Is There a Safe Environment for Catholicism in Catholic Schools: Benilde-St. Margaret, Minnesota

Editor: A local story about a poorly written editorial in a school newspaper has gone national.  The whys and the wherefores of the newsworthiness of this piece are an open question, a sort of cognitive disease of the nation, but because someone in the school administration decided that it was unacceptable to continue airing an editorial attacking Archbishop Nienstedt and the Church's teaching about homosexuality,  attacking the leadership of the Catholic Church over a prudential decision to send out an educational DVD known as Preserving Marriage in Minnesota, hence, the "discussion" about "free-speech" and why it's so amazing to so many intelligent commentators that a Catholic Church institution would object to a student newspaper attacking it..  

Many of the editorials and coverage are concerned about "free speech", while at the same time condemning the Archbishop for exercising his own free speech.   One editorial asks if a safe environment is being created for homosexuals in Catholic schools.  A better question to ask is, "is a safe environment being created for Catholicism in Catholic schools?"   Archbishop Nienstedt and the school administration of this allegedly Catholic school seem to think that public opposition in defense for moral depravity on the part of its students to the Church's teachings and a safe environment for Catholicism  are mutually exclusive. 

This event even made the Washington Post:

ST. LOUIS PARK, Minn. -- Editorials in a Catholic prep school's student newspaper about same-sex marriage and gay teenagers are sparking debate about free speech in Minnesota.
Student-written opinion pieces in the newspaper at Benilde-St.
Margaret in suburban St. Louis defended gay teenagers and criticized a DVD by Minnesota's Catholic bishops that denounced same-sex marriage.

The editorials and the nearly 100 comments they generated were deleted from the newspaper's website over the weekend. The principal says they created confusion about church teaching and an intensity that made an unsafe environment for students.  [An unsafe environment for Catholicism]

 Link to Washington Post 

WTOL, Toledo, Ohio

National Public Radio

"There's so many suicides in the news. And I felt very frustrated that my voice couldn't be heard, and that there were all these things that I see as injustices all the time that I didn't feel like anyone else was recognizing," said Simonson.

The essay reads in part:

"You fear looking the wrong way in the locker room and offending someone," he continued. "Politicians are allowed to debate your right to marry the person you love, or your right to be protected from hate crimes under the law. Your faith preaches your exclusion -- or damnation. And no one does anything to stop it."

 Chicago Examiner

Sexuality is one of the most complicated aspects of human life. Let’s not further denigrate it, justifying it by a book written, sorted and edited, by males, in a cultural context worlds from our present cultural context. It’s just not an honest comparison. Who are we to judge?

[ David Thorsen, the author, says celibacy is too hard, all of those things related to sexuality just happen, why try to control it?  Indeed, according to his argument, why bother with prosecuting  any offense listed in the criminal code at all, since they're so common?  Why not just legalize pederasty?]

The Colorado Independent, here