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An athletic director at a high school in Springfield, Mass. says she was pressured to leave her position because she married her wife last month.

Christine Judd, dean of students and athletic director for Cathedral High School, stepped down after meeting with school administrators on Wednesday, according to The Republican newspaper.

Judd worked for the school for 12 years, where she rose from science teacher to dean of students and, three years ago, athletic director. While the state has allowed gay people to marry since 2004, same-sex marriage is still not sanctioned by the Catholic Church.

“Cathedral had nothing to do with this,” she said in the article. “This was a diocesan decision. In the end, the timing of this issue really affects the kids. That is where it has the most effect.”

Note: 40 Cathdral High students held a protest outside of St. Michael’s Cathedral in support of Judd.  Heartwarming.  More here.

“Victims deserve a church brave enough to confront its vulnerability and find a fair response,” said an independent commission investigating cases of sex abuse.  The commission was set up by the Belgian Catholic Church.  It was chaired by Dr. Peter Adriaenssens, a 53-year-old child psychologist.

As in many European countries, Belgium has been slow to confront sexual abuse. That changed this past April with the high-profile resignation of the former bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, who confessed to sexually abusing his nephew for many years. Outrage increased with the publication of transcripts of recordings of Cardinal Godfried Danneells advising the nephew not to go public with the story. Danneels, who has retired, admitted that advice was a mistake and apologized.

43% of the victims whose accounts are in the commission’s report came forward in the week after the Vangheluwe story broke. “The Vangheluwe case was a landmark because it was the first time people saw you could have a normal, famous person who was actually a hidden sociopath,” Dr. Adriaenssens said.

“Their stories help answer the question of how there could have been so much abuse and nobody said anything,” said Dr. Adriaenssens. He blames church leaders “for giving psycho-sociopaths a place to hide for many years.”

Please join me at “Searching for Vatican II – Why a Transformative Moment Remains So Elusive.” This program will be held on Tuesday, September 14, 2010, 6-8 pm, Fordham University, Lincoln Center Campus, Pope Auditorium, 113 West 60th Street, New York City. Free.

Description: No one denies that the impact of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) has been massive. Yet, almost five decades later, the very categories in which the Council is understood are subject to fierce debate. Sharp dichotomies have been posed between the “letter” of conciliar documents and the “spirit” of conciliar experience. Interpretations stressing continuities with the church’s past have been pitted against those stressing discontinuities.

In “Search for Vatican II” Joseph A. Komonchak, one of the world’s leading scholars of the Council, will examine fundamental ways of viewing the Council and what difference they make.

Part of the international editorial team that produced the acclaimed History of Vatican II, Father Komonchak is professor emertius of the School of Theology and Religious Studies at the Catholic University of America, and a priest of the archdiocese of New York.

Life is though. But Nuns are tougher.  If you need helpful advice, just Ask Sister Mary Martha.

Here. 

Fish Out of Water on July 12th is especially funny.

From Maureen Dowd’s Op-Ed column Rome Fiddles, We Burn published in the New York Times on July 16, 2010:

“In The New Republic, Garry Wills wrote about his struggle to come to terms with the sins of his church: Jesus “is the one who said, ‘Whatever you did to any of my brothers, even the lowliest, you did to me.’ That means that the priests abusing the vulnerable young were doing that to Jesus, raping Jesus. Any clerical functionary who shows more sympathy for the predator priests than for their victims instantly disqualified himself as a follower of Jesus. The cardinals said they must care for their own, going to jail if necessary to protect a priest. We say the same thing, but the ‘our own’ we care for are the victimized, the poor, the violated. They are Jesus.”

I wonder if the shock value of seeing Jesus as a holy innocent being sodomized–with a bishop standing by and doing nothing to stop it–would shake even the most hardened apologist into action against the church structure that allowed this to happen.