Sunday, January 12, 2014

2nd employee at Catholic school plans same-sex marriage; school CEO says she is welcome to stay

http://www.advocate.com/sites/advocate.com/files/imagecache/stories/catholicteacher400x300.jpgA part-time employee of a Seattle-area Catholic school has announced that she is planning a same-sex wedding in August – and the school’s president and CEO says that she is “welcome” to stay, according to a local media report.

In December, Mark Zmuda, the vice principal at Eastside Catholic School, was dismissed after his summer same-sex wedding became a matter of public knowledge. 

A local newspaper reported that the dismissal followed a conversation between Archbishop J. Peter Sartain and the school’s president and CEO, Sister Mary Tracy. 

The vice principal’s dismissal led 400 of the school’s students to protest. 

On January 7, Stephanie Merrow, a part-time drama coach at the school, announced that she will wed another woman in the summer and said that she feared for her job. 

““I’m doing this to support the kids, and what the kids are trying to do is get to the Pope and change the Church,” said Merrow, according to a KING-TV report. 

The Seattle NBC station also reported that Gene Colin, the chairman of Eastside Catholic’s board, was involved in Zmuda’s dismissal and has resigned and that Sister Tracy said that Merrow “is ‘welcome’ to continue working on campus.” 

“Sister Tracy also told KING 5 the board discussed ways to prevent the current controversy from happening again, indicating the school would seek counsel from the Archdiocese and research other similar circumstances around the nation,” the report added. 

According to a student, Sister Tracy said that “I look forward to the day where no individual loses their job because they married a person of the same sex.” 

Sister Tracy, according to the school’s website, worked for 15 years at the National Catholic Educational Association in Washington, most recently as the NCEA Director of Advancement Services.