After the music director from St. Victoria’s Catholic Church, Jamie Manzie-Moore, married his male partner last month, Archbishop John Nienstedt asked him to resign.
Whether you agree with the archbishop’s decision or not, one thing is clear: One of the most relevant factors in this controversy is whether we consider marriage a public statement or a private affair.
If marriage is a public statement, as I think it is, then the archdiocese as an employer is justified in caring about the marital status of its employees. Since the archdiocese has a public and controversial stance on marriage, public statements made by employees matter to the archdiocese.
People on both sides of the issue seem to agree that if marriage were a private affair, the music director wouldn’t have had to step down.
Defenders of the music director argue that it is none of the Church’s business what he does in his private life.
The archbishop himself appealed to the public nature of marriage to justify his decision. He cited an archdiocese employment rule, which warrants termination in cases of “public conduct which is inconsistent with the faith, morals, teachings, and laws of the Catholic Church.”
So people on both sides seem to agree that marriage only concerns employers (or the archdiocese) if it is, in fact, a public matter. If marriage is just something private – a private decision or lifestyle – then it is none of the Church’s business. But if marriage is a public matter, then marrying against the teachings of the Church is analogous to an employee publicly calling his employer unethical. This leaves me wondering, What is marriage: private or public?
I think it becomes clear, upon reflection, that marriage is public.
Certainly, there are many private aspects to marriage. Marriage is a deeply inward-facing bond. Fundamentally, it is between the spouses alone – and not between the spouses and society. With that said, marriage is not limited to its private nature. It clearly has a public character as well.
Why is it that marriages are celebrated with a community? Why the long guest lists and the piles of gifts and well-wishes? Why are family members and community leaders (such as parents, pastors and judges) traditionally involved in the marriage ceremony?
Why is there such a divisive debate about whether the government and other public institutions, such as churches, should endorse certain types of marriage? If marriage were private, why would it matter if these public institutions recognize marriage? Why does the government provide tax breaks and other benefits to married couples? Why does marriage have official status in the first place?
All these questions answer themselves if we recognize that marriage is a public affair. In short, marriage is more than its private components. It has public implications and is a public statement as well as a private one.
This is the point. Regardless of whether the Church is right or wrong about marriage, this much is clear: The Church’s stance on marriage is very public and very controversial. So public statements, like wedding vows, against Church teaching are going to concern the Church as an employer.
With that said, I think the real question we should be discussing isn’t whether the Church should care about employee marriages but whether the Church is right that marriage is only between a man and a woman. This, I think, is the point of controversy that is really underpinning the debate.
Elliot Polsky can be reached pols4319@stthomas.edu.
Mr. Polsky. Good thinking, reasoning and logic. The trouble here is that the opposition to traditional marriage does not use any of these attributes, but only emotion and self enjoyment.
This is a fine article. Indeed, it is important to realize the public attributes of marriage. I totally understand that this article is not criticizing either form of marriage, but understanding that the Archbishop’s decision in this case is understandable due to the public nature of marriage itself.
In Catholic tradition, isn’t Marriage a holy union before God? Something tells me that’s a private affair? It’s not the business of the public, and it’s certainly not the business of an obviously bigoted employer.
If it doesn’t obstruct you from doing reasonably doing what you were hired to, there is no grounds for termination of employment. And that, folks, is what we call wrongful termination.
Emma, there are a whole bunch of reasons in the article why marriage is a public affair (we invite tons of people, spend lots of money on invites and food, get presents, and so on). With which do you disagree?
And yes you’re spot on, marriage is a holy union before God, and it’s also a covenant. And covenants are a pretty big deal in God’s eyes (examples: God’s deal with Noah about never flooding the earth again, God promising to bring the Israelites out of Egypt even though they pretty much whined the whole time, etc). Things set before God are always done so in public settings, including all the other sacraments.
I do think marriage is a public statement, we have licenses, announcements, and witnesses, and its fully intended to be public. However, I am curious as to why the Archbishop only chooses to enforce this strict public conduct rule, which forbids acts “inconsistent with the faith, morals, teachings, and laws of the Catholic Church”, to ONLY LGBT people in public relationships or who enter into same-sex marriages.
There are Jewish, Muslim, Atheist, Protestant, and Buddhist teachers in Catholic schools – very good people too. Should we fire them? How about Catholic employees who use birth control, which is probably a majority should polling be believed? How about divorced teachers and staff? Do we have nothing to learn from them?
The moralizing done here is selective, bigoted, and very sad. It’s also self-defeating because the teachers and staff who’ve been thrown out (like the music director from St. Victoria’s, or the Vice-Principal of the Catholic school in Seattle) are often exemplars of charity, mercy, and other virtues as central to Catholicism as any guidelines for sex. But their hearts didn’t matter. It was all about their loins. I hope and pray that the Church will get away from that.
You bring up some great points, Chris. I wonder too about the contraception part because I’ve heard of similar polls. I’m not sure about this archdiocese but at my high school in my archdiocese in Iowa, a teacher was let go because he remarried and didn’t get an annulment. That’s one example I can think of, and it was really difficult for the whole community just as this one is for that parish and this archdiocese. I think the Church’s intent is good because it is trying to shepherd the people who shepherd its children but I agree it is really difficult to carry out and seems there is much work yet to be done. It also seems like these actions come in waves; I think there was a wave of ‘divorced and remarried without an annulment’ cases and now more of LGBT marriage cases, but it’s regrettable that the community feels attacked.
Also I thought about your points about people of other faiths and contraception and I think the difference is the publicity of those acts. If the teachers are of other faiths but don’t do anything openly against the Catholic faith of the school at which they work, that is okay. Similarly, it is okay for LGTB individuals who are unmarried to work at Catholic schools. And the contraception issue probably just isn’t public enough to look into, though that doesn’t make its use justified. Any thoughts on those points?