sdyer@bbncc5.UUCP (Steve Dyer) (09/11/85)
> Justice Joseph Nolan, writing for the majority, found that the > constitutional right of the Church to exercise its freedom of religion > took precedence over Madsen's right to employment without discrimination. > The opinion quoted an article form the COLUMBIA LAW REVIEW that claimed > that "when an employee agress to do the work of the church he [sic] must > be held to submit to church authority in much the same way as a member... > The state may not intervene to protect employees from treatment that is > merely arbitrary or unfair; the remedy for that is to resign or renego- > tiate the terms of employment." I was fairly appalled at the Court's ruling in this case, for it seems that there is a clear distinction between "work of the church" and "work for the church." This distinction is especially clear in the case of the Christian Science Monitor, a large international daily newspaper. "Work for the church" is construed rather broadly, I guess. I am also rather dismayed by the rather meek response by Madsen and her lawyer, though it undoubtedly was the end of a very tiring struggle. > But the ruling may be used by other religions at a crucial moment, ie, > now in the Roman Catholic Church in the US. Karel Wojtyla, the Catholic > pope, has just demanded that even Catholic institutions of higher educa- > tion rigidly conform to doctrine in teaching and adminstration, a demand > resented and opposed by many US bishops, who have never taken kindly to > Vatican authoritarianism in education. But the above court ruling may > give the Vatican a new weapon with which to undercut American opposition > by turning aside appeals to pluralism based on US law & the Constitution. I doubt that this ruling on the Massachusetts law, as defined by its Constitution, will have any effect whatsoever on the current situation with the Vatican and Catholic colleges and universities. The analogy simply doesn't hold: the Monitor was an organ of the Christian Science Church, which presumably could use whatever temporal clout it needed to get that lesbian out of its offices; American Catholic colleges and universities are PRIVATE institutions, organizationally separate from the local Catholic dioceses. Put simply, the Pope has no legal power to require doctrinal orthodoxy to be taught in these schools; all he has is his (not insignificant) position as a spiritual leader. On the other hand, there is a tradition more than a century old of the independence of American Catholic schools from the Church organization, and anyone would be naive to think that any member of these schools, lay or clergy, would be willing to acquiesce to such old-country strong-arming. I think the Pope is not so naive as to ignore the squawks which have arisen from North America in just the past few weeks: a leader has to know when not to press too hard on his influence lest he find it weaken. There is already precedent for similar independence in women's religious orders who have boldly ignored Vatican demands for the resignations of women who have publically supported the right to abortion, pointing out that their orders are organizationally distinct from the Church hierarchy. -- /Steve Dyer {harvard,seismo}!bbnccv!bbncc5!sdyer sdyer@bbncc5.ARPA