{"id":3174,"date":"2005-08-30T10:34:47","date_gmt":"2005-08-30T10:34:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/double-standard.html"},"modified":"2005-08-30T10:34:47","modified_gmt":"2005-08-30T10:34:47","slug":"double-standard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/double-standard.html","title":{"rendered":"Double Standard?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is really fascinating turn of events from the Diocese of Fargo. The link requires registration, but I’ll summarize and quote. In 1999, a laywoman, a secretary in the diocesan office, became pregnant outside of marriage. She was fired. (The diocesan lawyer says she was fired for cohabitating, and was given the chance to change her situation, but didn’t). She’s suing for gender discrimination, and her lawyer wants to bring in evidence of how the diocese ahem, didn’t<\/em> fire priests for various types of sexual misconduct as part of the suit. The diocese is responding by saying, "Hey! Priests aren’t employees!" (We’ve heard that before…)<\/p>\n

(Of course, there really is no argument that the diocesan lawyer is correct on the point that lay employees and priests are in different categories as far as their relationship to the diocese goes. It is just interesting to me that it took so long for a dismissed lay employee to come up with this angle, the secret fantasy tactic of dismissed lay employees everywhere…)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Benjamin Thomas, the diocese attorney, argued at pretrial motions Monday in Cass County District Court that priests aren\u2019t considered employees of the diocese. <\/p>\n

Only the Vatican can appoint and remove priests, Thomas said. Also, it is the Code of Canon Law, not state labor laws, that dictate how priests are disciplined, he said. Therefore, priests don\u2019t provide a fair comparison in Enebo\u2019s case, Thomas said. <\/p>\n

Enebo\u2019s attorney, Robert Schultz, pointed out later that some priests are considered employees of the diocese and are under the bishop\u2019s oversight. <\/p>\n

Thomas said allowing allegations of priest misconduct as evidence would require an expert for the diocese to explain Canon Law, complicating an already complex trial. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat would be hopelessly confusing to a jury,\u201d Thomas said. <\/p>\n

He also expressed the diocese\u2019s concerns about unwanted public exposure, saying the allegations would be \u201cdevastating to all involved and would invite a media circus.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThe diocese is very adamant that that information should not and could not be disclosed,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

East Central District Judge John Irby ruled after the motion hearing that he would review any evidence of priest misconduct in private. He would then decide whether to allow the evidence in the trial.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is really fascinating turn of events from the Diocese of Fargo. The link requires registration, but I’ll summarize and quote. In 1999, a laywoman, a secretary in the diocesan office, became pregnant outside of marriage. She was fired. (The diocesan lawyer says she was fired for cohabitating, and was given the chance to change…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nDouble Standard? - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/double-standard.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Double Standard? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This is really fascinating turn of events from the Diocese of Fargo. The link requires registration, but I’ll summarize and quote. In 1999, a laywoman, a secretary in the diocesan office, became pregnant outside of marriage. She was fired. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}