All second baseman Paige Sultzbach wanted to do was play in her school’s state championship baseball game tonight.
But because she is a girl, that won’t happen.
Sultzbach is a freshman at Mesa Preparatory Academy, which had been scheduled to play Our Lady of Sorrows Academy in tonight’s Arizona Charter Athletic Association state championship at Phoenix College.
But Our Lady of Sorrows, a fundamentalist Catholic school in Phoenix that lost twice to Mesa Prep during the regular season, chose to forfeit the championship game rather than play a team fielding a female player.
Our Lady of Sorrows school officials would not comment, but Sultzbach’s mother, Pamela Sultzbach, said her daughter and the rest of the team received the news after Wednesday afternoon’s practice.
“This is not a contact sport, it shouldn’t be an issue,” Pamela said. “It wasn’t that they were afraid they were going to hurt or injure her, it’s that (they believe) that a girl’s place is not on a field.”
Paige played softball and volleyball in junior high, but because Mesa Prep does not have a girls softball team, she decided to try out for the boys baseball team, with the coach’s encouragement.
From early on, Paige tried to blend in, her mother said. When the coach referred to the kids as “guys and gals,” Paige spoke up and said that they all wear the same uniform, so the coach should just call them all guys.
Her teammates have stood up for her.
During Mesa Prep’s two previous games with Our Lady of Sorrows, Paige didn’t play out of respect for the opposing team’s beliefs, but that wasn’t going to be an option this time, Pamela said.
“We respected their school rule … but she took it hard,” Pamela said. “She didn’t like it and neither did her teammates. They went out and played the best they could because they wanted to prove a point.”
Our Lady of Sorrows is run by the U.S. branch of the Society of Saint Pius X, a group of conservative, traditionalist priests who disagree with the reforms of the Vatican II Council in the 1960s and broke with the Catholic Church in the 1980s.
Category: Why I’m Not A Catholic Anymore
Many kinds of Catholic
by Susie
Including “ex”, which is what I am.
Occasionally family members try to talk me back into the arms of Catholicism, but I have no interest in the political organization formerly known as the Catholic church — except as nostalgia, back from the days nuns and priests were chaining themselves to the front entrances of bomb makers. Now, that was a religion I could respect!
When it’s gotten to the point that you need to have the condom talk with the American Catholic church hierarchy (you know, because they’re the ones who are humping under the covers with the right wing), when the same shameless bishops and cardinals who covered up the rape of children are telling married Catholic couples what they should be doing in the bedroom or what they shouldn’t have in their medicine cabinet, well, it seems to me there’s no real Catholic church left to save. Your mileage may vary.
I just keep wondering when it will occur to American Catholics that they should simply start their own kinder, gentler church. I think Jesus would approve.
Blame the hippies and their free love
by Susie
For making priests do things like this:
BRUSSELS — A young man in the care of the Roman Catholic Church in the Netherlands was surgically castrated decades ago after complaining about sexual abuse, according to new evidence that only adds to the scandal engulfing the church there.
The case, which dates from the 1950s, has increased pressure for a government-led inquiry into sexual abuse in the Dutch church, amid suspicions that as many as 10 young men may have suffered the same fate
Bedfellows
The Catholic Church and the right wing. Go read:
The near-disappearance of economic justice as a priority for American Catholic bishops is an aberration, both historically and in the current global context. Though rarely mentioned by current U.S. bishops, “Economic Justice For All” was very much in keeping with orthodox Catholic theology and practice, and leaders and laypeople were integral to the early progressive movement.
Morally inconsistent
by Susie
Yeah, I’d say that’s a good way to describe the U.S. Catholic church, considering how they’ve been under the blankets with the extreme right-wing for so long:
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has no official policy on donations to Komen because funding activities take place at the local level, according to conference spokeswoman Sister Mary Ann Walsh. That could change as more bishops speak out on the issue, though another conference official said the national body has no plans to take up the question.
Observers say the local bishops’ focus on Komen and other social issues reflects a larger conservative shift within the American church since New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan became chairman of the Conference in November 2010.
Under Dolan’s leadership, the conference last year set up a new ad hoc committee on religious liberty to oppose government policies that conflict with church teachings on abortion, contraception and gay marriage.
That move coincided with the rise of social conservatives in Congress and state legislatures during the 2010 elections and has gathered pace during the 2012 presidential campaign.
“It’s an ideal time for them to push both Democrats and Republicans to acquiesce to their demands, because nobody wants to be seen as disrespecting religion,” said Jon O’Brien of the advocacy group, Catholics for Choice, which opposes the Vatican on matters related to sex, marriage and family life.
But even as opposition to Komen continues, some Catholic recipients of Komen money have promoted their ties with the breast cancer charity to the media. Other institutions carry hypertext links to Komen on their Web sites and some display the Susan G. Komen for the Cure logo, including a pink ribbon.
In Ohio, tens of thousands of dollars in Komen grants have gone to some of the same institutions that bishops there proposed as funding alternatives to Komen.
Georgetown University in Washington has received $15 million in Komen grants. Catholic institutions overall collected $7.4 million from the charity in 2011 alone, while Planned Parenthood’s receipts totaled $684,000 during the same year.
The grants, and the warm reception for Komen among some Catholic institutions, underscore the common interests of charity and church in protecting women against a devastating and deadly disease. But some outside observers say the money also raises ethical questions about the bishops’ opposition role.
“It is morally inconsistent, and difficult to explain, why you would condemn donations but continue to accept grants. It makes no ethical sense at all,” said Arthur Caplan of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Bioethics.
Oy
What Violet said. Nothing needed to be done.
Scrapple TV News: Republican Raucus Caucus! Stu Bykofsky’s Love Tips! Why the Catholic Church hates birth control! And a Philly Fire Sale!
It’s all here, at the only news source you can really trust!
With the most Trusted Name in Fake Internet News… your friend and mine… the man with the plan, the flower of the hour of power in a sexy shower…
AP TICKER! [makes fake applause noises]
Religious liberty
I hope the Obama administration stands firm on this one. It was only a matter of time until the church upped the political ante, and of course a low-life like Newt Gingrich is only too happy to jump on the bandwagon. The American church’s hierarchy climbed under the covers with the right wing decades ago, and they’re all too happy to tear down the Democratic candidates on command:
During church services on Sunday, Catholics around the country were read a blistering letter assailing the Obama administration for an “assault on religious liberty” in the form of a coming requirement that most church-linked organizations – among them hospitals, schools and universities – offer birth control coverage as part of their health care plans.
Despite strong lobbying from religious groups, the Health and Human Services Department announced earlier this month that most church-linked groups will not be exempt from the requirements – which also mandate that no co-pay be charged for contraceptive services – though they will have an extra year to comply beyond the August 1 deadline.
Churches themselves (along with any other employer that is explicitly focused on offering a religious message, and which primarily employs those who believe in that message) are exempt from the requirement.
Religious groups were outraged by the decision – saying it forced employers at church-linked organizations to violate their conscience – and on Sunday Catholic leaders took their complaints directly to parishioners. As Business Insider reported, similar letters were read in churches around the country complaining that “the Obama Administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our Nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty.”
In an appearance on “CBS This Morning” Monday, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich brought up the letters, using them as an opportunity to attack both the Obama administration and Republican rival Mitt Romney.
“The Obama administration has just launched an attack on Christianity so severe that every single church in Florida had a letter read from the bishops yesterday all across the country – Cardinal [Timothy] Dolan was leading an effort to explain that, literally, freedom of religion in America is now being attacked by Obama,” he said. “The Romneycare does the same thing. Romneycare has tax-paid abortions. Romneycare put Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in America, in the bill. No right to life group’s in the bill. Planned Parenthood is. Romney himself approved taking away a conscience clause from Catholic hospitals.”
(As Hotsheet pointed out earlier this month, Gingrich’s comment that Planned Parenthood is part of the health care law Romney signed as Massachusetts governor is misleading, and Massachusetts law mandated that the health care law cover abortion.)
In explaining the decision to require birth control coverage for chuch-linked groups, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that “Scientists have abundant evidence that birth control has significant health benefits for women and their families, it is documented to significantly reduce health costs, and is the most commonly taken drug in America by young and middle-aged women. This rule will provide women with greater access to contraception by requiring coverage and by prohibiting cost sharing.“
End of an era
I couldn’t begin to count how many Catholic schools have already closed in Philadelphia over the last 20 years, and now the relative few that are left are on the chopping block.
I’m not fond of the Catholic church, to say the least, and they’ve lost a lot of local support since the sex scandals. One could well argue that the church is abandoning its core mission of educating the inner cities in order to pay their legal bills, but what’s the point? They’re leaving.
I feel bad for the elementary school teachers (one of my relatives teaches in Catholic school). They don’t get paid much and they have almost no job protections (in sharp contrast to the public school teachers I know, who frequently have graduate degrees and decent salaries). I suppose the teachers thought loyalty would be protection enough, but the Church’s loyalty has always been to its own interests, and not of its members.
That’s why, no matter how many statements the Church released on the right of workers to unionize and to get a living wage, it rang so hollow. They treated the people who worked for them like peons.
You see?
Even though we won’t do the thing you want us to do
, you’re discriminating against us by not hiring us to do it.