EDUCATION, GENDER IDENTITY, PARENT REPORT

ContributorMay 19, 20231 Comment

on York Region – Grade 5-8 Workshop on Gender and Queer Identity

I’m a parent at an Elementary-aged Public School in York Region District in Ontario. 

Sometime at the end of February, without parents’ knowledge, the school invited Canadian Centre for Sexual and Gender Diversity to give a workshop on gender diversity and queer identity to students from Grade 5 to 8. The title and content of this workshop and by what organization were all vague. Some parents heard something from their children but no one had a clue what happened. 

Until March 1st.

At the school parents council meeting, while the school showed previous activities at the school, I noticed this workshop for Grade 5 to 8 and asked what it was about and if parents’ consent were obtained. The Principal stated that this topic falls under the Human Rights code, thus parents acknowledgement or consent are not required. Two other council members stated that they wanted to be educated on the same topic so parents can help promote gender equity. The school thought it would be a great idea to bring in speakers to give a gender diversity session to parents. On April 21, the school sent out the following invitation to all parents at the school: 

It was a painful first 20 minutes to sit through the presentation (presented in its entirety below), which was an indoctrination session of gender ideology, even more shocking knowing our young children had to attend this. I didn’t even know why “toxic masculinity” was thrown in there (is that a tenet of gender ideology?), and regardless, is that what we want to be teaching our impressionable boys? 

A third of the way into the presentation, parents started to ask questions about the appropriateness of asking children pronouns all the time. The majority of the parents kept assuring the presenters that they are fully on board with their ideas – they just wanted to be “educated” to be better parents. However, I now believe, thinking back, these parents might have wanted to appease the school and these people so that they don’t take our kids from us (it is anecdotally known in Ontario that teachers will call child protective services on parents who don’t automatically affirm and unquestioningly their child).

The presenter and school’s answers were within my expectations, that they want to create a safe space for everybody. They did not seem to have any clue about the UK’s non-partisan Cass Review, which states that “social transition is not a neutral act.” In fact, it can lock in a trans identity that would otherwise desist, leading to risky medicalization and becoming a lifelong medical patient.

Later in the conversation, the vice principal and the speaker threw in the (unrelated?) concepts of white privilege and racism. And so now we parents had the complete ideological package.

At one point, the presenter claimed that Disney is teaching kids to be racist and transphobic, so I brought out books from the local public library (see photo below) saying these books are all talking about your agenda to children, telling them that you are confusing and gaslighting our children regarding their sexes, and this is very harmful to certain vulnerable children. Then I quoted the study findings of the interplay between autism, ADHD, and other psychological disorders and gender identity. 

However, I couldn’t finish because I was stopped by the principal and vice principal, who reprimanded me that what I said was very offensive. Someone was offended (it was not clear who). No other parent backed me up – they were too scared. So I shut my mouth. At the end, the school sincerely thanked the speakers for giving us such a precious opportunity to “openly discuss” these new concepts so we can be global citizens.

The school principal reached out to me a week later saying that because of my active involvement with the school (I have organized Chinese culture activities for the school and act as a voting member of the school parents council) he felt like he should clear the air. I thought he was going to apologize to me. To my surprise, he reaffirmed his position last week at the presentation that he needed to stop me because my speech was transphobic. I asked how this was so since my statement was backed by scientific studies. I offered to send him the studies, so he could understand the complexity of the issues. He ignored this request and replied that one of the speakers self-identified as transgendered. He said that when I mentioned autism and other comorbidities, I made this speaker feel uncomfortable and unsafe. I asked the principal to confirm this was why he interrupted me, because he thought the speaker felt uncomfortable and unsafe. I then told him that I had actually felt unwelcomed in that room and that I felt the environment was hostile. Would he stand up for me like he did for the speaker?

He said no, what I said was unacceptable, the same as a racist slur calling someone the N word. 

Can you imagine my blood pressure at this point? Then the principal reminded me how racism and white supremacy sneaked into our debates last week at the presentation. I was flabbergasted by this assertion. He said that when I objected to transgender ideology, I automatically became a racist and part of the discriminative supremacist system. Then he went on to say that he affirms all students’ identities. This conversation wouldn’t go anywhere else, so we agreed to disagree. 

At last, I asked if there are teachers who object to this gender identity ideology. To my horror, he said if there are, he needs to have a serious conversation with them. 

LIBRARY BOOKS: 

These books are available and easily accessible at the Library. These are only a sample of what they have on their shelves. This is also the only library we have in town. They have hosted Drag Queen Story Hour before and will host another one on June 3. The books I brought to the presentation are quite controversial and many parents are concerned about age appropriateness, given that some of them can be considered pornographic, with images of young people engaging in fellatio.

CLASSROOM:

These two photos show the presentation right at the door of my Grade 2 (age 7) daughter’s classroom. 

PRESENTATION: 

This is a shocking number historically speaking, however not too surprising if you realize that social influence is at work and LGBT has become a social and political identity.

Again, this seems shocking, until you realize that LGBT people tend to have many comorbid mental health issues. Also, the term “cisgender” is a hallmark of gender ideology.

The “genderbread person” and the “gender unicorn” are not based in science. The gender giraffes are a good and respectful alternative.

This slide boggles the mind. Biological sex is indeed binary and should not be confused with “gender.” DSD (differences in sexual development, or intersex), a medical condition where biological sex is still relevant, should not be used as a way to advance an ideology. This article by an evolutionary biologist is helpful in clearing up the misconceptions.

This slide seems irrelevant and anti-boy. 

As noted above, social transition, including changing names and pronouns, is not a neutral act but can have a profound psychological impact. Parents must be involved and not have this hidden from them. Schools are not psychologists or doctors and should not act as such. 

This is straight from ideological and much-disputed academic queer theory.

Obviously, transphobia and homophobia can occur and need to be discouraged, but these terms are sadly now over-used, weaponized, and utilized to cancel debate by anyone who might disagree about any aspect of these issues (including social transition without parental knowledge).

Again, this is queer theory. For instance, feeling uncomfortable with puberty is very normal for both sexes and across cultures.

Good advice for any parent. The research is increasingly clear social media can be problematic for young people.

We must figure out a way to balance the rights. It’s important that the rights of girls are not violated when implementing such policies, for example in sports.

Of course people should be respectful of each other, that goes without saying. If a parent is okay with using different names and pronouns, then that is a different story than if a parent is being lied to, the ultimate in disrespect.

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One thought on “York Region – Grade 5-8 Workshop on Gender and Queer Identity”

• Tony Kiar

• May 20, 2023 at 10:23 am

• In Ontario, public schools are closed union shops. In elementary school the Elementary Teacher’s Federation of Ontario (ETFO) is the predominant group from which the teachers of your children can be hired and from which administrators of elementary schools are recruited. Teachers and administrators carry ideology into their roles in the schools and when recruited – into the school board office. There is a trickle up effect over time that changes the character of the school board as union ideologues are inducted into administrative positions.
  Read more at: https://scrapbookwithtony.wordpress.com/2019/08/12/how-did-gender-ideology-become-embedded-in-our-public-schools/

Case Dismissed

The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO) did not find that my daughter’s case vs OCDSB met the criteria for “direct discrimination” and their reasoning was that our daughter was not denied access to education services. They also found our argument that the repeated pattern of instruction in gender identity theory resulted in a poisoned environment and the direct statement (at least once) by the teacher that “there’s no such thing as girls and boys” was adequately corrected; by the teacher using a gender spectrum as a further teaching tool with 6-year-olds and without any recognition of biological sex as a relevant and important personal characteristic. 

My husband and I approached the school 4 ½ years ago to advocate for our daughter because she had clearly become distressed about how her teacher was instructing her Grade 1 class on the topic of gender. We had not been overly concerned about the “sex-ed” curriculum prior to this experience, but now we’re committed in our belief that children deserve factual and balanced education when it comes to the topic of personal identity. Recognizing that children have a sex, for example, was deemed “not necessary” by the school board and this was noted without disagreement in the ruling. 

The ruling also gave the teacher the benefit of the doubt over our testimony as NB’s parents as to her state of distress. The ruling declared that “cognitive dissonance (that a child might experience) “is simply a part of living in a diverse society” and “a part of growing up” and “arguably necessary if children are to be taught what tolerance itself involves.” 

Exposing the new dogma

Taking this action helped expose the reality of what’s going on in our schools with the full support of the school board administration, and now it seems, the HRTO. Most parents are under the mistaken assumption that what happened in our daughter’s class was the act of a “rogue teacher”. We had initially thought so as well, and friends and neighbours suggested filing a complaint because this teacher must clearly be teaching “outside the curriculum”. 

It turns out that replacing a child’s understanding of themselves in terms of their sex with something called “gender identity” (which can be fluid or not fluid depending on who you ask and what you’re asking about) IS the curriculum – a curriculum within the curriculum. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the HRTO has used our case to double-down on their support for gender identity. Had we won our case, it would have meant an admission from the Human Rights Commission that their own policies had overlooked some critical pieces. This, it seems, is not in the cards. 

“Everyone has a gender identity”, the ruling declared. This statement in and of itself conflates sex and gender. That some people declare they have a gender that is different from their birth sex is an observable fact. Beyond that, it is not possible to prove or assert that gender identity applies to everyone. To do so requires that you ascribe sex and gender identity the same meaning, which is not reflected in the HRTO’s own policies. They don’t seem to be bothered by that particular discrepancy.   

HRTO Reveals Bias

Our hearing presented the HRTO with an opportunity to reflect on the harmful effects that gender identity theory can have on children. Instead, their characterization of our proposed public interest remedy reveals that they have no interest in helping schools ensure they adopt a rational approach to gender that ensures a safe and inclusive environment for all. 

The Tribunal ruling made an “exception” in commenting on the remedies that we were asking for. The guardrails we proposed are based on recent British Department of Education guidance that recognizes the sensitive nature of discussions on the topics of sex and gender in schools and sets out very reasonable parameters. 

The Tribunal ruling refers to them as “complex and detailed” and mischaracterizes them completely by suggesting they ask “that the school board be directed to avoid the issue of gender fluidity”. 

The intent of the guardrails is not to avoid the issue of gender fluidity, but ensure that it is discussed factually, at an age appropriate level and without reinforcing harmful gender stereotypes or suggesting that one’s sex is a fiction. 

We also noticed several glaring mistakes in the ruling, including the suggestion that Aaron Kimberley is an expert in genetics. Was our expert witness ruled out because the Adjudicator thought we were proposing an expert in genetics!? Good Lord. 

We proposed Aaron (a trans-man who happens to have an intersex condition and has clinical experience supporting trans-identified youth) as our expert witness because of this background and his studies and deep knowledge of queer theory. Queer theory is the root of the issue we had wanted to explore because of its insidious influence in our culture and social institutions. And insidious it continues to be.  

Guardrails Needed

Regardless of the outcome, we stand by our call for guardrails on how teachers can instruct the topic of gender in the classroom. 

Our proposed guardrails were adapted from recent updates in Britain:

That the Tribunal instruct the Board to develop publicly available guidance on the sensitive topics of gender and biological sex to ensure that any discussions and/or the use of teaching materials and/or the use of third party organizations do not: 

i) reinforce harmful stereotypes, for instance by suggesting that children might be a different gender based on their personality and interests or the clothes they prefer to wear; 

ii) influence a child’s identity formation by giving preference to understanding oneself in terms of gender identity over understanding oneself based on one’s biological sex observed at birth; or 

iii) suggest that the sex categories of male and female do not exist or exist on a spectrum. 

Further, that the Board ensure resources used in teaching about this topic be age-appropriate, evidence based, and avoid suggesting to a child that their non-compliance with gender stereotypes means that either their personality or their body is wrong and in need of changing, while always treating individual students with sympathy and support.

What Now?

I’ve been reflecting in the past weeks about what good can come from this, even with a decision that is not in our favour. I started Canadian Gender Report after my husband and I decided to go public with our daughter’s case. And the number of people who reach out looking for support or information continues to surprise me.

I’ve met many parents, mental health clinicians, physicians and others who are concerned about the drastic and unexplained increase in the number of mostly girls identifying as something other than their birth sex and seeking medical transition – most of them “non-binary” or some other variation of this in between place that can be found if you think (and are taught) that gender exists on a spectrum. Not to mention all the re-inforcement of this idea in our culture and social media environment that children are able to access. 

If the reason for this was “greater societal acceptance” then the numbers of people declaring a trans identity would be constant across age groups. This is not the case, with adolescents and young people experiencing a drastic and unexplained increase.

Just this summer for example, I was contacted by several young people who have “woken up” from their own experiences following the gender identity rabbit down the rabbit hole. 

I spoke with a young man a few weeks ago who still goes by his chosen feminine name and faces a very difficult time at work and simply existing in society. He told me he knew right after the surgery that he had made a mistake. He found me through Canadian Gender Report and our network has tried to find him appropriate therapy and support. 

Another recent inquiry is from the family of a young woman who would like her breasts back. She’s in her early 20’s and living on disability with severe anxiety that she has had since she was a child. She was able to access transition services without a problem. Trying to get help and support to transition back is turning out to be not as easy. Stay tuned for a possible fundraiser if she has to travel out of province to access care.

It’s these types of situations that keep me going and help me know that Canadian Gender Report is a necessary and worthwhile endeavour. 

But that’s actually a very big problem, isn’t it? 

Should it not worry all of us that people are finding Canadian Gender Report because they have no where else to turn!? These are extremely serious and sensitive situations. Canadians in this kind of situation should be able to turn to therapists and physicians for help – and feel free to have a conversation with a neighbour or friend about what they’re going through. What is happening here in Canada and why?

Until we come to terms with the answers to this question, there will be much ne

In his annual “state of the world” address to the Vatican diplomatic corps last month, Pope Francis expressed his deep concern over a phenomenon that he believes poses an escalating threat: “cancel culture,” the increasingly prevalent practice of silencing individuals, institutions, and even, in the Pope’s estimation, entire cultures that are deemed to hold incorrect or inconvenient views or values. 

In expressing this concern, Pope Francis has given new voice to the growing number of Catholic clerics and academics who fear that cancel culture’s relativistic and amoral philosophical underpinnings are the antithesis of Catholic teaching.

They further contend that Catholic schools and universities are a key battleground in which the war against cancel culture must be fought and won if Christianity is to thrive. At its most fundamental level, it’s a battle over what is true in the world. And, as such, it’s a struggle to which leaders at Catholic colleges in the Vancouver area—Catholic Pacific College in Langley, and Corpus Christi-Mark’s College in Vancouver—say they are deeply committed.

The term “cancel culture” has come into common usage over the past few years and is widely understood to mean the increasingly successful attempt to censor views—and to shame and shun those who utter them—that do not conform to the “politically correct” tenets of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and its closely associated cultural manifestation, “woke-ism.”

Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez recently said, “Today’s critical theories and ideologies are profoundly atheistic.” (CNS photo/Bob Roller

An integral part of the agenda is “diversity, equity, and inclusion” mandates that critics say end up discriminating against members of groups that have not been identified as oppressed or under-represented.

Canadian academic and author Jordan Peterson wrote in a National Post column last month that these mandates comprise an “appalling ideology,” and constituted the primary reason why he had resigned as a tenured professor at the University of Toronto. As well, Frances Widdowson was fired from her job as a Mount Royal University (Calgary) political-science professor late last year after being a persistent critic of equity mandates and of the contention that Canada’s former treatment of its aboriginal residents represented an attempted cultural genocide.

Writing last month for the National Review, Canadian columnist Mark Milke observed, “Widdowson and Peterson are only the most high-profile academic casualties of the woke mania in Canada. It is unlikely that they will be the last.”

The interconnected phenomena have sparked widespread debate in the secular world for at least the last several years, but their adverse impact on Christianity and Catholicism has now come into sharper focus with the statements by Pope Francis.

Pope Francis has, in several past addresses, used the term “ideological colonization” to describe the Western world’s trampling of Indigenous cultures and institutions. He referred to that phenomenon again in his January address to diplomats representing 183 countries, but also widened his critique to include cancel culture.

Pope Francis warned that political, legal, and cultural “agendas are increasingly dictated by a mindset that rejects the natural foundations of humanity and the cultural roots that constitute the identity of many peoples.”

“As I have stated on other occasions,” he said, “I consider this a form of ideological colonization, one that leaves no room for freedom of expression and is now taking the form of the ‘cancel culture’ invading many circles and public institutions.”

The Pontiff continued, “Under the guise of defending diversity, it ends up cancelling all sense of identity, with the risk of silencing positions that defend a respectful and balanced understanding of various sensibilities.

“A kind of dangerous ‘one-track thinking’[…] is taking shape, one constrained to deny history or, worse yet, to rewrite it in terms of present-day categories, whereas any historical situation must be interpreted in the light of a hermeneutics of that particular time, not that of today.”

Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez, who is president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, used more direct language in November when he said that secular movements promoting social justice and “wokeness” are “pseudo-religions” that should be understood as “replacements and rivals to traditional Christian beliefs.”

Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez recently said, “Today’s critical theories and ideologies are profoundly atheistic.” (CNS photo/Bob Roller)

As reported in America Magazine, Archbishop Gomez made the comments in a videotaped address to the 23rd Catholic and Public Life Congress, held Nov. 12-14 in Madrid. “With the breakdown of the Judeo-Christian worldview and the rise of secularism, political belief systems based on social justice or personal identity have come to fill the space that Christian belief and practice once occupied,” he said. 

He continued, “Today’s critical theories and ideologies are profoundly atheistic. They deny the soul, the spiritual, transcendent dimension of human nature; or they think that it is irrelevant to human happiness.

“They reduce what it means to be human to essentially physical qualities—the color of our skin, our sex, our notions of gender, our ethnic background or our position in society.”

Archbishop Gomez linked these movements to liberation theology; he added that “they seem to be coming from the same Marxist cultural vision. Also these movements resemble some of the heresies that we find in church history. These new movements have lost the truth about the human person” because they deny God. No matter how well-intentioned they are, they cannot promote authentic human flourishing.”

Archbishop Gomez’s speech can also be seen as a critique of CRT, which has been defined as an intellectual movement and framework of legal analysis based on the premise that race is a socially constructed category that leads to oppression of minorities. Some of CRT’s more common manifestations are hiring quotas for visible minority (rather than employment policies based on qualifications) and justice-system “reforms” that lessen penalties for members of races or ethnic groups that are “over-represented” among those charged or convicted of crimes.

CRT and “wokeness” are intrinsically anti-Christian, says a representative of the Virginia-based Cardinal Newman Society, whose mission is to promote and defend faithful Catholic education.

“First, critical race theory has a very narrow focus,” Dr. Denise Donohue, Vice-President for Educator Resources, said in answer to questions from The B.C. Catholic. “It premises everything on race and addresses the question of who benefits and who doesn’t.

“But the first principle of Catholic social teaching is the dignity of all people. It is race-neutral. It teaches that all people have a common origin and a common destiny, that we are all children of God, made in his image and likeness.

“We all have individual dignity; we can’t ‘cancel’ anyone. Critical race theory opposes a person’s dignity by imputing unconscious bias within them which negates their individual freedom of choice – that which actually makes them an image of God. And that’s another difference. Critical race theory  is atheistic and leaves no room for a Creator/creature relationship. There is no transcendence or reliance upon anything higher than man himself.”

She added that, while both CRT and Catholic social teaching focus on the poor and marginalized, their means of eliminating economic and societal disparities clearly differ. Last summer, the Cardinal Newman Society published a fact sheet, drawing on Donohue’s research, outlining 10 ways in which Catholic education and CTT are “simply incompatible.” (See below.)

Donohue’s colleague, Dr. Dan Guernsey, said it is important that Catholic educational institutions mount a challenge to this anti-Catholic worldview. “Catholic universities should respond to every event, opportunity, and challenge in light of their mission,” said Guernsey, who is the society’s Education Policy Editor and Senior Fellow.

“Vatican II affirms that a central mission of Catholic universities is to offer ‘a public, enduring, and pervasive influence of the Christian mind in the furtherance of culture,’” he said in emailed answers to B.C. Catholic questions. “Insofar as woke-ism and critical race theory are currently powerful cultural forces, Catholics should examine them in an academic context.

“Insofar as central elements of their underlying philosophies run counter to the Christian mind (influences of Marxism, materialism, relativism, etc.), these elements must be called out and examined against an authentic Christian anthropology and a comprehensive Catholic worldview. Catholic universities should not use their institutional reputation and resources to further a mindset antithetical to Christianity.”

This would be in keeping with St. Pope John Paul II’s 1990 “Apostolic Constitution on Catholic Universities,” in which he declared, “It is the honour and responsibility of a Catholic university to consecrate itself without reserve to the cause of truth.”

St. Pope John Paul II continued, “The present age is in urgent need of this kind of disinterest service, namely of proclaiming the meaning of truth, that fundamental value without which freedom, justice and human dignity are extinguished.”

Andrew Kaethler, Academic Dean and Assistant Professor of Theology at Catholic Pacific College in Langley, said in an interview that one important way he carries out this important responsibility is to introduce his students “to a tradition in which there is a recognition that there is a good, there is a truth, that there is truth to reality, that we can encounter it, and that the logos (universal divine reason) that undergirds all reality—that of our own individual logos and everyone’s—interconnects with The Logos, and therefore see reality for what it is.”

                        Andrew Kaethler

Kaethler said that does not mean that he wants the college’s graduates to go out into the world “wagging their fingers, and saying, ‘wrong, wrong, wrong.’” There is a time and place for naysaying, he said. 

“But our students are better off if they are equipped to respond by offering a counter story, the story of the true, the good,  and the beautiful—that is, Gospel.”

On the specific issue of CRT, “We want to teach our students to relate to the truths that are within critical race theory—the desire to combat racism and to have empathy with those who are struggling—but then to provide a far more beautiful response than CRT, a response that, unlike CRT, does not perpetuate the problem that it seeks to overcome,” he said.

On the interconnected issues of cancel culture, Kaethler said Christian teaching is clear. “As Joseph Ratzinger [Pope Emeritus Benedict VXI] beautifully sets out, to be the elect means that we have been called to lay our lives down for the sake of the world,” he said. “Part and parcel of this is forgiveness, something that does not exist within cancel culture.

“There’s no room for forgiveness in this perspective because it overlooks persons. Here one does not live for the other, and the human person is lost in group think. This is terrifying.”

The newly-appointed President and Principal of Corpus Christi-St. Mark’s, Dr. Gerry Turcotte, agreed that the pursuit of truth is central to a Catholic college’s mission. Turcotte, who will replace retiring Dr. Michael W. Higgins in August, said in an interview that, “the cause of truth is one that allows and encourages, specifically in Catholic universities, the asking of questions about all the most difficult issues.”

                                    Dr. Gerry Turcotte  

However, this does not mean dissenting or differing voices should not be heard. “We need to create a space of dialogue, where we can meet and encounter truth,” Turcotte explains. “It’s arguably the hardest thing to do. And I think it was always the mission of Catholic universities to pursue this.

“This was why the Catholic Church created the very first universities in the first place, to create a space where difficult questions could be asked, and it’s always going to be uncomfortable, because of the wide range of issues, and it’s something that you have to negotiate in the university system.”

Turcotte, who is currently President and Vice-Chancellor of St. Mary’s University in Calgary, said he will devote himself to continuing the Corpus Christi-St. Mark’s tradition of “creating these amazing individuals” who are going “out into the community to make a difference.

“I think that’s the antidote to the negativity and to guilt and to all other issues we may be struggling with. It’s creating people who have good strong values and who want to make a difference and to do the right thing in our  community, even when that’s a difficult thing to do.”

Turcotte said that he personally is dedicated to improving the community and to social justice. “And I believe strongly that Catholic education can heal a lot of the wounds that our planet is experiencing right now,” he said. “And I will come in with energy, and I will come in with an open heart, and I will try to assist in every way I can to make the mission of the colleges a success. And through that success, and through those actions, to really celebrate the dynamism and the beauty of the Catholic faith.”

As Catholic colleges in B.C. look to grapple with these fundamental issues, retired St. Thomas Aquinas Regional Secondary teacher Peter Nation is working to educate parishioners, parents, and other interested people about the dangers of the woke worldview.

                    Peter Nation

Nation, who is the founder of Catholic Voices Canada, said in an interview that he believes the intent of woke ideology and cancel culture “is to bring down the Judeo-Christian tradition, including specifically the family and the moral law, and so it is a threat to Western civilization as a whole.”

He also believes that woke philosophy has infiltrated deeply into all schools and that students, even those in elementary schools, have been thoroughly indoctrinated. For example, Nation said he heard from one Grade 4 teacher who was explaining how adjectives must agree with nouns in French. Her students were outraged when she used the word “white.”

As an antidote, Catholic Voices launched its “Awake from Woke” education series last April. The virtual sessions show that woke ideology is based on beliefs and assumptions that are the antithesis of the Catholic faith. Catholic Voices has held 14 such sessions so far. One scheduled for February will instruct participants on how to engage in conversations about woke ideology.

“Adults themselves need to be educated before our young people can stand against cancel culture,” he said. “One problem has been that woke ideology has been camouflaged by terminology like ‘diversity, inclusivity, and equity,’ and ‘social justice,’ which sound like they are secular initiatives that could be aligned with Catholic social teaching. They are not.”

Nation said the struggle to counter woke-ism is not an easy one, especially given the inroads the philosophy has made. But he said success may be found through a commitment to the “unity of family and friends,” through devoted “prayer warriors,” by “taking back institutions through friendships,” and through the “Awake from Woke support network” of parents and students.

10 ways Catholic education is incompatible with Critical Race Theory

The following are 10 ways Catholic education and critical race theory are incompatible, summarized from the Cardinal Newman Society’s Principles of Catholic Identity, Catholic Curriculum Standards, and “Background on Critical Race Theory and Critical Theory for Catholic Educators” by the society’s Dr. Denise Donohue.

1) Catholic education teaches from the truths of our faith and Christian anthropology. But critical race theory is a political, divisive ideology that is antithetical to the Catholic worldview.

2) Catholic education teaches the dignity of all people, made in the image and likeness of God. But critical race theory has its origins in critical theory, a Marxist-inspired movement that views all things through the lens of power and divides society into oppressors and the oppressed. Critical race theory marks this division according to racial lines.

3) Charity and community are central to the mission of Catholic education. But critical race theory promotes division and forces people into competing racial groups.

4) Catholic education conforms consciences to Christ and his Church. But critical race theory imputes unconscious bias upon persons and deems racism a permanent condition.

5) Catholic education teaches that sin is an individual fault that can have devastating social impact. But critical race theory imputes guilt for “social sins” committed in the past.

6) Catholic education teaches the unity of faith and reason and helps students know and live the truth. But critical race theory is skeptical of objective truth and rejects the Western intellectual tradition. It places individual experience and cultural constructivism over reason.

7) Catholic education recognizes individual autonomy and cultivates students’ capacity for reason, without regard to skin color. But critical race theory assumes that race defines how one thinks and looks at the world.

8) Catholic education observes human accomplishments and failings according to a Catholic worldview, by which racism is one element of a fallen and redeemed nature. But critical race theory demands that history be taught through the lens of race, power, and privilege.

9) Catholic education favours literature that promotes understanding of the human condition across time and culture. But critical race theory demands that classic texts be set aside for contemporary literature that is narrowly focused on race and social deconstruction.

10) Catholic education respects the natural and religious rights of parents to direct the formation of their children in collaboration with the school. But critical race theory manipulates education to form children according to its narrow ideology and to reshape culture.

‘Woke’ social justice is not Catholic social justice: Bishop Barron

One of North America’s most popular Catholic apologists says Catholics committed to social justice for the poor and disenfranchised should be aware of the dangerous, anti-Catholic underpinning of the “woke” social-justice movement currently holding sway over Western culture.

Bishop Robert Barron, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, said in an April 2021 interview with Pablo Kay, Editor-in-Chief of Angelus News, that advocates of “woke” ideology have made no secret of the philosophical underpinnings of their perspective. “They do indeed find inspiration in [Communist Karl] Marx, [German philosopher Friedrich] Nietzsche, [French philosopher Jean-Paul] Sartre, [Algerian-French philosopher Jacques] Derrida, and [French historian and philosopher Michel] Foucault, among others,” he said. 

Bishop Barron said “woke” social-justice advocates derive several principles from these thinkers. “First, they advocate a deeply antagonistic social theory, whereby the world is divided sharply into the two classes of oppressors and oppressed,” he said. “Second, they relativize moral value and see classical morality as an attempt by the ruling class to maintain itself in power.” 

His third observation was that social justice warriors focus more on racial and ethnic categories than individual characteristics, which leads them to endorse the idea of collective guilt while supporting “a sort of reverse discrimination to address the injustices of the past.” 

“Fourth, they tend to demonize the market economy and the institutions of democracy as part of a superstructure defending the privileged,” Bishop Barron explained. “Fifth, they push toward equity of outcome throughout the society, rather than equality of opportunity.” And finally, “wokeism” employs divisive strategies of accusation that are contrary to the Gospel demand to love our enemies.” 

Bishop Barron concluded: “Suffice it to say that Catholic social teaching stands athwart all of this. It wants social justice, of course, but not on ‘woke’ terms. Its heroes are not Marx, Nietzsche, and Foucault, but rather Isaiah, Amos, Jeremiah, Jesus the Lord, Ambrose, Aquinas, and Teresa of Calcutta.”

Faith needs to be on the table: colleges’ incoming president

In a society more comfortable with cancel culture than counterculture, Pope John Paul II’s 1990 call for Catholic universities...

TERRY O'NEILL

FEBRUARY 23, 2022

CRT and “wokeness” are intrinsically anti-Christian, says a representative of the Virginia-based Cardinal Newman Society, whose mission is to promote and defend faithful Catholic education.

“First, critical race theory has a very narrow focus,” Dr. Denise Donohue, Vice-President for Educator Resources, said in answer to questions from The B.C. Catholic. “It premises everything on race and addresses the question of who benefits and who doesn’t.

“But the first principle of Catholic social teaching is the dignity of all people. It is race-neutral. It teaches that all people have a common origin and a common destiny, that we are all children of God, made in his image and likeness.

“We all have individual dignity; we can’t ‘cancel’ anyone. Critical race theory opposes a person’s dignity by imputing unconscious bias within them which negates their individual freedom of choice – that which actually makes them an image of God. And that’s another difference. Critical race theory  is atheistic and leaves no room for a Creator/creature relationship. There is no transcendence or reliance upon anything higher than man himself.”

She added that, while both CRT and Catholic social teaching focus on the poor and marginalized, their means of eliminating economic and societal disparities clearly differ. Last summer, the Cardinal Newman Society published a fact sheet, drawing on Donohue’s research, outlining 10 ways in which Catholic education and CTT are “simply incompatible.” (See below.)

Donohue’s colleague, Dr. Dan Guernsey, said it is important that Catholic educational institutions mount a challenge to this anti-Catholic worldview. “Catholic universities should respond to every event, opportunity, and challenge in light of their mission,” said Guernsey, who is the society’s Education Policy Editor and Senior Fellow.

“Vatican II affirms that a central mission of Catholic universities is to offer ‘a public, enduring, and pervasive influence of the Christian mind in the furtherance of culture,’” he said in emailed answers to B.C. Catholic questions. “Insofar as woke-ism and critical race theory are currently powerful cultural forces, Catholics should examine them in an academic context.

“Insofar as central elements of their underlying philosophies run counter to the Christian mind (influences of Marxism, materialism, relativism, etc.), these elements must be called out and examined against an authentic Christian anthropology and a comprehensive Catholic worldview. Catholic universities should not use their institutional reputation and resources to further a mindset antithetical to Christianity.”

This would be in keeping with St. Pope John Paul II’s 1990 “Apostolic Constitution on Catholic Universities,” in which he declared, “It is the honour and responsibility of a Catholic university to consecrate itself without reserve to the cause of truth.”

St. Pope John Paul II continued, “The present age is in urgent need of this kind of disinterest service, namely of proclaiming the meaning of truth, that fundamental value without which freedom, justice and human dignity are extinguished.”

CRT and “wokeness” are intrinsically anti-Christian, says a representative of the Virginia-based Cardinal Newman Society, whose mission is to promote and defend faithful Catholic education.

“First, critical race theory has a very narrow focus,” Dr. Denise Donohue, Vice-President for Educator Resources, said in answer to questions from The B.C. Catholic. “It premises everything on race and addresses the question of who benefits and who doesn’t.

“But the first principle of Catholic social teaching is the dignity of all people. It is race-neutral. It teaches that all people have a common origin and a common destiny, that we are all children of God, made in his image and likeness.

“We all have individual dignity; we can’t ‘cancel’ anyone. Critical race theory opposes a person’s dignity by imputing unconscious bias within them which negates their individual freedom of choice – that which actually makes them an image of God. And that’s another difference. Critical race theory  is atheistic and leaves no room for a Creator/creature relationship. There is no transcendence or reliance upon anything higher than man himself.”

She added that, while both CRT and Catholic social teaching focus on the poor and marginalized, their means of eliminating economic and societal disparities clearly differ. Last summer, the Cardinal Newman Society published a fact sheet, drawing on Donohue’s research, outlining 10 ways in which Catholic education and CTT are “simply incompatible.” (See below.)

Donohue’s colleague, Dr. Dan Guernsey, said it is important that Catholic educational institutions mount a challenge to this anti-Catholic worldview. “Catholic universities should respond to every event, opportunity, and challenge in light of their mission,” said Guernsey, who is the society’s Education Policy Editor and Senior Fellow.

“Vatican II affirms that a central mission of Catholic universities is to offer ‘a public, enduring, and pervasive influence of the Christian mind in the furtherance of culture,’” he said in emailed answers to B.C. Catholic questions. “Insofar as woke-ism and critical race theory are currently powerful cultural forces, Catholics should examine them in an academic context.

“Insofar as central elements of their underlying philosophies run counter to the Christian mind (influences of Marxism, materialism, relativism, etc.), these elements must be called out and examined against an authentic Christian anthropology and a comprehensive Catholic worldview. Catholic universities should not use their institutional reputation and resources to further a mindset antithetical to Christianity.”

This would be in keeping with St. Pope John Paul II’s 1990 “Apostolic Constitution on Catholic Universities,” in which he declared, “It is the honor and responsibility of a Catholic university to consecrate itself without reserve to the cause of truth.”

St. Pope John Paul II continued, “The present age is in urgent need of this kind of disinterest service, namely of proclaiming the meaning of truth, that fundamental value without which freedom, justice and human dignity are extinguished.”

Andrew Kaethler, Academic Dean and Assistant Professor of Theology at Catholic Pacific College in Langley, said in an interview that one important way he carries out this important responsibility is to introduce his students “to a tradition in which there is a recognition that there is a good, there is a truth, that there is truth to reality, that we can encounter it, and that the logos (universal divine reason) that undergirds all reality—that of our own individual logos and everyone’s—interconnects with The Logos, and therefore see reality for what it is.”

The following are 10 ways Catholic education and critical race theory are incompatible, summarized from the Cardinal Newman Society’s Principles of Catholic Identity, Catholic Curriculum Standards, and “Background on Critical Race Theory and Critical Theory for Catholic Educators” by the society’s Dr. Denise Donohue.

1) Catholic education teaches from the truths of our faith and Christian anthropology. But critical race theory is a political, divisive ideology that is antithetical to the Catholic worldview.

2) Catholic education teaches the dignity of all people, made in the image and likeness of God. But critical race theory has its origins in critical theory, a Marxist-inspired movement that views all things through the lens of power and divides society into oppressors and the oppressed. Critical race theory marks this division according to racial lines.

3) Charity and community are central to the mission of Catholic education. But critical race theory promotes division and forces people into competing racial groups.

4) Catholic education conforms consciences to Christ and his Church. But critical race theory imputes unconscious bias upon persons and deems racism a permanent condition.

5) Catholic education teaches that sin is an individual fault that can have a devastating social impact. But critical race theory imputes guilt for “social sins” committed in the past.

6) Catholic education teaches the unity of faith and reason and helps students know and live the truth. But critical race theory is skeptical of objective truth and rejects the Western intellectual tradition. It places individual experience and cultural constructivism over reason.

7) Catholic education recognizes individual autonomy and cultivates students’ capacity for reason, without regard to skin color. But critical race theory assumes that race defines how one thinks and looks at the world.

8) Catholic education observes human accomplishments and failings according to a Catholic worldview, by which racism is one element of a fallen and redeemed nature. But critical race theory demands that history be taught through the lens of race, power, and privilege.

9) Catholic education favours literature that promotes understanding of the human condition across time and culture. But critical race theory demands that classic texts be set aside for contemporary literature that is narrowly focused on race and social deconstruction.

10) Catholic education respects the natural and religious rights of parents to direct the formation of their children in collaboration with the school. But critical race theory manipulates education to form children according to its narrow ideology and to reshape culture.

Pope Francis and Cancel Culture

from

CATHOLIC VANCOUVER FEBRUARY 10, 2022

https://bccatholic.ca/news/catholic-van/wokeness-and-pseudo-religions-catholic-colleges-look-for-ways-to-challenge-growing-cancel-culture

The interconnected phenomena have sparked widespread debate in the secular world for at least the last several years, but their adverse impact on Christianity and Catholicism has now come into sharper focus with the statements by Pope Francis.

Pope Francis has, in several past addresses, used the term “ideological colonization” to describe the Western world’s trampling of Indigenous cultures and institutions. He referred to that phenomenon again in his January address to diplomats representing 183 countries but also widened his critique to include cancel culture.

Pope Francis warned that political, legal, and cultural “agendas are increasingly dictated by a mindset that rejects the natural foundations of humanity and the cultural roots that constitute the identity of many peoples.”

As I have stated on other occasions,” he said, “I consider this a form of ideological colonization, one that leaves no room for freedom of expression and is now taking the form of the ‘cancel culture’ invading many circles and public institutions.”

The Pontiff continued, “Under the guise of defending diversity, it ends up canceling all sense of identity, with the risk of silencing positions that defend a respectful and balanced understanding of various sensibilities.

“A kind of dangerous ‘one-track thinking’[…] is taking shape, one constrained to deny history or, worse yet, to rewrite it in terms of present-day categories, whereas any historical situation must be interpreted in the light of a hermeneutics of that particular time, not that of today.”

Pope Francis

Peter Nation founder of Catholic Voices Canada

Nation, who is the founder of Catholic Voices Canada, said in an interview that he believes the intent of woke ideology and cancel culture “is to bring down the Judeo-Christian tradition, including specifically the family and the moral law, and so it is a threat to Western civilization as a whole.”

He also believes that woke philosophy has infiltrated deeply into all schools and that students, even those in elementary schools, have been thoroughly indoctrinated. For example, Nation said he heard from one Grade 4 teacher who was explaining how adjectives must agree with nouns in French. Her students were outraged when she used the word “white.”

As an antidote, Catholic Voices launched its “Awake from Woke” education series last April. The virtual sessions show that woke ideology is based on beliefs and assumptions that are the antithesis of the Catholic faith. Catholic Voices has held 14 such sessions so far. One scheduled for February will instruct participants on how to engage in conversations about woke ideology.

“Adults themselves need to be educated before our young people can stand against cancel culture,” he said. “One problem has been that woke ideology has been camouflaged by terminology like ‘diversity, inclusivity, and equity,’ and ‘social justice,’ which sound like they are secular initiatives that could be aligned with Catholic social teaching. They are not.”

Nation said the struggle to counter woke-ism is not an easy one, especially given the inroads the philosophy has made. But he said success may be found through a commitment to the “unity of family and friends,” through devoted “prayer warriors,” by “taking back institutions through friendships,” and through the “Awake from Woke support network” of parents and students.

    Dr. Gerry Turcotte 

However, this does not mean dissenting or differing voices should not be heard. “We need to create a space of dialogue, where we can meet and encounter truth,” Turcotte explains. “It’s arguably the hardest thing to do. And I think it was always the mission of Catholic universities to pursue this.

“This was why the Catholic Church created the very first universities in the first place, to create a space where difficult questions could be asked, and it’s always going to be uncomfortable, because of the wide range of issues, and it’s something that you have to negotiate in the university system.”

Turcotte, who is currently President and Vice-Chancellor of St. Mary’s University in Calgary, said he will devote himself to continuing the Corpus Christi-St. Mark’s tradition of “creating these amazing individuals” who are going “out into the community to make a difference.

“I think that’s the antidote to the negativity and to guilt and to all other issues we may be struggling with. It’s creating people who have good strong values and who want to make a difference and to do the right thing in our  community, even when that’s a difficult thing to do.”

Turcotte said that he personally is dedicated to improving the community and to social justice. “And I believe strongly that Catholic education can heal a lot of the wounds that our planet is experiencing right now,” he said. “And I will come in with energy, and I will come in with an open heart, and I will try to assist in every way I can to make the mission of the colleges a success. And through that success, and through those actions, to really celebrate the dynamism and the beauty of the Catholic faith.”

Andrew Kaethler, Academic Dean and Assistant Professor of Theology at Catholic Pacific College in Langley, said in an interview that one important way he carries out this important responsibility is to introduce his students “to a tradition in which there is a recognition that there is a good, there is a truth, that there is truth to reality, that we can encounter it, and that the logos (universal divine reason) that undergirds all reality—that of our own individual logos and everyone’s—interconnects with The Logos, and therefore see reality for what it is.”

Kaethler said that does not mean that he wants the college’s graduates to go out into the world “wagging their fingers, and saying, ‘wrong, wrong, wrong.’” There is a time and place for naysaying, he said. 

“But our students are better off if they are equipped to respond by offering a counter story, the story of the true, the good,  and the beautiful—that is, Gospel.”

On the specific issue of CRT, “We want to teach our students to relate to the truths that are within critical race theory—the desire to combat racism and to have empathy with those who are struggling—but then to provide a far more beautiful response than CRT, a response that, unlike CRT, does not perpetuate the problem that it seeks to overcome,” he said.

On the interconnected issues of cancel culture, Kaethler said Christian teaching is clear. “As Joseph Ratzinger [Pope Emeritus Benedict VXI] beautifully sets out, to be the elect means that we have been called to lay our lives down for the sake of the world,” he said. “Part and parcel of this is forgiveness, something that does not exist within cancel culture.

“There’s no room for forgiveness in this perspective because it overlooks persons. Here one does not live for the other, and the human person is lost in group think. This is terrifying.”

The newly-appointed President and Principal of Corpus Christi-St. Mark’s, Dr. Gerry Turcotte, agreed that the pursuit of truth is central to a Catholic college’s mission. Turcotte, who will replace retiring Dr. Michael W. Higgins in August, said in an interview that, “the cause of truth is one that allows and encourages, specifically in Catholic universities, the asking of questions about all the most difficult issues.”