education coordinator at St. Joan of Arc. White is a nationally known activist and speaker on gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender (GLBT) issues. Itzin is a lesbian in a long-term relationship, and the parent of four children.

Before CPO's recent activities made the news, few Minnesota Catholics even knew that the group existed. But it has been around, and somewhat influential, for a few years.

The organization was founded in 1998, by people convinced that Catholic high school outreach programs for GLBT students, in development since 1995, were implementing the "homosexual agenda." They felt sure of this because another unofficial and largely unknown group, Families and Friends of GLBT persons in Catholic Education, was deeply involved in preparing hundreds of educators to participate in the program.

Families and Friends, you see, was a new project launched by an unofficial but officiously named, and definitely GLBT-friendly, organization known as the Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities.

Once founded, CPO immediately set out to rid the schools of such pernicious influences, restore fidelity to Catholic doctrine concerning sex and sexuality, and save Catholic children from "the world."

The organization does not always get what it wants, but as recent events demonstrate, sometimes it does. I know from personal experience.

From 1990 to 2000, I taught religion at Cretin-Derham Hall High School in St. Paul. Late in December of '99, I wrote a Commentary essay for the Star Tribune: "Luther, John Paul II, and the necessity of dissent." In January of 2000, the essay appeared on the CPO Web site, where it remains to this day. An introduction written by the organization's president, Colleen Perfect, charged that I was "poisoning children's minds" with my "heretical beliefs and dangerous agenda," and called on friends of CPO to inform the school of their dissatisfaction.

In April of that year, I was told that my contract would not be renewed.

I do not hold CPO solely responsible for the loss of my job, but the group and some of its individual members played a large part in the way things turned out.

I also do not deny CPO the right to stand up for church teaching, or mind that they chose to do so in my case. I just want Catholics who disagree with that organization, and even with specific church teachings, to realize that they have the same right.

These others - most Catholics, including parents who enroll their children in parish education programs and send them off to Catholic schools - usually consider it unnecessary to claim that right. All they want is to be left alone, free to think for themselves and to live as they choose.

That attitude is very human, very understandable. But the people who have it should consider this: If organizations like Catholic Parents Online keep getting the bishops to enforce traditional Catholic doctrine, the next generation will not have the same freedom.

The time to organize and speak up is now.

Frank Reilly is a Catholic theologian who lives in St. Paul.

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