{"id":316,"date":"2011-12-15T14:25:15","date_gmt":"2011-12-15T19:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=316"},"modified":"2011-12-16T20:48:00","modified_gmt":"2011-12-17T01:48:00","slug":"frank-borzellieri-victim-of-the-new-orthodoxy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/12\/frank-borzellieri-victim-of-the-new-orthodoxy.html","title":{"rendered":"Frank Borzellieri: Victim of the New Orthodoxy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Frank Borzellieri was <\/em>the principal of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, a predominantly black and Hispanic Catholic elementary school located in the Bronx,New York.\u00a0 This past summer, in spite of having had a stellar record during his tenure, Borzellieri was abruptly terminated from the office that he held for two years.<\/p>\n

Unlike those sexually abusive priests who the Church harbored for decades, Borzellieri is not guilty of any crime.\u00a0 In fact, he isn\u2019t so much as suspected of having engaged in any criminal activity whatsoever.\u00a0 Nor is it the case that Borzellieri, a committed Catholic, was deemed to have deviated from Our Lady of Mount Carmel\u2019s Catholic mission.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Still, Borzellieri was judged, and justly, of holding quite heterodox<\/em> views.\u00a0 But the orthodoxy from which he deviated is not that of Catholicism, but that of \u201cPolitical Correctness.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Borzellieri, you see, dared to defy the conventional dogma on race<\/em>.\u00a0 For this, he was essentially branded a \u201cwhite supremacist\u201d by the New York Daily News <\/em>and fired by the Archdiocese of New York. \u00a0In early August of this year, the Archdiocese of New York released a statement in which it said that Borzellieri\u2019s views were \u201cincompatible with the philosophy and practices of Our Lady of Mount Carmel School, and with Catholic schools throughout the archdiocese.\u201d<\/p>\n

Borzellieri, I hope to show, is up against an immovable object, on the one hand, and an irresistible force, on the other.\u00a0 It is with the twin titans of Idiocy and Cowardice that he has to contend.<\/p>\n

First, to know that someone is an advocate of \u201cwhite supremacy\u201d is to know practically nothing.\u00a0 <\/em>To know that a person is a \u201cjerk\u201d is to know more.\u00a0 Like the term \u201cracist,\u201d \u201cwhite supremacy\u201d is a rhetorical mechanism by which some groups of individuals have sought to neutralize those racially-oriented ideas that the politically dominant group deems threatening.\u00a0 Like the terms \u201cjerk\u201d and \u201cidiot,\u201d it is an all-purpose device.\u00a0 However, for all of the latter terms\u2019 ambiguity, most of us haven\u2019t any difficulty spotting jerks and idiots when we encounter them.\u00a0 Such can not be said of \u201cwhite supremacists\u201d and \u201cracists.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Second, while the task of identifying \u201cwhite supremacy\u201d is indeed formidable, the challenge of determining what \u201cwhite supremacy\u201d is not <\/em>is more readily surmountable.\u00a0 One would think that a \u201cwhite supremacist\u201d is a white person who either seeks to be as far away from non-whites as possible or to hold a position in which either he or other whites can perpetually weaken the social standing of non-whites\u2014all <\/em>non-whites.<\/p>\n

Yet not only does Borzellieri fail to satisfy this description of \u201cthe white supremacist\u201d; he blatantly defies <\/em>it.\u00a0\u00a0 For one, Borzellieri has chosen <\/em>to spend his professional life in the company of blacks and Hispanics\u2014his students and their parents.\u00a0 Moreover, he has labored incessantly, as a principal, an educator, and an elected<\/em> member of the New York City school board, to guarantee that his black and Hispanic students get a first-rate education.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Borzellieri has more than a little experience interacting intimately with large non-white student populations: he taught English prior to being a principal and worked at other predominantly black and Hispanic schools before assuming responsibilities at Our Lady of Mount Carmel.\u00a0 There is absolutely no evidence, or at least none that his accusers have as yet to supply, that Borzellieri ever so much as remotely mistreated any students.\u00a0 Moreover, no less a figure than Father Eric Rapaglia, the man who initially hired him as principal at Mount Carmel two years ago and who now<\/em> expresses regret over having done so, admits that \u201cthere was never any complaints from parents or students about him sent to the Archdiocese.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

This hardly sounds like the workings of a raving, hate-filled \u201cwhite supremacist.\u201d<\/p>\n

But there is another consideration that puts the lie to the charge that Borzellieri is a \u201cwhite supremacist.\u201d In the very same writings in which he notes\u2014correctly\u2014<\/em>that, measured by such indicia as rates of crime and academic performance, blacks and Hispanics are at a disadvantage with respect to whites, he also observes\u2014again, correctly<\/em>\u2014that relative to the same standards, whites are at a disadvantage <\/em>relative to Asians. <\/em><\/p>\n

To put it simply, by the same criteria that his critics judge him a \u201cwhite supremacist,\u201d we could just as easily\u2014and much more consistently\u2014judge him an \u201cAsian supremacist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, Borzellieri has done or said nothing to suggest, much less establish, that he is any sort of \u201csupremacist.\u201d\u00a0 In addition to his own writings, his detractors cite Borzellieri\u2019s relationship with \u201cAmerican Renaissance\u201d as the basis for their claim to the contrary.\u00a0 In so doing, however, they only convict themselves further of gross illogic.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

To argue that Borzellieri is a \u201cwhite supremacist\u201d because he associates with American Renaissance and the latter champions \u201cwhite supremacy\u201d is like arguing that theism is true because the Bible claims that it is.\u00a0 The problem here is that the very reasons one has for doubting the truth of theism are precisely the same reasons that one has for doubting the claims of the Bible.\u00a0 Similarly, we first have to show that \u201cwhite supremacy\u201d has any meaning within the context of American Renaissance before we can use Borzellieri\u2019s association with it to show that he <\/em>is a \u201cwhite supremacist.\u201d\u00a0 To argue otherwise is to beg the question.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

According to American Renaissance\u2019s website, since \u201crace and racial conflict are at the heart of the most serious challenges the Western world faces in the 21st<\/sup> century,\u201d it seeks to ameliorate misunderstandings by analyzing \u201call aspects of race, whether historical, cultural, or biological.\u201d\u00a0 That whites would organize for the purposes of calling into question the conventional egalitarian vision of race relations is alone more than sufficient to condemn them in the eyes of the self-appointed guardians of our Politically Correct orthodoxy.\u00a0 That they would dare to note IQ differences between blacks and themselves, and that they would argue that such differences are predominantly hereditary, <\/em>is enough to insure their reduction to non-persons.<\/p>\n

One needn\u2019t agree with American Renaissance\u2019s findings in order to recognize, and respect, the fact that it seeks to address issues of real importance.\u00a0 That is, one needn\u2019t agree with its positions in order to recognize that the fury with which its nemeses attack it is entirely undeserved, the function of a raw anti-intellectualism.\u00a0 And that the charge of \u201cwhite supremacy\u201d is as unwarranted when made against American Renaissance as it is when hurled against Borzellieri is obvious once we consider that while American Renaissance observes that whites as a group have a higher IQ than blacks as a group, it just as quickly notes that northern Asians have a higher IQ than whites.\u00a0 It is a strange sort of \u201cwhite supremacist\u201d that affirms the intellectual superiority of non-whites over whites.<\/p>\n

Logically, the case against Borzellieri is fatally flawed from the outset.\u00a0 Perhaps his detractors realize this.\u00a0 Thus, they decided to resort to brute force and fire him instead of engaging reason. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The logic\u2014or illogic\u2014of Borzellieri\u2019s situation aside, the real story here is the ungodly treatment to which he has been subjected by his fellow Christians.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As the Christmas season dawns upon us once more, Christians the world over are busying themselves preparing for the advent of Christ.\u00a0 Through church attendance, prayer, meditation, Scriptural and devotional readings, moments of silence, and, most importantly, acts of charity<\/em>, the disciples of Jesus seek to renew their minds and hearts in joyful anticipation of the coming of their Lord.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The duty to love one\u2019s neighbor as oneself is no less \u201cgreat\u201d than the duty to love God Himself.\u00a0 On this score, Jesus was unequivocal.\u00a0 He was equally clear, by way of His parable of \u201cthe Good Samaritan,\u201d that one\u2019s neighbor is any person <\/em>in need.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Frank Borzellieri is in need.\u00a0 Yet not only has the Church within which he has spent his life and to which he has provided tireless service refused to attend to his needs; Borzellieri is in<\/em> the situation that he is because of it. <\/em><\/p>\n

The profession of an educator, especially a Catholic school educator, is not known for being particularly remunerative.\u00a0 Those of us who pursue a career as educators do so, then, not for the money, but because of our desire, our passion, in some instances, to supply other human beings with a priceless good: an education.\u00a0 We are ministers of the mind, bearers of the gift of the civilization\u2014the ideas, the skills, and the traditions\u2014of which our students are the proper heirs.<\/p>\n

The Catholic Church in which Borzellieri was reared gave him this opportunity to minister to the young.\u00a0 Yet it just as swiftly snatched it away from him.\u00a0 The Archdiocese\u2019s position that Borzellieri\u2019s views on race are \u201cincompatible\u201d with Catholicism is not only nonsense; it is, to quote Jeremy Bentham, \u201cnonsense on stilts.\u201d\u00a0 As the great Catholic writer G.K Chesterton remarked, contrary to popular opinion, Catholicism not only admits of variety of thought, there is far greater intellectual diversity among Catholics than among any other group, including and especially those secularists who pride themselves on \u201cindependence of thought.\u201d\u00a0 Catholics agree on a couple of theological doctrines.\u00a0 Beyond this, there is no consensus.<\/p>\n

Borzellieri undermined no theological doctrines.\u00a0 Even the Catholic notion of \u201cthe inherent and inviolable dignity of every human being, from conception until death,\u201d isn\u2019t in the least bit imperiled by anything that Borzellieri had said.\u00a0 This belief is no more incompatible with the acknowledgment that differences in intellect and conduct vary among racial groups than it is incompatible with the acknowledgment that there are intellectual and behavioral differences amongst individuals.\u00a0 If, say, the assessment that blacks as a group have higher crime rates than whites as a group can be said to undermine the Catholic teaching of inherent and equal human dignity, then the assessment that Adolph Hitler was a worse human being than Mother Teresa\u2014a normative, <\/em>not a descriptive, <\/em>judgment\u2014can more <\/em>easily be said to do the same.<\/p>\n

No, Borzellieri violated the doctrines of Political Correctness, not Catholicism.\u00a0 It is for this<\/em> transgression that the Archdiocese threw him out in the cold.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t just the Church, though, that has abandoned Borzellieri.\u00a0 He has connections with prominent conservatives in the media who have turned their backs on him as well.\u00a0 Not a single self-avowed \u201cconservative\u201d who once associated with Borzellieri, media personalities who are much more known, and much more professionally and financially well off, than I, has uttered a single word in his defense.\u00a0 More shamefully, most of these same people also consider themselves Christian.<\/p>\n

Frank Borzellieri is the victim of a great injustice.\u00a0 He is also a man in need of help.\u00a0 If ever his fellow conservatives and his fellow Christians had reason to be ashamed, their treatment of Borzellieri is it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frank Borzellieri was the principal of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, a predominantly black and Hispanic Catholic elementary school located in the Bronx,New York.\u00a0 This past summer, in spite of having had a stellar record during his tenure, Borzellieri was abruptly terminated from the office that he held for two years. 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