Morality Clauses in Teaching Contracts Must Be Rethought, Writes Catholic Schools Leader

Kent Hickey

For teachers, nearing the end of the school year brings a host of traditions and milestones, but, for those working in Catholic schools, it also typically means the time for renewing “ministerial covenants” in employment contracts. Attorney and experienced head-of-school Kent Hickey writes in the National Catholic Reporter that these contracts need re-examination and broader communal input in both their creation and execution, particularly around issues of sexuality, marriage, and relationships.

Hickey, who is presently leadership formation director at the Institute for Leadership and Entrepreneurship in Education, explains that these covenants largely came into vogue following the 2012 U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Hosanna-Tabor Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which he says “granted religious schools constitutional protections against discrimination lawsuits by employees who serve a religious function in the school.” In practice, they are “a kind of get-out-of-lawsuits-free card for Catholic schools,” writes Hickey, as those serving a religious function include most faculty and staff.

These contracts have been used to fire LGBTQ+ employees under the broad legal umbrella allowing for termination based on conduct or lifestyles seen as contradicting church teaching. But, as Hickey points out, the legal and financial security this coverage gives to Catholic schools and dioceses misses the mark of the Catholic mission itself.

First of all, the right to fire a teacher based on “conduct or lifestyle” is intentionally open and without details about what exactly would be considered problematic, although it seems to be widely understood the behavior under scrutiny relates to sexuality in particular. Hickey wonders:

“Could a teacher be fired after being observed purchasing condoms at Walgreens? How about a staff member who is overheard in the break room talking about her birth control pills? Calling in sick after a vasectomy?”

Secondly, Hickey observes, these rules are not applied consistently from diocese to diocese or in every school within a diocese, even around issues of sexual orientation or relationships. He writes:

“In one diocese, for example, a teacher who enters a civil same-sex marriage may be fired for violating the ministerial covenant, but an unmarried heterosexual teacher who is cohabitating is not. A pregnant unmarried teacher is fired in a diocese but would have been retained if she worked in another just a few miles away.”

To ameliorate the lack of specificity as well as the inconsistencies, Hickey makes a recommendation: if a bishop is going to threaten termination of teachers over particular aspects of church teaching, then those behaviors need to be clearly outlined in the contract in detail, not simply be at his discretion under a broad umbrella of possibilities. “Transparency and clarity are required at our Catholic schools,” he writes, as “signs of mutual respect and partnership in mission.”

A third problem with these covenants is that they are largely based on legal precedents rather than being rooted in “discernment” and Catholic identity, even though bishops and church officials implementing such covenants often claim the basis of these clauses is in the latter. But a discernment perspective demands listening to the community to gather a “sense of the faithful,” as in the example of Seattle’s Archbishop Paul Etienne during a controversy over the same-sex marriage of a teacher several years ago.

Etienne commissioned a task force and a broad survey of nearly 5,000 participants on the community’s expectations of Catholic school teachers. While 60% of respondents, including 58% of priests who responded, agreed that a teacher should be terminated for actions such as buying alcohol for students, bullying, and racism, less than 15% agreed with termination for actions related to lifestyle, such as marrying a same-sex partner, divorce and remarriage, or cohabiting with a partner. Hickey concludes that, “The faithful therefore, were more concerned about how well teachers lived their faith at work than their private sexuality and relationships at home.”

Of course, the real progress would be in instituting non-discrimination clauses and full affirmation and welcome for LGBTQ+ relationships in church and school settings. But at the very least, Hickey calls the bishops and administrators to transparency and honesty about their policies. And if they will not listen to the faithful on this issue, then a turn to the Gospels yields the same wisdom:

“Jesus rarely spoke about sexuality, but he did speak often against lifestyles that expressed hatred and conduct that harmed others, especially children. Those teachings would ground expectations in any ministerial covenant very well.”

—Angela Howard McParland (she/her), New Ways Ministry, May 16, 2024